Essay On Alcoholic Blackout

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Memory loss, closer than you think if you drink

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Have you ever been drunk and forgot what you were doing while you drunk? Or did you remember that you have ever been drunk a lot without being told by your friends or others?
‘No.’ Is it the answers to both questions? It is a normal experience as getting drunk may brings us to a state of alcoholic blackout. And alcoholic blackout shows that there is a high relationship between our alcohol intake and our memory. However, the negative effects on memory brought by the alcohol intake are far more serious than we usually think. The following parts are going to talk about how alcohol highly related to our brains and the effects of it.
Alcohol Blackout
Let’s have a look into being drunk first. Why we might lose our memory after we are drunk? This phenomenon is called alcohol blackouts. According to Donald W. Goodwin, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Kansas Medical Center, alcoholic blackouts can be regarded as amnesia. That is a man drink, does things and forget them afterwards1.
Professor Goodwin have interviewed 100 alcoholics about alcoholic blackouts and found that during a blackout the patient is awake, alert and does memorable things. It is different from what we usually regard as alcoholic blackout as we doing things in the unconscious state that alcohol brings us to. Yet, after alcoholic blackouts, people will forget what they do during blackouts. In other words, we have indeed lost the memory of the period of time when we are drunk1.
This kind of losing memory suddenly is like the post-traumatic amnesia from a head injury and electroshock therapy, instead of gradual forgetfulness based on aging2. Mo...

... middle of paper ...

...me for us to put attention to the alcohol consumption no matter from health or social aspects.

1. Goodwin, D. W. “Alcohol amnesia”. Addiction (1995); 90 (3), 315-317
2. Goodwin, D. W. and Hill, S. Y. “SHORT-TERM MEMORY AND THE ALCOHOLIC BLACKOUT”. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (1973); 215,195–199
3. Vivien S. Chin, Candice E. Van Skike, Douglas B. Matthews. “Effects of ethanol on hippocampal function during adolescence: a look at the past and thoughts on the future”, Alcohol (Fayetteville, N.Y.) (2009); 44 (1), 3-14
4. American Academy of Neurology (AAN). "Heavy drinking in middle age may speed memory loss by up to six years in men." ScienceDaily, (15 January 2014)
5. Angloinfo, the global expat network Hong Kong. “Teenage Issues” [Internet]. [Cited 2014 Apr 15]. Available from: http://hongkong.angloinfo.com/information/family/teenagers/teenage-issues/

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