What Are Alcohol Blackouts? Causes, Symptoms & Risks

Research indicates that blackouts are more likely to occur when alcohol enters the bloodstream quickly, causing the BAC to rise rapidly. This could happen if someone drinks on an empty stomach or consumes large amounts of alcohol in a short amount of time. Because females, on average, weigh less than males and, pound for pound, have less water in their bodies, they tend to reach higher peak BAC levels than males with each drink and do so more quickly. This helps explain why being female appears to be a risk factor for having blackouts. Evidence also shows that women with a history of sexual assault are more likely to be re-victimised if they are in an alcohol-induced blackout – compared to binge-drinkers who didn’t blackout. This is because they are risk while they under the influence due to impaired decision making, especially when it comes to assessing potentially dangerous situations, but they are also at risk afterwards because they cannot rely on their memory of what happened.

• For drinkers, getting to the point of ‘blackout’ is surprisingly common. In a study of more than 1,000 college students, more than two-thirds – 66.4% – reported experiencing at least one blackout. Another analysis of more than 4,600 participants found that 52% of men and 39% of women reported having at least one blackout in their lifetime, while 21% of men and 11% of women reported having had three or more in one year. And a study of 2,000 participants one year out of secondary school found that, of the 68% who admitted having ever had a drink, 20% reported they had experienced a blackout in the previous six months. Researchers long assumed alcohol impairs memory because it kills brain cells.

Blackout Drunk: Signs, Causes, and Dangers of Blackout Drinking

But if they try to press charges after, they also are vulnerable to having their cases dismissed. Like the risk factors, the consequences of blacking out are not only worse for adolescents, but also for women. She remembers talking to people at a party, but then after that a shadow drops over her memories. BetterHelp can connect you to an addiction and mental health counselor.

What Are Alcohol Blackouts? Causes, Symptoms & Risks

Excessive alcohol use can, however, lead to problems like alcohol blackouts. Blackouts cause permanent memory blanks during the time you were drinking and can have several negative consequences. Anyone who drinks heavily na vs aa or binge drinks should understand what alcohol blackouts are and what causes them.

What Are the Causes of Alcohol Blackouts?

This phenomenon, which falls on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, is known as both ‘Blackout Wednesday’ and ‘Drinksgiving’ to revelers all around the country. Typically marked by out-of-towners returning to their hometown haunts to reconnect with high school friends, the day has now morphed into one of the busiest days of the year for bars, rivaling that of St. Patrick’s Day and New Year’s Eve. So much so that establishments around the country advertise their “Blackout Wednesday” drink specials, ticketed events, and extended hours on the day.

1. Simply asking about the amount an individual has drunk was not found to be effective.
2. One man told me of having gone to a magic show after dinner and suddenly, as though teleported through space and time, finding himself on stage with the magician being asked to pick a card from a deck he was handed.
3. Another complicating factor for research on blackouts is the potentialuse of other drugs (illicit or prescription) that might also contribute tomemory loss.
4. Alcohol-induced blackouts during the past three months prospectivelypredicted increased social and emotional negative consequences, but not alcoholdependence symptoms the following year.

Alcohol-related blackouts are gaps in a person’s memory for events that occurred while they were intoxicated. These gaps happen when a person drinks enough alcohol to temporarily block the transfer of memories from short-term to long-term storage—known as memory consolidation—in a brain area called the hippocampus. Blackouts happen when you drink so much alcohol that your brain isn’t able to store memories long-term. The most common is a fragmentary blackout, which leads to only partial memories being formed, with missing periods of time. The more serious type is an “en bloc” blackout, or completely forgetting what happened. Briefly, the hippocampus is abrain structure involved in memory formation for events and has been found to beparticularly sensitive to alcohol.

A comprehensive, systematic literature review was conducted toexamine all articles published between January 2010 through August 2015 thatfocused on examined vulnerabilities, consequences, and possible mechanismsfor alcohol-induced blackouts. If you’re having difficulty concentrating, remembering recent events or keeping track of a conversation, you may be close to getting blackout drunk. If you’re in that situation, find someone you trust and find a safe ride home. In a 1970 experiment, researchers in the Washington University School of Medicine’s psychiatry department gave 10 men with a history of alcohol addiction 16 to 18 ounces of 86-proof bourbon in a four-hour period. However, scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine found in a 2011 study that alcohol didn’t kill brain cells. Instead, they found that alcohol interfered with receptors in the brain, making them produce steroids that interrupted the learning and memory-building process.

Research also indicates that smoking marijuana while drinking increases the likelihood of blacking out. The authors concluded that the blackouts were caused by an inability to transfer information from short-term to long-term memory when blood alcohol levels were rising. The results were published in the Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol.