Gottalife

I was listening to the radio the other day and they were talking about a strange sort of blank spot that afflicts most drivers from time to time. It happens to me, like I will be driving across town,then suddenly ask myself was that light red or green? Did I just run a red light? I can't rmeber.

Or on a longer journey last week I had to ask my partner if we had passed a certain town. We had but I had no memory of it. I drove through an entire small town and can't remember? According to the program it has something to do with fatigue and part of the mind just shuts down for a period. The person has no control over this as they are unaware. That's roughly how it went .

It struck me that there was a similarity to when I was drinking, or rather swearing off for the day. I would start my journey home after work (with no intention of drinking and then find my self on my third or fourth drink. I had no memory of changing my destination from home to bar, of arriving, or of ordering the first few drinks. What was going on? Has anyone else had a similar experience?

HereIAm321

OMG yes yes yes! That's a perfect way to describe it! A huge mental blank spot. On autopilot.

freshstart57

Our brains have several different parts each responsible for different aspects of our behaviour and function. Memory in one location, creativity in another location, deductive reasoning in another. When you talked about not being aware of driving up to the bar, parking your car, locking it, walking to the door and taking a chair, I think that you are describing how the base part of your brain was in control, the same part that is in charge of making a sandwich, getting a glass of water, or staying away from the edge of the cliff.

This part of the brain is a primitive part of the brain, and is seen in all critters above a certain level of intelligence, and is called the amygdala. It is responsible for processing drives for pleasure, fear, and anger, and is important in emotional conditioning and how we can become creatures of habit or 'running on autopilot'. The amygdala is responsible for the pleasure response as it activates serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine.

All of this babble explains how our amygdala can influence our actions without conscious effort, how it can hijack our intentions to stay sober. We can learn to overrule this part of our brain by using our higher levels of thinking, by using the most evolved portion of our brain, the neocortex. By recognizing these urges as coming from this reacting part of our brain we share with lizards and all creatures more complex than that, we can enable our thinking part of our brain.

We can understand that our urges to drink come from a primitive beast brain, and that we are smarter, stronger, and fully in control if only we can be mindful and recognize our pleasure center when it tries to control us. There is some science after all in getting sober.

instant

Dissociation- very normal when doing repetitive tasks for long periods

"on automatic pilot"

least

I had the same experience early in recovery. Fortunately it went away.

lilgolden73

Oh I have the blank spot...fits right in with my adhd....sigh...

renaldo

I've never not remembered starting drinking, but I've woken up in the morning groggy thinking I had one beer left in the fridge, opened the fridge, and then remembered, 'oh yeah, I decided to drink it.'

And even completely straight, when I've done some non-momentous task, I can't remember if I've done it or not. A perfect example would be that sometimes I put a room temperature soda in the freezer to get it cool fast, and then decide I don't want to drink it. I'll be in bed and can't remember if I moved it over to the fridge to keep it from exploding or not.

I'll get up and check, and sure enough I had moved it, but have no recollection of doing it.

mick3580

I have had mental blank spots with booze exactly as you describe. It's how I knew I was alcoholic. Aa's description of the alcoholic in aa's basic text. "Alcoholics Anonymous" describes this in Fred's story.

KateL

I have those when driving on routes I use a lot xx

Thepatman

Ok, now I feel normal. I had a few of those over the weekend. Yikes!

Felt like in my younger days smoking weed, going to the kitchen and asking myself what the hell I came here for?

Like Freshstart said, I walk around like a lizard. LOL!

KateL

I think I'm just getting old xxxxxxx