The most common cause of permanent blackouts is thiamine deficiency due to poor diet in chronic alcoholics, called Korsakoff’s Syndrome. Questions about blackouts during routine medical visits could serve as an important simple screen for the risk of alcohol-related harms. The Recovery Village Atlanta offers comprehensive addiction treatment for drug and alcohol addictions and co-occurring mental health conditions. A large study of twins found that genetic risk alone accounted for more than half of the blackouts experienced.

Health Topics: Alcohol-Induced Blackouts

During a blackout, an intoxicated person can still function as normal. They may seem articulate because most parts of the brain are alcohol-tolerant. They can still eat, walk, hold conversations, have sex, drive, and get into fights. People pass out when they have had so much to drink that it is like going under anesthesia. Consciousness lapses and people become comatose, unable to be aroused. Blackouts, on the other hand, have no objective signs of their presence and no alteration in the level of consciousness.

Alcohol-induced blackouts are defined as amnesia, or memory loss, for all or part of a drinking episode. This memory loss can be sputtering, called fragmentary, or continuous, called en bloc. The sole cause of alcohol blackouts is a high level of alcohol in the bloodstream. The higher the concentration of alcohol in the blood, the greater the chance of a blackout.

A half an hour later, however, they’d forgotten the events completely. “Anything that causes damage to the brain, whether temporary or permanent, can cause memory loss if the damage is in the right spot,” states Dr. Streem. If a person drinks on an empty stomach or quickly consumes a lot of alcohol, their BAC level could increase faster than usual. Moderate alcohol consumption is defined as one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), there are two types of alcohol-induced blackouts.

Theta rhythm comes from areas in the midline of the lower parts of the brain. In Korsakoff’s, these source areas of theta are destroyed, which leaves the hippocampus disorganized enough that the link between short- and long-term memory is severed. It is not difficult to navigate through an evening with full awareness of your life before the blackout began and of only what happened in the last three minutes since the blackout began. The gap in memory between the beginning of amnesia and the last three minutes continues to grow as long as the blackout lasts. There is a lot of information during the last three minutes, enough to keep people oriented and appearing quite normal, even to themselves.

Why drinking too much water could be life-threatening

Too much alcohol can temporarily inhibit the brain’s transfer of memories from short- to long-term storage. Researchers long assumed alcohol impairs memory because it kills brain cells. Indeed, long-standing alcohol abuse can damage nerve cells and permanently impact memory and learning.

How to Avoid Blackout Drinking

Despite the increase in research on and our understanding ofalcohol-induced blackouts, additional rigorous research is still needed. Studiesexamining potential genetic and environmental influences, as well as theirinteractions, are clearly warranted given recent research findings of Marino and Fromme (2015). Sex Drug & Alcohol Rehab Treatment for Women Near You differencesin alcohol-induced blackouts are another area in need of study.

Blackouts ultimately keep short-term memories from being converted into long-term memories. This means that with a blackout, you’re not losing memories; you’re actually never forming them in the first place. The severity of a blackout depends on how high the amount of alcohol in your blood was at the time of the blackout. Blackouts can happen to anyone who drinks too much, regardless of age or experience drinking. People who are blackout drunk are often not in control of their behavior.

1. They may act like they are aware of their surroundings, and they may attempt to drive, behave erratically or assault someone.
2. In rats, White showed that there are doses of alcohol where brain cells “still kind of work”, and higher doses where they are completely off – which explains partial blackouts where only fragments are lost.
3. For these reasons, questions about alcoholic blackouts are now increasingly being used in screening tools to quickly get at whether someone is a recreational drinker or a problem drinker.
4. A person who has blacked out or overdosed on alcohol could throw up while sleeping due to the loss of reflex control.
5. Although many people recover from blackouts, one episode can be fatal.

If you are continuing to experience blackouts from alcohol, but are struggling to control your alcohol use, seek evaluation for alcohol use disorder (AUD) and professional treatment. Regardless of the exact reason for your frequent blackouts, blacking out easily is a clear sign of a need to evaluate alcohol use and make changes, potentially with the help of your doctor or an addiction treatment specialist. This is when a person can remember bits and pieces of the drinking episode but not the full experience.

These environmental factors, in turn, could createstress and contribute to early initiation of alcohol use and maladaptivedrinking behaviors in her offspring, especially sons, who are geneticallypredisposed to alcohol misuse and alcohol-induced blackouts. Given thepotential impact of these findings on prevention and intervention programs,additional research examining genetic and environmental factors contributingto alcohol-induced blackouts is needed. They found that alcohol dependence symptomspredicted an increased frequency of blackouts and consequences the followingyear.