What Kopek said. Horrifying. Like a stranger borrowed your body for awhile.
Wow, I always had a sense of humor about it. No big deal, really. You have presence of mind, you just don’t remember the next day. I’m thinking of all the times I left a local drinking establishment (walking distance, if you need to know) and couldn’t for the life of me remember paying my tab (or even leaving to walk home). But sure enough, there it was if I went back to check. The tab all figured out and a perfect tip amount added in and everything. Wow, I did that? 
Pretty much this.
Except for one time… Got black out drunk at a bar (Smoking Dave’s Rock room in Dallas).
Went back the very next day. When I walked in, I had all these people calling me by name, shaking my hand, slapping me on the back. Apparently, I managed to be everyone’s BFF, even though I had no recollection of who any of those people where. (With the exception of the group I went with of course)
That cliche is the exception. Every other time it ended badly. Not that I’ve had a lot. But I have had a handful.
During my youth, I got horribly drunk plenty of times, but never experienced loss of memory (I claimed it was so, once, to try to excuse my awful behaviour).
Most of the time when I was drunk, it was like there was a ‘sober me’ inside as a horrified passenger within my drunk and disorderly outer self. Very often, I quite coherently knew what I was supposed to be doing, but could not properly control my speech or actions.
I don’t ever drink to that level of excess now.
I have to be very careful, as I am a very friendly social drunk whom is entertaining enough and not creepy, with the ability to make an unlimited numbers of new friends when blacked out drunk. This is mixed with a fairly low tolerance before losing inhibitions.
While it was amusing when I was younger and it was fairly nice to have good friends I don’t remember at any place I would go I have to keep a physical tally when going out these days. I have a poor short term memory and physically move some sort of object from my right front pocket to my left pocket based on a quota (usually 4 quarters) and I go home when my right pocket is empty. I also tend to go out to bars where I know the help and with friends whom won’t feed into this behavior. I live in an area of the country where strangers don’t talk to each other much and I function as the ultimate wing man which creates a really bad feedback loop.
I am grateful that this behavior does not result in fights or get me in jail and I am also lucky that it never lead to serious health issues but it is very real.
It also is not good socially as people would tend to view me as conceded, stuck up or shallow when I didn’t acknowledge them at a later date. I seriously did not remember even meeting them.
I should also note that while binge drinking is abuse I have never had an alcoholic dependance. If the social aspect is removed I do not drink, without guests beer will stay in my fridge for months or more.
I am not saying this out of pride or self justification of my past behaviors but purely to note that it is not restricted to functional or chronic forms of alcoholism.
I never blacked out. Sometimes I wish I had, because this way I had a complete memory of all the stupid things I had done. And even why it seemed like such an epic idea at the time.
But on the other hand, people told me about it, even though I remembered. So they would still have seen it happen even if I couldn’t remember.
What I needed was for everyone else to black out their memories. Yeah.
Confirming that:
- Alcohol induced memory gaps
- Awful, awful “next morning dread” that you did something extremely inappropriate the night before, but can’t remember
… are both very real phenomena.
Just to clarify a few points. Having a blackout is different from “fuzzy memory” or gaps because you might have passed out/fallen asleep. The later, you can usually piece together with a few “oh yeah…I remember that now” moments. And usually it’s because you are sloppy drunk and sort of oblivious.
Blackouts are different in that you may appear to be walking around normal, but your brain stopped recording.
IIRC, the effects are cumulative in that getting blackout drunk makes it more likely you will have future blackouts.
I drink regularly and with abandone. There are times when I at first do not recall things I saw/did/said, but when reminded it comes back to me.
Then again, the same thing happens when I’m sober.
I was pretty young when I drank excessively. I never exactly blacked out, but I was certainly drunk enough I couldn’t remember everything I did.
That’s my experience too. Getting filled in the next day on how much fun I had was always good for a few laughs. I was never shocked or scared by it.
I blacked out twice in college from alcohol. Kind of scary waking up afterwards, and having friends tell you what you did. Luckily, it was nothing beyond making a minor fool of myself.
I’ve blacked out several times, it is totally a real thing. It is a very uncomfortable feeling not knowing if the worst thing you did the night before was chug maple syrup…
I had one night that ended up so poorly (maybe 6 months ago) that I haven’t had more than a few drinks at a time since and never want to again.
Absolutely does happen. The most “memorable” time this happened to me was in college. I was playing keyboards/piano in an improvisatory jam band. We were passing around a handle of vodka, it being the party weekend of the year before finals and summer break. Anyhow, I remember what I think is the whole show and then going to a party afterwards.
The next day, the guitarist brings a tape over of the show and mentions some songs I have no recollection of playing. But they are there, on tape. However, the weirdest is that there is also one completely improvised song there–never played before or since–that I started with a melody line and some chords. It’s just so disconcerting hearing yourself play and create a song that you have absolutely no memory of ever doing, and sort of critiquing yourself along the way ("hey-that was a pretty cool lick, what was that? Oh, wait, that’s me playing. Why don’t I know what lick that is?). And, surprisingly, even in my blackout drunk state, I had enough muscle memory and coordination to play reasonably musically.
I had it happen once when I was first in Japan and not used to how Japanese drank. I don’t remember how I got back home.
Unfortunately I remember lots of the embarrassing things I did drunk, which is one reason I gave it up.
Back home to the US?:eek:
Compared to many friends of mine (my wife included) I remember very little of the 90s.
I do remember things from that decade, but it’s like only having snapshots or still pictures vs. others who experienced the same things having videos of those events. That’s in general.
There are other events - parties, weekends, things I said or did, things others said or did - that everyone I still know from back then can remember that I have absolutely no memory at all.
“Remember that time we… and then this and that happened…” No, not a clue, not even a hint of it. “Seriously?” Yeah, zero.
I was a drug addict and alcoholic back then. I chalk it up to that. Following that period in my life, my memory seems more on par with others. Very anecdotal I know. But that seems the most likely explanation.
Back in the 70s, before ticket prices made it so hard to do, I often enjoyed going to see the Texas Rangers play. One time that I went, I couldn’t get the beer vendors to visit me often enough, so the next time I went, when the beer vendor came before the start of the game, I gave him an extra five dollars to make sure that I didn’t go thirsty.
Why, yes, I did get very drunk.
I had picked up a friend before going to the game, so I had to drive him home. The time between trying to remember where I had parked the car, and showing up on his doorstep (where his wife informed me that I was NOT going to drive home!) is a an almost complete and utter blank. The one thing I remember was coming to a T-intersection, and trying to remember which way to turn. And I’m not completely sure that that memory was from that incident.
I asked this a couple years ago. Probably all the drunks who answered didn’t remember they had already done so 