Well, of course they’d be followed by falling asleep at some point. 
But, yes, the idea of “blacking out,” as I know it and have experienced it multiple times, is being absolutely conscious to all outward appearances, but having absolutely no memory of such the next day. This has happened to me more times than I would care to admit to, but, for a ballpark figure, maybe a dozen or so times. You go out, have a shitton of drinks, somehow don’t collapse in a stupor or end up in a toilet, end up home somehow, wake up the next morning wondering, what in the fuck happened last night.
Well said, sir.
I guess the point I was making was that blacking out will be followed by passing out, but passing out isn’t necessarily preceded by blacking out. And yeah, at some point everyone falls asleep. And, not to put too fine a point on it, eventually doesn’t wake up.
I’ve blacked out maybe a dozen times over the years. Not for several decades though. Like Pulykamell. Concious, probably seemed drunk but not horribly so, manage to get home miles away by bicycle or skateboard. And not being able to remember the night before or more commonly be missing a couple of hours. I remember waking up with pretty bad skateboard road rash and bloody sheets. I had obviously fell off my skateboard pretty badly. I don’t think I ever had a blackout by drinking just beer…it always involved hard alcohol and usually shots.
My wife has blacked out a couple times in the past year. Absolutely no memory of long, deep discussion in the car. It just wasn’t there but she wondered how I knew all this stuff she told me about?
I love to drink, but I am very good at reaching that point just before things go bad, then titrating to stay right at that point. My gf is another story.
Just a few weeks ago we returned from a party; I was feeling fine, my gf apparently was a bit further down the road. I let the dogs out, checked on the horses and chickens, then climbed into bed. As I was sliding into slumber, my gf bellowed, “STOP THRASHING!!!”.
Now, who uses the word “thrashing”, and who bellows at 3 am? I was quite put off, and got out of bed and went to the guest bedroom to sleep. Indeed, I was angry at the way I’d been treated.
The following morning she had no memory of the thrashing thing. None. She even pointed out, "I’d never use the word “thrashing” " as proof at it was all my imagination.
When my ex and I were vacationing in Mazatlan, we went out to eat one evening and started drinking margaritas. The next thing we remember is waking up in our hotel room the following morning*. Neither of us had any memory of how we spent the evening or how we got back to the hotel. I just hope we paid for our meal; it was often difficult there to get someone to bring the check.
In college and for a while thereafter, I drank heavily at Friday happy hours with friends. I cut way back after being informed that I had made some racist remarks to the clerk at a mini-mart. I was horrified. I truly don’t harbor those feelings, and I was concerned about what else alcohol might cause me to do.
*At least we still had our kidneys.
I couldn’t drink until I black out because, before then, my personal anti-drinking mechanism would kick in. It’s called PUKING. LOL
The first time I got drunk was in my off campus apartment on a Friday night. It was an “all-girl bitch about school and talk about boys” night, and we were drinking steadily. I was starting to get truly drunk when, suddenly, I found myself racing to the bathroom. While miserably and uncontrollably retching in the toilet, I heard a loud voice outside the bathroom door announce, “Jasmine’s puking her brains out!”
And didn’t wake up in a bathtub full of ice. :eek:
Back around… 1996, one of Middlebro’s many nicknames was Mr. Red Cross. He wasn’t a volunteer, but for several years starting when he was 15 he held the town’s record for “person most likely to tend to some blacked-out drunk he may not even have met previously”.
Combine that with having realized that he wasn’t good at figuring out when to stop (he never even ended up with a bad hangover, but by the time he realized it was time to stop it was past), and he was a teetotaler for over 30 years. He recently started drinking a little bit but only wine and that either homemade (the reason he started doing it was so the neighbors in his wife’s home town would feel more comfortable around him) or from the shelf above the top shelf.
I related in another thread that I got my hair set on fire at a party and didn’t recall it happening. Was told a couple weeks later by the guy who was sipping high proof booze and and blowing fireballs. He apologized for setting me on fire.
I hadn’t noticed in the meanwhile so it must have only singed my hair lightly. But I looked closely in the bathroom mirror and one side of my hesd had slightly shorter hair.
Thing was, no one had mentioned it to me in the meantime.
I never drank enough to have a blackout, and I don’t know how I could tell if someone else was blacked out. My parents didn’t make it a taboo, and would let us have a drink or two, even in high school. So I kind of knew my limits earlier than most naïve drinkers did.
I was the one watching other people staggering about, and later cleaning up the puke, which kind of sucked. Sure, I’ve been drunk, but I found out it’s not all that entertaining.
Regards,
Shodan
I found this excerpt from the book Blackout: remembering the things I drank to forget
Since alcohol makes me very sleepy, had I been inclined to drink to excess, I’m sure I’d have blacked out. But when I go out, I don’t want to sleep, so I drink very little, if at all. Even when I was young and had minimal responsibilities, I just didn’t get the appeal of excessive drink.
Maybe it came from watching relatives or friends being obnoxious when drunk, maybe I’m just a goody-goody down to my core, but apart from once being a bit wobbly from beer at a squadron party (still don’t understand that one, since I really hate beer) I’ve never been drunk.
Blacking out is not the same as passing out. Drinkers in the middle of a black out are very much awake, conversing and participating in whatever antics are occurring. The only difference is the drinker has no memory of the events the following morning. Passing out is going to sleep because you drank too much.
Same here, I wasn’t so much blacking out or passing out as moving the party to the bathroom for some alone time with the porcelain throne. Then, I’d be able to stagger somewhere and sleep it off.
Ah yes… hugging the white wishing well…
I don’t want to sound virtuous or anything (just a light-weight who knows his limits) but I have never been that drunk. Closest I’ve come was when I quit a job and my co-workers took me to a bar for an “escape celebration.” We arrived at about 5pm and I was there with them until 9pm and I made some excuse like, “I gotta be someplace (shomeplashe) at noon tomorrow.”
They let me go and I headed for the bathroom to take a leak, bouncing off the doorframe once. When I’d been sitting still I’d been okay but walking around revealed some balance and motor deficits. I remember leaning against the partition between the urinals while I voided so I wouldn’t piss all over my shoes or the floor. Using the walls as a guide I made it the front door and managed to locate my car.
I started it up, kind of took roll call, and determined there was no way I was going to make it home – about 30 miles – without incident. Not wanting to be spotted by my ex-cow-orkers and dragged back in for the party-pooper I was, I drove around to the back of the bar and parked there for an hour and a half. I made it home so I guess the nap was enough, but I’m somewhat surprised to this day.
Not exactly.
Sadly, I am equipped with a crackerjack memory for every thing when I am drunk. This is both good and bad, EXCEPT for one time. I drank a lot, and have definite gaps in my memory, but that is likely from the trauma of the sexual assault, and not blackout drinking. Sorry it’s not a cute, fun story.
Does waking up and realising that you’ve been using a half-eaten donner kebab as a pillow count?
Blackouts from the other side.
I used to have long phone calls with a friend of mine that later she would deny ever happened. I thought for the longest time she was either deliberately lying, or just acting rude.
It wasn’t until later, when we had to take her to the hospital because we thought she was having a stroke, but was just totally drunk, I had the :smack: realization that she was an alcoholic, and had been for quite some time. None of us had a clue, but the signs were there to see, if we’d only noticed.
Once I drank two beers at a faculty reception for new resident physicians and was more friendly and talkative than usual.
I don’t have much of a drinking history.