Do you ever black out when you’re drinking and then think that you most likely did something wrong and have scars to prove that you must have? I find it very disturbing.
Anyway, does anyone have any black out stories. I know that you can’t tell a story that you don’t remember, but maybe something a friend told you that you did and you were either disappointed in how you acted or rather pleased.
you need help bro… blacking out whilst drinking aint good
The butterfly effect!!
isn’t there an excellent Scorpions Song, circa 1983 dealing with this same subject!
I once woke up in a strange hotel several hundred miles from home, with a knife in my hands and a dead woman lying in my bed. I washed the blood off my hands and got the hell out of there. After that, I gave up drinking. Well, gave it up for a couple of weeks at least, I’m only human.
are ye sure it wasn’t one of those alien biatches?
I had a great uncle (grandmother’s brother-in-law) who used to binge drink. He lived in Sioux Lookout, Ontario (boonies). He woke up in Las Vegas once.
New Years Day. 1993. 15 years old…Supposed to go to a rave…end up at a family cowboy music event…crashed their event, walked up to the music stage and fell down…people lift me up, I fall down again…four cops soon carry me out… were gonna take me home…I told them the wrong address…black out…wake up in the morning thinking I am at a hotel…look out the window…see high barbed wire fences with guards…
An interesting first night festival
[quote=“j99l88e77”]Do you ever black out when you’re drinking and then think that you most likely did something wrong and have scars to prove that you must have? I find it very disturbing.
Anyway, does anyone have any black out stories. I know that you can’t tell a story that you don’t remember, but maybe something a friend told you that you did and you were either disappointed in how you acted or rather pleased.[/quote]
It happened to me one or twice years ago. It was always (in my case) the result of a combination of too many late nights in a row, mixing beer, spirits and what have you, and not eating enough/properly/or anything at all.
I was only disappointed because I missed out on the “best part of the party” that always happened after my ‘departure’ to la-la land. :fume:
I have since started eating. Now I have to take care of the drunkards. 
[quote=“j99l88e77”]Do you ever black out when you’re drinking and then think that you most likely did something wrong and have scars to prove that you must have? I find it very disturbing.
Anyway, does anyone have any black out stories. I know that you can’t tell a story that you don’t remember, but maybe something a friend told you that you did and you were either disappointed in how you acted or rather pleased.[/quote]
About 19 years old. Had been kicked out of my parents’ house and was living on the couch at a friend’s house in San Diego. Went to a beach party and was drinking beer, tequila, etc. and smoking lots of pot. Woke up the next morning on the couch and was surprised to find sand in my hair. Even more surprised to find bandages on my arm and my back. Had no recollection how they got there, but my friend explained that I had stumbled backwards and passed out into the coals of the fire, they pulled me out and bandaged me. Sure enough, when I pulled off the bandages there were burnt coals embedded in my skin. I was attending university (more or less) at the time, so I went into the school clinic and had the nurses pull the coals from me and scrub the wounds (not a pleasant experience), as they shook their heads and told me what an idiot I was. They were right. A few days later my mom happened to come in to the place where I worked and was visibly distressed over my bandages. I told her I wiped out on a skateboard. She obviously didn’t believe it.
Another time at the same fucked up period in my life my friend and I were drinking heavily at the beach, while burning a pile of pallets that we’d stolen somewhere, and we both passed out in the front seats of his van in the beach parking lot. I was awakened by a cop’s flashlight in my eyes. He began questioning me but I was still totally plastered and half asleep. Having no idea what I was doing and no control over my body or mind I blurted out “we dinnnnt take no fuckin pallets.” He ordered me out of the van and the result was then inevitable. I was taken downtown and booked for drunk in public. (After sobering up, I argued strenuously that it was a stupid arrest, we weren’t in public, we were asleep in a van, what do they want us to do, drive home? But the authorities didn’t agree – if you want to get shitfaced, they replied, you should do it at home. And besides, if you’re 19 years old in the US you’re not supposed to be getting drunk anyway).
But those incidents were a LONG, LONG time ago – over 20 years. I no longer like getting totally shitfaced. It’s not worth it. It took me a few years to learn, but that’s all in the ancient past for me. If you sometimes black out and wake up with a splitting headache and no recollection how you got covered in puke or wounds or ended up where you are, I suggest you ask yourself if it’s really worth it. Does the fun the night before outweigh the pain the next day?
Wearing a raincoat helps avoiding the mess.
… I know … PC and stuff … should talk about the bad bad alcohol …
Got sick and tired of feeling sick and tired and so quit drinking so much some time ago. Alcohol is a lousy drug actually.
j99, and whoever else needs this,
black outs usually occur infrequently in frequent drinkers, they are usually blown off as flukes.
I’ve had one real blackout in my life, in my 20s, and it scared the hell out of me, not because I did something bizarre, but becuase I honestly couldn’t remember that I did what my friends told me I did the next day. It was nothing really, but for ME it was WAY out of my character to do: after we left a bar after drinking heavily, natch, we got a slice of pizza. I wasn’t eating meat at the time and ended up ordering a peperoni slice. I then began to strip the peperoni off the slice and throw them on the sidewalk (this in a tourist town where there are LOTS of people walking around at 1AM) saying, “I don’t fucking eat meat!”
That I would a) throw food on the ground and b) use profanity in front of strangers and children was so far away from what I was like, that I didn’t drink again that summer. (I wish I had never started up again, but that’s another story.)
