Fly N Buy

The migration of young adults to college campuses/universities is in full swing. Of course one of the first activities they engage in is drinking - many to great excess.

This is an excerpt from the book Under the Influence and is a Sticky in the forum Alcoholism. I found it tremendously helpful in detailing how an alcoholic's body metabolizes alcohol differently than a non-alcoholic.

"Only rarely, however, will a normal, nonalcoholic drinker take in enough alcohol to lose consciousness. This is fortunate, for alcohol taken in large enough quantities to cause unconsciousness is dangerously near the amount needed to paralyze the respiratory center, shut off the breathing apparatus, and kill the drinker."

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...influence.html

In a general way - with the newcomer in mind, consider sharing what it was like and issues that arose from being a blackout drinker.........I am certain a few friends here have some ESH for others.

Coldfusion

In the late stages of alcoholism, blackouts became a nightly occurrence for me and my wife. We inflicted a lot of damage in that state of oblivion, and I am glad it is behind us now.

PurpleKnight

There was a time in my life when I would have only two pints of beer and then home, but from that point I can plot a course all the way to blacking out more nights in the week than not.

The behaviour around alcohol I can clearly see evolved over time, I needed more and more, my drinking occurred around others out in a bar but that turned into drinking alone, the beer turned to whiskey and the the light buzz of two pints had morphed into blacking out, drinking to the point of waking up in the early hours of the morning, crawling into bed for a few hours before the alarm went off for work, this became my reality, not overnight, but on a slow progression over years.

It's a scary place watching your life descend slowly into self destruction and you can see it happening before your eyes and not knowing what to do about it or if anything can even be done. The train was headed in only one direction and I either needed to get off quick or I was heading for a crash.

But it can be done, my body hasn't had to experience blacking out, completely shutting down due to the sheer volume of alcohol going through my bloodstream in a very long time.

We can draw a line under this chaos and say no more, reclaim our lives, take back control and not put our bodies through the madness I lived for many years anymore if we don't want to!!

capricallia

Isn't losing consciousness and blacking out something different? Blacking out being the inability to lay down short term memories because of the effect on the brain of so much alcohol but still up and walking/talking etc losing consciousness almost an extreme form of passing out, inability to be roused? Apologies if I've read it wrong or misunderstood, hence asking the question.

red3215

Blackout drinker to me means someone who might be conscious but will forget a lot of what they did later.
I think alcohol can cause this with non-alcoholics, but got much worse the more I drank.

I would blackout even if barely buzzed and would make promises to people I completely forgot (Several times my mother would tell me, I thought you were gonna visit today! and I had no idea I told her that)

But that's not even the worst of being an alcoholic. I've been through ongoing sexual abuse, an abusive marriage, major depression, panic attacks every day and other sh*t while sober, but I think alcoholism was worse than any of these things. Plus caused even more of these problems sometimes.