Memory blackout
 

Anyone out there suffer complete blackout through drinking? Talking to my daughter this evening and for the first time she was telling me how abusive I was in drink. How I'd come home completely smashed, then an argument would ensue, that is, if anyone was still up, with me erupting in a massive screaming, hurl of abuse!!! I think I've done this in the past, on the phone to my husband but have complete memory blackout. I find this very, very frightening. They say murders can occur under the influence and the person know absolutely nothing about it! That being the case, one could drive home drunk, kill someone, and know absolutely nothing about it!!!! Really scary stuff.

Ps: this is so out of character for me that my friends would never believe it.

yes black out is deadly serious and quite common
the times i have woke up the next day trying to remember what happened is a scary nightmare
i have woke up in police cells not knowing how on earth i got there
then having to face up to what i have done

it started to become normal for me to wake up the next day and get my ex wife to tell me what i did what i was like etc

thankfully its not like it anymore as i dont drink so no more blackouts

I think most of us, if we drink for long enough (not in a night - I mean in years) will have blackouts.

There are still nights I cannot and will never remember from 20 years ago...but I know things happened because I have too many corroborated witness statements to prove it.

Things that were, are are, totally outside my usual self and personality.

I do not miss blackouts.

D

every single time I've ever drank in my life I lose my memory.

I'm scandanavian, it seems to vary with ethnicity.

Sure. I blacked out most nights I drank. I was aware of the problem and usually returned home before I did anything humiliating. I almost always woke up with no memory of the previous evening, and often had some mysterious circumstances I couldn't explain: what happened to my patio furniture? Why is there a hole in the wall? Why am I wearing a suit? Who the hell is this in my bed? Etc. etc.

I was going to start a similar thread. I am so ashamed to admit, I have gotten very verbally abusive when blackout drunk, and more frequently through the years even physically abusive. Also, this is so out of character for me also. Sober im kind and a peacemaker.....I hate violence. Im not saying I cant have my arguments, but its not the same. And yes, very VERY frightening to be that out of control and out of character.

Not blackouts as such but in the past several months I have found that my memory isn't great.

Also, I tend to have dreams and I wake up genuinely not being sure if I'd dreamt something or if it actually happened.
I've often had to check Facebook or my texts to see if what I dreamt about actually happened.

Yep, I had blackouts nearly every time I drank,especially as time went on. Frightening, as there was absolutely no guarantee of what I would do.

I think that all drunk people could take a bit of solace in the fact that sober people kind of more or less get it. And you aren't typically judged by your drunk behavior.

People don't look and say "windancer is mean" they look and say "windancer was drunk" etc. Especially people who rarely drink but are social come to understand that drunks are just drunk, its not something to judge them for.

Its my hope that was an encouraging post, I guess I tried to say what I wanted to say, I hope it came out clearly.

My social group rarely judged me because they blacked out too.

But in a wider sense I think for a long time I *was* judged on my actions drunk, and rightfully so - I don't think 'I was in a blackout ' is a valid excuse for anything.

Several people had me pinned as some very unflattering things.
I missed out on invitations because of my prior drunken behaviour.

It took me a while to regain trust and rehabilitate my reputation, but I did...and if I could, anyone can :)

D

belive me when you end up in a police cell and you have to face the courts the next day for your drunken behavior you very much get judged

name goes in the local paper so all the neighborhood will know exactly what you did, so there is no were to hide from it

i hated waking up not knowing what i did it was so scary

i ran aa prison meetings in my area and would see first hand people being sent to prison for there drunken behavior just like did.

they would be in a huge state of shock and fear in prison as they thought they were not criminals just like i did.

if only they never had that drink last night would be there feeling just like i did

sadly i have even met people in prison who have killed someone in black out and you can bet they wished they never drank but there going to spend and long long time paying the price for there drink.

they shown me how lucky i am that i dont drink anymore as that could of been me when drunk

Blackouts are terrifying. There was a period in my drinking when they would happen quite frequently. I am normally a warm, kind, rational person but I would turn into a monster. I would scream, cry, insult people, cry some more. The shame the next day was unbearable.

I also thought about how it would be possible for anyone, really, to do anything during a blackout, including getting in a car and driving, starting a fire in the kitchen, or falling and hitting your head on a blunt object. I am now also remembering the bizarre facebook posts too. I would wake up the next morning and pray that nobody had seen them. Often I would wake up around 5 am and wonder if people on the east coast had already seen them? Opening facebook and trying to just look at the screen enough (one eye closed) to delete the post without seeing any of the comments? Oh, the horror.

