Defended my thesis, followed by:
–lunch with adviser and other grad student. Other student didn’t drink, but me and adviser split two pitchers of beer.
–went back to department building and opened bottle of scotch that a friend sent me in honor of defending. (Note: I had done the same for him several years earlier.) As people would stop by, I’d encourage them to have a shot with me.
–by 3 p.m., I was taken to the bar nearby for drinks. By 5, I was quite drunk.
–at about 7 p.m., I was at a different bar, with friends trying to get me to drink water and eat some food. I have no memory of leaving bar #1 and going to bar #2.
Thankfully, the friends kept me on this side of blackout drunk for the next hour or so, and they drove me home. The next day, I was talking to family about my thesis defense. My brother-in-law asked if I had partied. “Oh yes.” Then he asked how late I stayed out. “I…don’t…remember.”
I did piece things together, and I got home around 9 p.m. and promptly passed out on my couch. Surprisingly, I didn’t have a hangover the next day.
I’ve never been much of a drinker, so my stories are kind of boring. I don’t believe I’ve ever blacked out, but I can remember kind of “strobing”, kind of like when a video game starts dropping frames- the action is still happening, but you’re only aware of snapshots of it. Never more than a few seconds- at least, as I recall. Certainly never “wake up on the floor or in a stranger’s bed” blackouts.
It only happened to me once, freshman year of college. I was never a big drinker, but you gotta try everything once, right? So my friends and I got completely sloshed at this big formal party/event. I remember bits and pieces of the night such as playing beer pong at one of the frat houses, I remember hanging out with a couple of girls, and slipping on the ice and breaking my watch when I was crossing the road. But that’s about it. I just woke up in my bed with my suit still on in the morning.
I did most of my heavy drinking in high school. Started buying and drinking baby bulls (Schlitz malt liquor) at the age of 14. I had and still do have a baby face, so at age 14, I probably looked like I was 12. We just had certain convenience stores in my home town that in the 80’s would sell to anybody with cash. My friends and I liked beer. There were many weekend nights that I drank excessively, but never had a period of time that I don’t remember or lost track of time. The drunkest I have ever been was prom night, where we (my friends and I with our dates) ended up at one of the girl’s houses whose parents were gone, and whose college age brother was home and acted as bartender. There were about two dozen people at the party. Trash-can punch was the primary drink being served. I still was not black-out drunk, I guess I threw up in the bushes outside, before I could get to that point. In high school, on the weekends, drinking was what you did.
In college, drinking lost some of its appeal. Still went to parties and became more of a social drinker but not to excess. I had may friends that never drank in high school, that acted like they had finally been set free, that drank to puking most nights of the week, while I sat by, shaking my head, and would help them get home.
To this day, I am a casual drinker. Drink more when going out for dinner or at parties, but hardly ever to excess.
I like talking to strangers an hearing their story. In my younger years I use to show up to the bar, nurse one or two beers and get to know everyone in the bar. I just value hearing other people stories and just like here I learn a lot from doing so. It was extremely rare that I would get “drunk”.
Well around my mid 30’s my tolerance dropped and, being well liked and wanting to be liked I would never refuse when people bought me a shot. It took me a while to learn how to gracefully refuse but when I did that worked for a few years. At some point as my body changed the point where that I didn’t care and the blackout point converged at only a small number of drinks. I was always a low volume drinker but when I want to tie on one apparently my leg is hollow.
Fortunately I am apparently a friendly and non-creepy blackout drunk but that had the side effect of my good friends not approaching me with their concerns. I was that guy that got the whole bar talking to each other and at one point had an entire drawer filled coasters and business cards with peoples phone numbers I didn’t remember. According to my friends I somehow could even sit at a couple having a date and end up being their best friend and no one ever got mad at me…I have no idea how this is possible.
Anyway, one morning I woke up to a cold house fully dressed in bed. When I looked around the large plate glass window by the door was smashed and I couldn’t find my keys. I found my keys by the front door so I must have dropped the keys and decided to smash the window to get inside. Somehow climbing over half a dozen spike shaped glass shards that were about a foot long.
