Interrupted Memories: Alcohol-Induced Blackouts National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism NIAAA

In conclusion, PTSD blackouts represent a significant challenge for many individuals struggling with the aftermath of trauma. These episodes of memory loss and dissociation can have profound impacts on daily life, relationships, and overall well-being. However, it’s important to remember that help is available, and recovery is possible. PTSD anger blackouts deserve special attention due to their potential impact on relationships and daily functioning. During these episodes, individuals may experience intense anger or rage, accompanied by a loss of control and subsequent memory loss for the duration of the outburst. These blackouts can be particularly distressing for both the individual and those around them, often leading to feelings of guilt, shame, and confusion.

Implications for Treatment of PTSD and Alcoholism

Meanwhile, alcohol makes it harder to pay attention, which in turn makes your memory even fuzzier. With this severe form of blackout, memories of events do not form and typically cannot be recovered. You may drink because you think using alcohol will help you avoid bad dreams or how scary they are. Yet avoiding the bad memories and dreams actually prolongs PTSD—avoidance makes PTSD last longer.

The Role of Dissociation in PTSD Blackouts

Certain aspects of the traumatic event and some biological factors (such as genes) may make some people more likely to develop PTSD. Fear is a part of the body’s “fight-or-flight” response, which helps us avoid or respond to potential danger. People may experience a range of reactions after trauma, and most people recover from initial symptoms over time.

1. Alcohol is dehydrating by nature, so making sure you’re drinking plenty of water and staying hydrated is important.
2. The very thing a person needs is support and connection, yet those are often damaged as a result of drinking consequences and behaviors.
3. The most common type is called a “fragmentary blackout” and is characterized by spotty memories for events, with “islands” of memories separated by missing periods of time in between.
4. In this guide, we will discuss how to handle PTSD blackouts and regain control of your mind and body.

With a brownout, you may be able to remember certain details from the period of time you were affected, but other portions of time can’t be recalled. So-called blackouts and brownouts can lead to temporary and even permanent memory loss. Not to mention, they can put you in danger of serious harm in the moment when you’re not quite sure of your surroundings or what’s happening.

Ways to stay healthy

In a study of mostly female college students, symptoms of posttraumatic stress explained 55% of the variance in alcohol use (Edwards, Dunham, Ries, & Barnett, 2006). Another study found that students with PTSD showed a more hazardous pattern of substance misuse than other students, even those meeting criteria for other diagnoses (McDevitt-Murphy, Murphy, Monahan, Flood, & Weathers, 2010). Some have speculated that alcohol use among individuals with PTSD is a form of “self-medication” (Leeies, Pagura, Sareen, & Bolton, 2010) and this may be true for some college students as well (Read, Merrill, Griffin, Bachrach, & Khan, 2014). Blackout periods while drinking alcohol are a critical medical risk with potentially severe long-term consequences. During these blackout periods, individuals experience complete memory loss while remaining physically active, which can lead to dangerous situations. This impaired decision-making can lead to increased vulnerability to sexual assault, physical injury, and engagement in risky behaviors like drunk driving without any memory of those actions.

The experience of psychological trauma (experiencing or witnessing an event involving actual or threatened death or serious injury of self or others APA 1994) does not necessarily lead to long-term emotional distress or alcohol abuse. Rather, the likelihood of experiencing adverse consequences is related to the victim’s ability to cope with the trauma. On her way home, Barbara encounters a man who points a gun to her head and demands her money. Caught off guard, Barbara freezes in terror, forgetting everything she has just learned in the class about how to protect herself; the assailant takes her pocketbook and runs off with $50 and all of Barbara’s credit cards. Although Barbara avoided physical harm, she was left with the feeling that she had no control over the outcome of the incident (i.e., she experienced uncontrollable trauma) and, as a result, experienced feelings of terror and helplessness.

This was unexpected, from a theoretical perspective, and indicates that these cross-sectional findings are insufficient to determine the order in which these experiences occurred. Specifically, it is unclear if racial fetal alcohol syndrome celebrities discrimination leads to drinking to cope, perhaps the experience of blackout leads to drinking to cope, or perhaps some unmeasured variable (e.g., trauma, socioeconomic status) is driving all of these associations. Data from this study tell us only that these experiences tend to occur together. Going through a trauma—whether or not you develop PTSD—can lead to alcohol use problems. Up to three quarters of people who survived abuse or violent traumatic events report drinking problems. Up to a third of those who survive traumatic accidents, illness, or disaster report drinking problems.