What's nice is that in sobriety we don't have to worry about any more blackouts!

New Years Even 1982 turning into 1983. 12th grade. Parents not home, about 40 kids having a house party. Next day woke up in bed w/ 2 (male)friends. Walked home with 1 shoe. Was told next day I ripped into some girl becaue her name was Laura, and a Laura somewhere did me wrong.???? Even on that youthful day, I knew I 'liked' drinking too much. Did not drink very much for decades after. But even if I only drank once a year, I knew I liked it, and could not stop at one (I'd force myself to) Not until my early to mid 40's did I start drinking regularly. Many, what I call brown outs. I'd awaken and start to remember the idiot things I did (usually via phone)... the only positive thing was I was a happy brown out, I was like OK..I'll take Uncle John to the doc on Thursday. Or sure, I can lend you $500. Odd, until you brought up black out, I blocked out that NYE so long ago. Its cringy to think of it, even all these years later.

I didn't start blacking out until earlier this year. I woken up with holes in the walls, naked lying on the floor with a busted lips from apparently falling into my toilet face first. It seems to happen more frequently with less alcohol. Perhaps the years of heavy daily intoxication have caused me some brain damage. It's frightening waking up not knowing what I did or how I behaved towards others.

Geez, my history with blackouts could be a Seuss book: "Oh! The Places You'll Wake!"

I didn't start having blackouts until the end of my career (save getting extremely drunk, even for me.......didn't happen very often as I knew exactly how much I could drink.) Toward the end however, I didn't need to drink very much to black out......maybe 2 or 3 glasses of wine. It seems my tolerance went way up during the middle portion of my career and then way down toward the end. It was this decrease in tolerance and increase in blackouts that motivated me to start researching about alcohol.

It seems a decrease in tolerance is typical in late-stage alcoholism......that is where I was heading, so I got out.

Still having short-term memory issues.......I believe due to PAWS.

Yeah, blackouts not fun.

Amazingly, I started blackouts in my early 20's. That must have been an indication to most that something is dreadfully wrong, but I managed to accept it as just part of it. I had been blacking out for years. Women are affected quicker and to a greater degree by the breakdown and metabolism of alcohol and the very toxic byproducts. We can become "alcoholic" drinkers more quickly than men. In a way, I am thankful this was the case because I stopped sooner than I might have.

I blacked out starting many years ago as well but with increased frequency and seemingly with need of less alcohol(although my gauges for many things were out go whack so who knows how much it took to blackout. In the last many years I rarely recall going to bed and clues around the house pieced together somewhat of a story.

I would look at my phone to find out who I had called(hoping I didn't call anyone and seeing drunk dials mostly to family). I would fail to recall entire conversations and my poor husband would constantly have to have an entire conversation over with me because I couldn't remember what we talked about or decided.

I was also verbally aggressive, overly jealous and uninhibited (texting people I appropriately that I NEVER EVER would have sober). It made me hate myself(or was one of the reasons at least) and I felt like "who the HELL is this ******* inside of me when I drink????"

Never again(and definitely not for today - which is much more manageable)

Same for me, Trailrunr :(

It was a blackout which made me choose abstinence again. I, too, wonder who that angry, hurt, jealous woman is who emerges ranting from the dark spaces I can't remember. She is dangerous, vicious, hurt. She is the abandoned, maltreated animal that I have kept so carefully caged with my apparent kindness, my career, my intelligence. She was hurt at some point along the way, and I just locked her up. The only time she can break through those bars of "reason" are when I am blacked out, and there is no telling what she will say or who she will hurt.

I, too, have wondered if I would ever wake up discovering that I had done something irrevocable and violent. If I'm being honest, some of the abusive things I've said to people while in a blackout have been irrevocable, and I have lost friends and loves.

The only way for me to be safely sure that I will be the kind and nonviolent human that I want to be is to stay sober. I trust my behavior sober.

Recognizing that within all of us a shadow self lurks, some of us carry a more venomous shadow... I feel sympathy for that part of me, and try to heal her, but alcohol is her food.

I have noticed that as the years pass (I'm 48), I can no longer predict how much alcohol will produce blackout. I can drink heavily one day and be a charming happy reveler with a great sense of humor, and then drink far less another day and - bam - black out and chaos.

I spent much of my adult life in sobriety, but have attempted "normal" drinking here and there. It always escalates, and my wake up call has always involved unexpected angry scene-making, typically inside a blackout.
I return to sobriety, build a year or two of sanity and confidence, and cycle back.

I'm in sobriety now, and what I love most is that I can trust myself.