Only some people get blackout drunk | Hacker News Reader

Only some people get blackout drunk

bbc.com

24 pointsraleighm18 comments

Blackout drunk always sounded like a bullshit excuses to me, but I suppose for some people it happens. My memory can get a bit hazy but never have I ever gotten to the point where I can't remember anything at all from certain points in time. I wonder if having different drinking ability genetics effects the rate of being able to get blackout drunk.

Whoa, never heard this view. I guess it makes sense to question it if you’ve never had it happen. As a former alcoholic, I can tell you it’s definitely real, although I guess maybe not for everyone. It happened to me almost every time I drank, but I drank hard and fast. Blackouts to me were just a fact of my drunkard life.

Watching a video of yourself tell an invented story to a group of friends and strangers will make anyone a believer of blackouts. My response to the video was:

“Holy shit that’s hilarious, I wish I was there to see it.”

Anecdata here: i do not drink at all anymore, and the reason I stopped was that I almost always had a certain degree of memory loss regarding the evening. Not that I behaved in a drunk fashion (at least what my pals told me), so I guess my BAC was never too overboard.

I used to drink really heavily, I got 2 blackouts on two nights of extensive drinking and smoking. It's really like two hours of my life were gone, I was conscious, I talked to people and stuff like that, but I can't recall anything between the beginning and the end of the blackout.

It's a really strange feeling because I can remember pretty well what happened before and after the blackouts but in the middle it's just nothing.

I can not recall all the details of all conversations and all that happens. A lot of my life gets "blackouted" after a while. I mean yea I may can remember what I did last night _now_. But after a few days or weeks or whatever time I forget them. And it is no different than having a blackout.

Can you really remember a all connecting history without any gaps?

I bet there are always some gaps in the middle, where there is just nothing.

I get what you're saying, and I think I have a decent (enough) analogy to illustrate the difference.

The memory gaps you are talking about are sort of like lossy compression. The gist of what happened is there, even if you can't remember every detail. Blacking out is more like having a significant chunk deleted from the middle of the file.

The "after awhile" part is the key, there. I also don't remember what I said to my home room teacher on January 19th, 1996 - but I remember largely everything I did yesterday, if not in a eidetic manner.

You just didn't drink enough then.

Or strong enough drinks. The few times it has happened to me i've drank some stupidly strong beverages (rum or absinthe).

Everyone's alcohol tolerance is different, and their response to alcohol is different.

Putting some people on the floor is basically impossible.

Yeah thought this for a long time as well. I believe this is affected by genetics.

Interestingly, there is a gene mutation which makes people more impulsive when intoxicated. [0]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/17/gene-mutatio...

A girl I was seeing years ago would get blackout drunk... without actually being that drunk or drinking that much. Was extremely odd to witness

I normally get blackouts every time I drink. I don't think so much about it anymore. It is annoying I can't remember my drunken evenings, and sometimes i think i mis some of the fun, because i can't remember it. But at this point it is just normal. I do think i behave pretty well, even when i'm blackout drunk, people don't complain about that much anymore.

What is the enjoyment factor then? If you literally just 'vanish' so to speak.

I've been blackout drunk once in my life, I was 27, I've not been drunk for 11 years now (38 a couple of weeks ago),I average maybe 10 pints a year.

It scared the shit out of me so I stopped drinking entirely for about 5 years.

The article is tautological. It basically says that only some people get blackouts because they tolerate alcohol differently. It's like saying only some people blackout because only some drink.

I thought some people can't experience it. It seems they just didn't get drunk enough.

No it isn't. The article mentions alot of science to back this up. It starts with brain scans from mice studies, which suggest that blackouts are caused by cells in the hippocampus failing to make new memories correctly. It then mentions case studies of people who have brain damage in this area that also are unable to make new memories.

From there, it talks about twin studies which suggest there is a link between some genes and blackouts. What it's saying is that alcohol is processed slightly differently in some individuals so that it causes cells in the hippocampus to misfire and keep them from making new memories. This misfiring only seems to happen above certain blood alcohol levels. This is similar to how some individuals seem to be better (or worse) at processing alcohol, even controlling for other factors, which affects whether they pass out, or get poisoning, etc.

The bottom line is that alcohol causes different effects in the brain and turns off different parts of the higher functions at different blood alcohol levels. This can vary between individuals. In some people, they become more aggressive, or friendly, or lose their balance more easily than others. For certain individuals, they lose the ability to make new memories at high levels.

By your logic, the following two statements are alike:

- only people who drive cars can crash their car

- only some people who drive cars crash their car

I don't see that, and I don't see how the BBC article - claiming the same thing as the latter statement, is tautological. It has a whole list of known risk factors too.

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