While I was absolutely abusing alcohol I was fortunately not addicted to it as some are, but I was addicted to the social aspect. The very real fact that I could have fallen and simply bleed out or impaled an organ was enough motivation to to just stop going after that night.
I do still drink socially from time to time, but it has been months today and fortunately that is just because I haven’t even had the desire. Hanging around bars so much I know a lot of people who are not nearly as fortunate in that regard.
That said I do wish it was socially acceptable to strike up random conversations with strangers.
I have never in my life been that drunk. I was out of control, stumbling drunk the night before I was supposed to leave town to start my new married life with my military husband where he was stationed. I was so drunk I kept napping on the grass and my best friend had to hold me in the bed because I kept rolling out. I remember all this though, and remembered it the next day when I had to reschedule my trip so I could recover!
I have one family member who was raped when she was black-out drunk and all she could remember was pain, flashes in a dark room and people laughing and cheering. She was so ashamed thinking it was her fault (she was young and very inexperienced) she tried to kill herself a few weeks later instead of contacting the police. She didn’t even ask anyone at the party about it. She was so humiliated she didn’t tell anyone for a few years, after several suicide attempts. I don’t think she’s ever really recovered emotionally.
My college roommate lives next door to an interior designer I know through work. The roommate is an (unadmitted and undiagnosed) alcoholic, and the designer is very talented, very honest, and very expensive.
One summer, Roommate hired Designer to do some work on various parts of her house - paint a bedroom, furnish the living room, install some new shelves in the kitchen, etc. And after every project was done and invoiced, Roommate would be incensed and complain to me, “$1,300 to paint a bedroom?! I never even said she could install crown molding, and that was most of the expense!” or “She stripped and stained that antique table, and it cost a shitload. I do love it, but she should have gotten my approval first.” And every time, I’d say, “Don’t you people have contracts that list the work she’s supposed to do? When you do approve something, is it just verbal?” Not until a few years later did the Designer (who had gotten yelled at for doing and charging for unauthorized work) realize that Roommate was requesting work and approving details during a blackout, then not remembering the conversation.
I’d been to a whisky tasting and was already getting pretty sloshed. Afterwards I went to the regular pub and proceeded to have a gin shot drinking contest, downing ten shots as fast as I could, together with beer of course. After I got thrown out I couldn’t even get my bike open and had to get help from the owner. He told me I wasn’t allowed to bike home, but as I crossed the street from the bar I jumped on anyway, him screaming behind me.
On the way the road become more bendy than it usually was. I rode down a hill with a ditch on the right hand side, with trees plated at the bottom of the ditch. After a looooong bend I went full speed over the edge. I came to it up in a tree three hours later. I’m not sure if I blacked out or if the tree knocked me out…
I want to thank everyone for posting such honest and often scary/unflattering stories. and also stories with really bad memories associated with them, That took guts to share. I think some of y’all are lucky to be alive.
I’m a recovering alcoholic, but actually never had a blackout during all of my heavy drinking days. The only time that I ever blacked out was very early in my drinking career. I met a Japanese businessman somewhere and he took me to a hostess club, where the women will keep serving drinks for you. They mix wiskey and water, with ice and keep refilling your glass. You have no idea how much you have been drinking. I was pretty new to drinking and trying to compete with the president of a small Japanese company. I only remember leaving the place and don’t remember anything until I woke up the next morning in a horrible mess back at my apartment.
One time I was drinking in Roppongi with a friend of mine. He took a taxi home, but woke up in the gutter in Shibuya, and had soiled himself, as well has thown up all over himself. He had his wallet, but a 10,000 yen note was missing. He thinks he probably got sick in the taxi, and the driver threw him out and took a cleaning fee.
I’m very lucky that my only blackout event happened at home in the company of my husband.
