It’s a common trope in tv shows, most recently in Mad Men, that if you drink enough you can lose entire days, forget most or everything you did over a day or more. I’ve been a heavy drinker at times but I can’t imagine how this is possible, for me at least. Have you ever had a lost day or weekend due to drinking? I’ve blacked out before but it’s been for an hour or two at most.
I’ve never blacked out or failed to remember a large time period, and I’ve done my fair share of drinking.
I haven’t but my first husband sure did. So did my brother, before he quit drinking.
Hell no. I don’t even like being drunk very much. When I realize that I’ve gone from being “buzzed” to “holy shit I’m actually drunk now” my (slow, drunken) reaction is to start drinking water and sober up. I’ve never even had a hangover, let alone blacked out and missed time.
Never blacked out. I’ve lost time in that I’ve been hungover the next day and wasted time just sleeping, but never forgot. Sometimes my memory is a bit hazy, but I’ve never had a situation where I just lost time. That would frighten me a lot–the idea that I’ve done or experienced something and that it’s just gone from my mind. Very Eternal Sunshine…
I’m considering preemptively getting on the liver transplant list, and I’ve never forgotten much of anything.
I met this guy, a friend of my cousin’s, and we got to talking about the millennium celebration… apparently there was a party at my place, with people and stuff. As far as I know, I’ve never seen the guy before, nor did I host any kind of a party at my old place, ever. Admittedly I have this weird memory thing where I can’t recall events in the past… but I usually remember people tho… so, it’s possible alcohol was consumed during this supposed party, and it could be that played a part in my total loss of recollection.
I can buy going to a party in a drunken haze and meeting people there and chatting and shit and not recalling much or anything the next day but if I had the wherewithal to actually put on a party i bet I’d remember most of it!
Once. I was 16, tequila was involved and to this day the smell nauseates me. They tell me I had a great time. No one even realized I was very drunk until the vomiting started.
shrug
That’s what I was thinking… thought it was some sort of a joke at first. Based on the description he gave me, the usual suspects were present and he did know what the house looked like from the inside… It could’ve been some sort of an after-party tho, not actually an organized party.
Dunno, I’m kinda used to not remembering; I can’t really recall events without serious prompting… and regular days (like yesterday) I can’t remember at all.
Once I lost a day. It was New Years day when I was in college. I started drinking at about 6 pm on New Year’s Eve and by the time about 2 am rolled around my memory was getting fuzzy. By about 4, stopped remembering anything until about 10pm the next day. I guess I was drinking until about 10 am, taken home and I passed out. My roommate told me I briefly woke up, used the bathroom and ate some bread around 4 pm. I thought it was just a dream, so I guess I was still pretty out of it. I woke up around 10 pm, ate something, drank a bunch of water, watched TV for a few hours, then went to bed again around 1.
I felt like such crap. Never again will I drink for 18 hours again…
A day? No.
Sadly, I admit to losing 4-6 hours, though.
A day or a weekend? Dude, that’s some serious drinking.
Nope. Even my worst blackout, which was this past June and involved about twelve ounces of 100 proof vodka drunk in two gulps on an empty stomach while it was somewhere around a hundred degrees, only caused me to lose about four or five hours, and I remember before and after as clearly as I do anything from three months ago.
I am, unfortunately, gifted with the unwanted ability called “total drunken recall”.
I’m not proud of it, but I have lied that I didn’t remember something because I was so embarrassed that I had done it. But that was back in the days when I chugged nasty crap to really get drunk (thankyouverymuch, first time around at college). Nowadays if I accidentally fall drunk it happens pretty slowly anyway, and not on purpose. More of an “I need to get a bottle water and go to bed now.”
I don’t remember a good portion of my 21st birthday. The good news is I still know nothing terrible happened; I had asked my mom to be my designated driver for the night. I couldn’t have imagined asking anybody else.
Never before or since though. I’ve never been a heavy drinker.
There were a few nights back in college parts of which I couldn’t remember later the next day. All but one of them eventually came back to mind.
Happened very regularly when I was younger, I drank very heavily as a young man.
Through my 30s and 40s it would still happen if I drank a lot (a lot for me is probably 2x as much as what you would imagine), but while I’m prone to drinking a lot on occasion I’d say my nights like that have been under ~25 since over the last 25 years.
I read once that if you black out, you’re much more likely than other people to black out from drinking. It seems like it might be one of those things that some people are dramatically more prone to doing than others. In my group of drinking buddies in my 20s, I’d say 80% of the group never had those blackouts, the other 20% (the group I was in) had them regularly to the point that it was just considered part of drinking for us. What’s interesting is by and large we all drank more or less close to the same amount, those of us that blacked out and those that didn’t.
My ExBF lost days and WEEKS. This was a person who would open a bottle of Vodka for breakfast and be starting a bottle of Scotch around 4:00 in the afternoon. He rarely ate and drank constantly. Our fights were because he couldn’t remember things and it took me a while to realize he was in a constant alcoholic haze.
When I talked about an appointment we had or people we had met, he would not remember any of it.
The best part of drinking is story-time the day after. OK, that’s not true, but I had friends in college who sincerely believed that, or at least acted like it.
I do black-out before I get physically ill, around maybe 10-12 drinks over a shortish period, and I don’t typically get ill until 12+, so for me there is a definitely real window of time where at a crazy party, I will black out. I don’t act any crazier than normal and most of the time, I am fine, but…yeah. It’s a pretty terrible habit to have, so now that I’m a bit older and wiser, I definitely try to avoid such crazy levels of consumption.
So, I’ve had many times where a few hours is lost, but a whole day? A whole weekend!? That is so hard to fathom for me.
EVER? Hell yes.
Recently? No. Not even in the last 25 years.
The drinking age was 18 for me (I’ll be 50 in October). So I could legally drink most of my Senior year of high school.
One Monday morning there was a buzz about how I told this teacher off in this tavern on Saturday and told him what a fat fuck he was and an asshole and so on. I remembered going to a party that night. I remember being insanely sick all day Sunday. I did not remember going into any bars, and I don’t know why I would have been in that particular bar as it wasn’t one for the younger crowd.
I did not remember telling anyone off. And I don’t even know why I would have unloaded on that teacher. I never had him for any subject. He did approach me in the hallway 2 days later and said “I hope you’re feeling better.”. And that was the end of it.
There was another time the summer after I graduated (1979). I was at a bar with a friend of mine in West Bend, Wisconsin. The place had 10 cent tappers which was pretty cheap even for back then. I’m not sure but I think the beer was Walters Master Brew. If that doesn’t frighten you you’re too young. Anyway, we got completely baked and I apparently gave my car keys to a couple of girls we met because we woke up the next day sleeping on the floor in their appartment.
No recollection whatsoever of how we got there. Listening to them tells us the story only made my head hurt more. And the only blue ribbons those 2 were ever going to get was made by Pabst. So we got the car keys and got the hell out of there.
But after 15 minutes of driving neither I nor my friend had any idea where the hell we were. We didn’t recognize anything! So we pulled into a filling station for directions and found out we were in De Pere!:eek: Over 100 miles away from home!