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How did you get here? Where did they put the seal that he had in his hand? Who bought the pizza? Who was the man next to him?
"I was like, well, it's weird, I do not know what happened … I laughed a little, it seemed normal," he recalls.
of memory arrived again and again at Hepola, and at an early age. I often felt as if "a trap was open under me, in the form of a secret door … I woke up the next day and it was like I was in a place different. "
I was suffering from alcohol breakdowns, a familiar term with potentially serious consequences. As the word suggests, in this state all memories of the night, after a point, darken. Some drinkers suffer from less serious fragment failures, where only pieces of memory are lost.
Hepola's regular power outages did not trigger any alarms at that time. Alone, when he saw it in perspective, he realized that he had a "conflictual" relationship with alcohol, experiences that he had written in a book.
If this type of amnesia after drinking alcohol seems familiar, that's because
An analysis suggests that more than half of college drinkers have experienced a certain level of blackout when asked about their alcohol consumption habits, while a survey of more than 2000 teenagers, freshly released Secondary, it revealed that 20% had a blackout in the last six months.
"Fifteen years ago, we would not have accepted that these phenomena are common," says Aaron White, of the US National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcoholism.
He spent most of his career studying drunkenness. "Now we all know that people [muchas] are suffering from power outages."
Scientists are further revealing why failures occur and why they affect more than others, helping them to better understand this phenomenon and, hopefully, to avoid its negative consequences.
For many decades, it was thought that only alcoholics suffered from memory failures due to drunkenness. This idea has only changed until recent studies show it. A strange series of experiments, which today would not be approved by ethics, revealed some surprising ideas.
In the late 1960s, a researcher named Donald Goodwin recruited alcoholics from hospitals and workplaces to determine what was happening. I remember, in a state of intoxication, he disappears.
He discovered that out of 100 alcoholics, more than 60 have experienced regular breakdowns, some total and some fragmentary.
He also revealed that people experiencing a breakdown can act remarkably coherently. For example, he showed that during intoxication, subjects used immediate memory "unhindered" and were even able to "get out of bed." perform simple calculations. But he forgot them 30 minutes later.
In the final stages of experiments, he administered whiskey to alcoholics (up to 18 ounces, or half a liter, in four hours) and presented them with situations designed to "provide memorable experiences." they have no difficulty remembering it. "
In one he showed the pornography of the participants, then he asked them detailed questions about what they had seen.In another, with a stove in his hand, he asked To the people they were hungry, when they answered, he told them that the pan had dead mice inside.Thirty minutes later, the drunken subjects had forgotten these memories and could not remember but they could remember these events two minutes later, revealing that their short-term memory was working.
Although these experiments were done with alcoholics, they opened the way for understanding , even how non-alcoholics act during a power outage.Today, these experiments are still influential in part because – for obvious ethical reasons – scientists can not induce with alcohol the loss of memoryInstead, they should be based on questionnaires of past events.
Memory fragments, which are completely lost during a power failure, reveal what is happening in the brain. It is thought that the hippocampus – the brain structure responsible for weaving incoming information and creating memories of everyday events – is momentarily damaged. Thus, White, who has studied the process at the cellular level with rodent brains, interrupts the central brain circuits, which create episodic memories, that is to say: "
" We believe that Much of what happens is that alcohol removes the hippocampus, leaving it unable to create this continuous record of events, "he says. "It's like a blank space in a recording."
In rats, White showed that there are doses of alcohol where the brain cells "still work", and that with higher doses, they are completely inactive. This explains why, in partial failures, only fragments are lost.
But White also explains another phenomenon: while this is happening, two other important areas of the brain, which feed the hippocampus information about what is happening in the world, they suppress when we drink alcohol. That's the frontal lobe – the reasoning area of the brain, which we use when we pay attention to something -, and the amygdala – the area that warns us of danger –
– – Risk Factors —
We now also know of other factors that influence power outages, such as drinking on an empty stomach or when you have not slept much.
Another important risk is that you see how fast alcohol is consumed, because the faster we drink, the faster our blood alcohol level goes up. A blood alcohol level between 0.20% and 0.30% can cause total failure. This level could be reached, for four hours, with 15 or more medium drinks available in the UK, depending on gender and body weight.
But alcohol levels in the blood do not explain why only some people lose whole pieces of his memory, while others who drink similar amounts do not. A 2016 study, conducted by Ralph Hingson, also of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, provided some answers.
"The frequency with which people reported excess and drunkenness over the past month played a role as they smoked and took more of a psychoactive drug. "
Fainting is more common in people with lower body weight, and is also more common among students known to drink alcohol before going to social gatherings. or parties, and that quickly raise their blood alcohol level, "says Hingson [19659019].More often, they are on average smaller than men and have a higher percentage of body fat , so their bodies have less water to dilute alcohol than they drink, which is why their alcohol level increases fast.
In 2017, Amie Haas, from the University of Palo Alto in California, discovered that women tend to suffer breakdowns s current with three drinks less than men. A 2015 study showed that women just consumed one as usual, they were 13% more likely to faint than men.
Aside from the differences between the sexes, there may be a genetic component that dictates who is most susceptible to power outages. example, usually children of mothers with alcohol problems.
Another study, conducted in more than 1,000 pairs of twins, revealed that there are genetic connections that affect half of the experienced breakdowns.
The genetic difference seems to be developing also in the brain. A longitudinal study of adolescents aged 12 to 21, led by Reagan Wetherill of the University of Pennsylvania, showed that some people who abuse alcohol and experience power cuts were less able to to repress their actions. It is possible to see this in brain scans, even before they drink alcohol.
