What is an alcohol blackout? This is not the same thing as passing out when you have had too much to drink. Passing out very much resembles sleeping. No, an alcoholic blackout is when a person has had a lot to drink and they go into this state of mind where they can no longer remember anything that they are doing, but they are still moving around, conversing with people, and possibly causing all sorts of problems.

Normally the human brain has the ability to keep recording whatever is happening in your life....whether you are hearing things, seeing things, tasting things....it all goes on the record. You might not remember every little detail but your brain actually has it all locked in there. Technically, you could bring these hidden memories out with hypnosis if you had to.

With a blackout this is not the case. Nothing is going on permanent record. The brain stops recording new information, so everything that occurs is lost forever to the alcoholic who is in a blackout. They can only recollect the experience as it is told to them by other people. This usually happens the next day when they find themselves waking up in a strange place, wondering how they got there, and what exactly they did the night before. It is at this point that they will generally call up their friends who they were with the night before and start asking questions. Their friends usually say something along the lines of: "Do you realize what you did last night?!" At this point the alcoholic usually does not want to know, because horrible and embarrassing things generally happen during these types of episodes.

If you are at the point of experiencing these sorts of things, then you might want to step back and take a good hard look at your drinking. Normal people do not black out from drinking, ever. This is because a normal person will pass out long before they black out. If you are blacking out from drinking too much alcohol then it means that your tolerance to alcohol is all messed up. Technically you should pass out and appear to be sleeping long before you get to the point of blacking out. If you are blacking out on a regular basis then it means your drinking has gotten way out of hand, and you need to do something about it. If this is the case then you might want to consider treatment or rehab of some sort.