I was 18 when I had my first alcohol-related blackout.
On subsequent, similar mornings, questions included Who are you?, Where am I?
and How did I get here?
Tang Yau Hoong/Getty Images/Graphic by Cristina Cianci
I take full responsibility for drinking to the point of blacking out.
Nobody forced me to have that tequila shot that tipped me over the edge.
But in my social circles, blackouts were normal.
Worthy of praise, even.You cant remember anything about last night?
It must have been quite a party!Slap on the back.
Laughing about the huge chunks of time lost.
Throughout college and into my 20s, I clung to the belief that women who drank were cool.
I drank like the boys, matching them, beer for beer.
I was reckless and stupid, but in my mind I was adventurous and exciting.
Hell, nobody was going to accusemeof being boring.
Even after I became a mother in my early 30s, I continued to ignore all warning signs.
My quota was more like 16.)
I told myself this report was just another form of woman-shaming by our patriarchal society.
But today, Im sober.
I have been for four months (123 days and counting).
Blackoutsfor so long a regular part of my lifeare now a thing of my past.
This creates a temporary void in the record-keeping system.
Memories lost in a blackout will never come back, because the information wasnt stored in the first place.
Blackouts come in two types, Dr. White says, depending on how severely the hippocampus is impaired.
The more serious, complete blackouts (calleden bloc blackouts) are when the memory is totally disabled.
Welcome to my world.
Im not over-dramatizing when I say Im lucky to be alive.
I always used to blame my blackouts on tequila shots.
It turns out, expensive wine will do the job just as well.
Speed of drinking is a key factor.
This is called acute tolerance.
Its a misconception that people who cant handle their booze are more likely to black out.
Perhaps the most common myth about a blackout is that it involves passing out.
However, the process of transferring information from shortterm to longterm storage in the brain has been completely blocked.
If Id known what I know now about blackouts, would I have changed my drinking habits?
Possibly, although it would have been a hard-fought contest between denial and science-based facts.
But Ive accepted that I wont get any of my lost memories backbecause what choice do I have?
And I’m focused on remembering everything else about the rest of my life.
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