"In general, there appear to be genetic and genetic vulnerabilities that put a person at risk," he says
. this excessive consumption of alcohol produces additional changes in the brain. It is also worrying that the same people who are more prone to power outages – teenagers and students – are at a more vulnerable age in terms of physical appearance. "There's more and more evidence that, especially, if you're younger, it's not safe for a developing brain," says Haas
because teens are more sensitive to the effects alcohol. One reason for this is that the frontal lobe of the brain is the last to develop, around the age of 25 years.
— Passages of Consent —
Like risk factors, the consequences of power outages are not only more serious for teens, but also for women.
Haas and colleagues have shown that women who experience power outages are more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors at night compared to men and drinkers who do not. These women also showed more feelings of regret the next day
Evidence also shows that women with a history of sexual assault are more likely to be revictimized if they are victims of a sexual assault. alcohol breakdown, compared to compulsive drinkers. they did not lose consciousness. Indeed, they run the risk of making bad decisions when they are under the influence of alcohol, especially when it comes to assessing situations that could be dangerous. In addition, they are also at risk later, because they can not trust their memories.
This means that there is a vicious circle. Those experiencing power outages may be more vulnerable, at the time, to potential attackers. But if they try to lay charges later, they are also likely to dismiss their case.
This is true, even in places where there is "affirmative consent", where there is sexual assault unless someone has indicated his will. "If there are situations where" he said / she said, "you should rely on the evidence to determine whether consent was granted or not," says Wetherill.
If one of the parties fails, it complicates the evidence. For example, in Canada, consent is required. Recently, in a Globe & Mail survey, he found that the courts preferred drunk whistleblowers who may have suffered a partial breakdown, but that they do not consider that a plaintiff victim of a crime has been found to be in a state of emergency. a power failure is a reliable source of information. 19659002] In the United States, laws vary by state. Most laws say that a "mentally disabled" person can not give consent. But New York, for example, says that mental incapacity is only legally valid if a drink or drug was inadvertently received, not because she chose to drink.
States that include having consumed alcohol voluntarily, on the other hand On the other hand, they often include a warning that the defendant must have reasonably realized that the person was incapable. But as people who experience a power outage may seem very functional, defendants may claim not to have noticed.
"It's complicated because people can lose consciousness and look pretty sober," White says. "You do not always have to get drunk to experience a power outage."
Sarah Hepola has extensive experience in this type of disconnection. She says that during her power outages, she was functional. He participated in conversations and answered jokes, just as Goodwin's subjects could do calculations. Only those who knew her well could recognize her appearance as "glassy, disjointed eyes" when she experienced a blackout. "It was as if no one was at home … like he was talking but did not equate the things that they told me."
No matter how she was seen by others, Hepola knows that she was not in her good sense. I really think that my decisions have been altered, "says Hepola," I was very impulsive, extremely careless and exhibitionist, even sexually aggressive, sometimes in a way that did not have any meaning to me the next day … depending on what "
" An individual may suffer from a breakdown of consciousness and seems to give his consent, but in reality he has no conscience or ability to give it, "warns College Amherst in its policy of sexual misconduct.
Similarly, the University of Michigan states: "By law, a person intoxicated can not consent to sexual activity, which means that sexual intimacy with a "mentally disabled" person is in accordance with the law. legal definition of sexual assault.
For this reason, it is not surprising that a person who experiences breakdowns on a regular basis is also more likely to experience other negative consequences. Ativs of alcohol consumption, the most mundane – do not go to work or be late for work – at worst – as an injury or overdose of illegal substances. This makes power outages a useful marker and a way to predict harmful behaviors.
For these reasons, questions about alcohol breakdowns are increasingly being used in questionnaires and screening mechanisms to determine if anyone is an alcohol lover. or problematic.
— Detecting Power Outages —
Mary-Beth Miller, psychologist of addiction at the University of Missouri, discovered a simple intervention technique that could help consumers reduce their consumption of alcohol, which was first implemented by veterans of the army and later by university drinkers.
The intervention is called "normative personalized feedback". It's an online quiz that asks people about their drinking habits and reports how much they drink compared to other people of similar age and background.
Power outages, discovered by the team, serve as "breakage"
Questionnaires on screening for alcohol consumption now relate to past power outage experiences which makes it easier to find people who need help. . It is not effective, for example, to ask only the amount of alcohol that a person has consumed. "If you specifically look for power outages, the assessment will be more accurate, rather than trying to involve everyone in the clinic," says Miller.
These interventions take a long time and are expensive. Make Miller hope that she and her colleagues can take the opportunity to develop more effective interventions.
She hopes to foster a culture of drinking in which people understand that "there is no need to get lost completely to have a good time.
Other researchers hope that asking questions about past power cuts will help reduce other types of risky behavior. "In summary, it's interesting that the blackout is one of the most negative consequences of alcohol consumption and could be an indicator of more complex problems," says Haas [19659019]. better monitor your alcohol consumption and ask your friends to do the same. It's easier said than done.
Hepola can see warning signs as he looks to the past. Even at that time, she knew that "I did not want to be so drunk", but could not stop drinking.
"Some disordered behaviors become jokes and normalize, and sometimes we distanced ourselves from emotional and physical damage causes [el alcohol]," says Hepola
Now she has been sober for eight years and is happy not to fall into the dark traps of memory loss. At this point, his life has become much simpler, he says.
Source: elcomercio / MF
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