We were drinking martinis. I remember it was a very hot, dry day and the icy cold gin tasted very good. I had three large ones, before and after dinner.
I remember I sat down in front of the fireplace and then I remember waking up an hour later flat on my back in the middle of the living room. My husband noticed me only after I passed out, and thought I had merely laid down for a nap. Nope, I had passed out.
And the whole next day I was as sick as a dog. I had the dry heaves all that day and I remember I couldn’t stand up straight after hours of retching. I had to crawl on my hands and knees upstairs to the kitchen the next evening and force myself to eat a banana, after which I recovered somewhat.
One of my friends was a regular in his neighborhood bar. He would get so drunk, he would pass out at the bar. The bar staff knew him, so they would take him home.
So from my friend’s perspective, he would just get drunk and magically wake up all tucked in his bed.
Heh. At a local bar I used to go to (it’s since gone), there used to be a guy that would get drunk and just pass out on the floor. (Like literally on the floor. First time I met him, the bartender asked me and my wife to go around the other way on the bar so as not to disturb him–it was one of those square-shaped bars like at an old-timey diner) They’d let him sleep there, and when he’d wake up, there’d be a shot waiting for him at the bar.
Imagine that pretty much anywhere but Japan? And more likely than not, it was the taxi driver that took the standard 10,000 yen (about $100) cleaning fee out of his wallet.
Not that I remember that ever happening to me in Roppongi…
My cousin has epilepsy & has had grand mal seizures on occasion (mostly controlled by medication). Once I picked her up at the hospital after she was discharged following a seizure, drove her home, stopped for groceries, then spent hours at her apartment getting things in order & talking. She seemed totally lucid & engaging the whole time, but had NO memory of it afterwards (sometimes for several days following the seizures). She finds it terrifying that she doesn’t remember & I’ve had to reassure her that her behavior was totally fine.
So I think blackouts are similar to this. Your brain is on autopilot but the part of your brain that stores memory is turned off.
My most disappointing blackout experience that I still regret to this day, was at Live Aid in 1985. We spent a small fortune on the tickets & I was looking forward to it forever. The line up was incredible…Queen, U2, Paul McCartney, etc. But we started drinking early in the day–hard liquor, which I wasn’t used to. I remember walking into the stadium, but nothing after that until the next day and even though I’ve seen recordings of the concert, I will forever wish I could go back & relive that day & remember it.
Same here. I’m wondering how much detail has to be missing, and for how long, to qualify as ‘black out’? Maybe a dozen or so times I had significant memory gaps, for awhile, but never ‘oh dude you did this…then you did that!’ and it’s a complete blank to me forever after. It would all gradually come back, sometimes ‘cringe worthy’ to quote a famous man, though never that dramatic.
I haven’t been intoxicated now in 35+ yrs though, married a long time and my wife has never seen me drunk, not that there’s much exciting about it.
I had just recently arrived at a Halloween party. I had a glass of wine. Then two friends arrived, one holding a bottle of Vampire wine. Of course the three of us had to split it. This was my second glass of the night, and their first. After pouring the drinks, we went outside to enjoy a smoke, finished the drinks B.S.ing over cigars, and headed inside. I recall sitting in a large, comfortable, brown chair, then waking up on my front lawn. Apparently, the three of us had entered the house in a great mood, but quickly became slurred, stumbling and belligerent. We were shouting at fellow party-goers and loved ones. Really abusive, hateful stuff, too. Then one by one we all vomited somewhere on the property and were promptly hauled into cars and brought home. I guess I just kind of rolled out of the passenger door and started crawling toward the house. The driver drove off and I decided not to make the rest of the trip. None of us recall anything after having the cigars. One of the other guys did some research, and the best he could find was something about an enzyme in certain wines that reacts badly with nicotine. Anyone else ever heard of that?
Don’t worry, that happens to the best people. Bowie much later claimed that he didn’t remember even one minute of recording “Station To Station”, and it turned out one of his best albums. (though this was more a steady blackout from cocaine)