LSC1

So I became aware of a drinking session of a good friend. Which occurred a while ago. I was not present. She drank to black out. She was in blackout for a couple of hours. She was not in danger. She is a happy drunk.... her behaviour was rather entertaining to the people around her.....Should I be concerned? I don't know if this was a "one-off" episode. I know she likes to binge drink when in a social situation. As far as I am aware (and I am rather confident) she does not drink like this at home... for example in my company (for the entire weekend) she only had 1 glass of wine .... what do you all think?

FeelingGreat

Hi LSC, even if she does have a drinking problem it's not something you can control.
Being a binge drinker puts her into the 50th percentile in Australia among young people, so I wouldn't assume this is going to develop into a life-long addiction. I know both my children binge drank at times and neither has developed into an A.

Of course I did! But then I wasn't a binge drinker.

AnvilheadII

i'm not sure you need to waste a whole lot of time worrying about an event that happened to someone else some time ago, in which you were not even present??? all you have is third hand information.

and as for calling it a black out....that isn't something you can see or detect from the outside, only the actual person under the influence would know if they were in a black out or not.

even if this person did drink to excess and often, had a real drinking problem, it's not really for you to DO anything about. except decide how much time you would want to spend with a drunk...........

NYCDoglvr

It's my understanding that only alcoholics have blackouts. And, it is a progressive disease which goes from binge to daily drinking. Being concerned is pointless since there is nothing you can do or say that will stop an alcoholic from drinking.

trailmix

I think that has been disproven. Many people who have had too much to drink experience a black out and aren't alcoholics and don't ever become alcoholics.

However I have seen it stated elsewhere, I think it was something that was previously believed.

https://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/ar...for-alcoholics

FireSprite

No, it's just that alcoholics often to progress to having blackouts regularly.

Anyone can get to a blackout state because it's really just a matter of body chemistry/biology..... when the blood concentration has reached a certain level, the body begins adjusting in an attempt to process it out faster. So it starts shutting down non-essential-to-life actions, like recording memories, in order to use that energy trying to process the toxins out. That's why those memories never "come back" - they never existed to begin with. You can't recall what you never recorded.

To some extent the liver prioritizes toxins as it processes, but overall it can't apply critical thinking so it just follows standard biologic procedure. This answer on quora is short & well done & explains what I'm saying way better:

https://www.quora.com/If-the-body-is...5-mg-aspartame

Obviously alcohol is the driver, but things like a person's overall hydration, whether the person has eaten and/or is mixing different alcohols & drugs combined, their body mass, how fast they are drinking & other variables come into play.

A "normal" drinker generally slows down before reaching the blackout state but it's still possible under the right conditions.

AutumnMama

I have blacked out in the past--not in the last 5 years or so--but when I was in college. It mostly happened because other people were pressuring me to drink more than I really wanted to. Maybe once when trying to keep up with my alcoholic husband.

I barely drink anymore, and when I do, it's one or two glasses of wine. I think people can black out without being an alcoholic.

velma929

I blacked out once, over forty years ago. Never again, and while I drank too much *that night* I didn't become an alcoholic.

It certainly is progressive, but even those who don't drink daily can be alcoholics. What separates a normal person from an addict is the fact that an alcoholic can't stop once he or she has started drinking.

Agreed, there is nothing the OP can do, except decide how much time to spend with the person in question. Re-reading your post, I wonder if your friend was unconscious, that is *passed out* instead of blacked out.

pdm22

I think if you have a concern about a friend’s personal safety, there’s nothing wrong with having a conversation with her about it. You say she wasn’t unsafe this time, but that’s where my mind would be going. Apparently many people, particularly young/ college aged, who thing they’ve been roofied/ given the date rape drug, were really just feeling the affects of binge drinking, perhaps not being experienced enough, and not realizing how hard and fast alcohol/ substances can hit you, and assumed that they must have been. I remember a sociologist going over some stats about this when those guys came out with that nail polish that detects date rape drugs.

I do remember this from my youth, my friends and I, who I hung out with during that time period, will sometimes talk about that. There were some over the top/ binge drinking/ mixing with pot or whatever, and there were some “passing out” types of experiences. I personally don’t recall ever “blacking out” / not remembering what I did while drunk, but definitely some over the top being wasted experiences. Some experiences were abroad too (Mexico, Russia), in the 90s, where we were really, really lucky nothing horrible happened to us. I didn’t become an alcoholic, I pretty much stopped when I saw where that was going, but I was hanging out with a bad crowd at the time and very easily could have. But I do recall the affects of binge drinking/ drinkignt too much at the time were still harsh. I do recall a few people talking to me about my behavior, and maybe it took me a while to straighten myself out, but it was the type of thing that stayed with me/ in the back of my mind.