Now, for a scary story. My brother, also in his 20s at the time, recalls “waking up” one night in his house, strangling his wife. Has no idea how he got there, as he was drinking in some bar after work. He calmed down, and she didn’t call the cops. But the next day,the State Troopers pulled into his driveway, checked his truck and liscense plate and took him away to the station. They didn’t tell him why, but did tell him that his car had been reported the previous evening. The whole ride down he was horrified that he had killed someone and driven off.
He found out when he got there that he had smashed into several parked cars on the way home and was seen.
Long story short, he joined AA and stopped. He’s boring now, but at least he’s not a potential murderer (because of alcohol at any rate).
The REALLY scary part is that most of us NEVER have the life changing blackout. We just get over it. They are usually so rare that we convince ourselves they don’t much matter. Most of us, myself included, keep drinking, and struggle through the few bad times and blow them off. When black outs happen to 20 year olds, they’re understandable, at 30, they’re embarrassing, at 40, they’re condemning.
Reading MT’s story makes me believe that ONE blackout could ruin someone’s life; imagine if he had fallen face first into the fire, MT wouldn’t be the handsome devil he is now. One should be enough of a lesson to learn from: ie moderate or quit.
Anyway, off the soap box.
Peace j99, eat more when you drink and don’t turn up drinking speed toward the end of the night.
JHMO
jds
Had a friend who got drunk one night and his father woke him up the next day. His father asked him if he got hammered and he said that he didn’t. His father then said, “Then why is the car running outside?”
J,
as long as it’s not you, I dont care as much.
honestly
jds
I once woke up on a airplane, not knowing why I was there or where the airplane was going, wearing different clothes and missing my wallet, watch and school ring.
I remember distictly that my first thought was…“Don’t panic - there must be a reason you’re here - they just don’t let anyone on an airplane”
I am not really big on AA because I think it tends to keep people wallowing around in the past, but one thing they get almost right (if I can remember correctly) is the part about alcoholism being a degenerative disease. Once you got it, you’ve got it and the more and longer you keep drinking the more you got it. It was sneaking up on me again there for a bit and if I was to try and identify the one thing that snapped me out of it I’d have to say it was a review of Karen Horney’s literature in which she describes garden variety neurosis basically as a disconnection from self, from your own fears, and more importantly, desires and aspirations. Nobody, deep down, wants to be an alcoholic and once you realize that quiting booze is as natural as sleeping when you are tired or eating when you are hungry.
I agree entirely that blackouts are damned scary and damned weird. I’ve had two. The first was the first time I ever drank. The second, I was 28, so that bothered me more. I am normally not a boisterous drunk at all, and I can generally remember anything significant that happens, even if it’s hazy. But having a whole strip of memory just not be there - that is a much different thing.
I am a frequent drinker, but I very seldom get drunk anymore, even if the opportunity is an inviting one. It’s just too boring for me normally. But I often go through long periods during which I’ll have 2-3 drinks an evening almost every evening. Other times I forget to drink until I feel it’s too late in the evening and I don’t feel like it anymore. A few of those in a row, and I might forget all about beer for the better part of a week. Then, one day I’ll be like, ‘Hey. I haven’t had a beer in days. What am I waiting for?’ When backpacking, I usually choose not to drink to save money. India - no problem. I still laugh at the thought that I could ever be alcoholic, though I do joke about it sometimes with people who worry about me. The truth is, I just like beer and the effect of small amounts of alcohol.
Personally I don’t think past blackouts means someone is alcoholic, but I just thought I’d describe myself in case others want to pursue that line of reasoning.
The stories: (1) I got smashed at a bonfire among high school friends by drinking a pint of rum in 40 minutes or so. I was totally dumb. I’d never drank before. I threw up a lot, then had a great totally wasted time acting silly with everyone and declaring my endless love for my (platonic) best friend Melissa. It was fun and I remembered it well, and also the walk to the tent in my friends back yard where I was sleeping out with some friends (all guys - we were Boy Scout friends). I wanted to get some sleep and told my friend Jerry to shut up. I remembered that crystal clear. And as far as I knew I put my head down and passed out. But in reality, I stayed up for an hour or more telling Jerry all the details of the evening because he had actually missed the party to babysit. Everyone said I acted quite normal - just a little drunk.
(2) The scary one. I was drunk at a drum n bass club in Seoul with friends including a Western girl who was basically my girlfriend at the time. She wasn’t in a good mood, but I was and was dancing all night long. I was really drunk. I was being pleasant to my gf and she was to me as well. At one point I went in the bathroom and some skanky English teacher chick followed me in, grabbed me and kissed me. I remember it clearly. I kissed her for about 3 seconds just to be polite (I’m too nice.) and then kind of pushed her off me and (I think I remember it this way) left the bathroom after telling her somehow that I couldn’t kiss her and all.
Not so! Apparently I was in the bathroom for at least 20 minutes making out heavily with this girl. That’s what my gf told me and I believe her. She would never have lied about it and she was really upset too. She even let me go home in the same taxi. I sure remember that. I didn’t have much to say. I guess she believed me, but it was the beginning of the end of our little love affair. She dealt with it I think, but I didn’t.
For several years following, remembering it would give me the creeps again. I think it was disturbing to lose time like that, as well as to know that my behavior was in the control of some other homunculus than the one I know and accept.
That’s gotta be my longest post ever.
J,
as long as it’s not you, I don’t care as much.
honestly
jds[/quote]
Not me.
Then the plane landed in an unknown country, you were taken to a secret detention center, held for eight days without sleep or toilet paper, asked a series of questions about things you knew nothing about, and eventually blindfolded and driven to a small fishing village where you were released to eventually make it home to your native country.