Ask HN: How did my brain get me home during blackout? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How did my brain get me home during blackout?

9 pointsmodinfo12 comments

Last night I drank too much alcohol and lost consciousness.

Then I took a train to another city, but I woke up next day in my bed. I don't remember anything from last night, only today I noticed the flex ticket I bought at the train station from my town Neustadt to Regensburg....

What was I doing in Regensburg? How did I get home? How can I do this "difficult" things like this during Blackout?

I have some flashbacks, I was sitting on a train, the conductor asked me for a ticket. That's all. I don't remember any more.

How did my brain get me home? How does it work?

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IMO the blackout is only the next days perspective. People can be surprisingly active and 'clear' when completely drunk.

I am sure something fun was probably going on in Regensburg ;)

Edit:// to go into more detail. I've seen and had this happen (f* alcohol). It surely decreased by drinking enough water and some club mate between beers :) Obviously anyone can tell you are drunk, but it doesn't mean you don't function. Also due to alcohol in general bad ideas turn into the best ideas ever and trips like yours can happen. Others awake next to people they don't know, or in a hospital. Count yourself lucky and learn to drink more water when drinking ;)

> People can be surprisingly active and 'clear' when completely drunk.

Yes. But how it works?

Why wouldn't it work? Alkohol doesn't put you into a coma or sleep. Studies suggest that alcohol actively dangers your long and short term memory. Doing to much at once and loosing short term memory is just a obvious proof for that.

According to this study* alcohol can interfer the ability to form memories

* https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-2/186-196.htm

I couldn't find a source, but I once heard that your brain works normally in that state (as much as it can being drunk), it just doesn't form long-term memories. So during the night everything is as always and you remember what you did ten minutes ago, the events just never cross the "barrier" to be stored longer term.

This explanation makes a lot of sense to me and would explain exactly this behavior. However, I'm not an expert on that topic so no idea if that's correct.

I suspect the main issue is with storing data from RAM to disk, not with the actual processing of said data.

I once managed something similar, and people mentioned I was obviously drunk when I got to the destination, but I still managed to get there unassisted. No memory of it the day after, though.

It’s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia

And it’s not super well understood. Aspects of dissociation are probably involved - if such a thing happened without the presence of alcohol or with a relatively low amount it might indicate a dissociative disorder.

I have had a similar experience and I have been with friends when they had that sort of experience. It might have to do with what you got drunk on. Not sure about that.

Basically, you are able to function. That is, make decisions and take actions. The reasoning sometimes being very strange. But making "sense" in that altered state.

But, the brain is not storing any memories or only brief flashbacks. So the executive parts of the brain kept functioning, i.e. you did not lose consciousness.

Brain studies demonstrate that different parts of the brain are involved in different functions. It is well known that alcohol can lead some people to lose inhibitions. Some people become more aggressive, others just want to sleep. So in the situation you describe as blackout, memories were not formed.

I found myself walking on the streets of Berlin once, at 11 AM, after a simular night ;). Did not know where I was going and did not remember where I was staying. After 20 mins of brainless walking, trying to figure out where I was going, I saw a taxi driver looking at me and decided to take a taxi.

The last thing I remembered was we standing outside of the venue, giving away MDMA to our new friends. That was at 3:00am.

I was trying to talk, but could not get my mouth to work. Super strange!!! I felt powerless and went trough my pockets, where I found a flyer of a hostel. Luckily it was the hostel me and my friends were staying. Taxi driver was very polite and probably a little worried.

Slept till 20:00 like a baby. Woke up 100% normal again.

Medically there are two separate phenomena here.

You may have "passed out" -- which is a loss of consciousness.

At some point you recovered from being passed out (if you were-- we can't trust your memory), but you still had enough alcohol in your body to be "blacked out" which is the inability to form memories.

People can be surprisingly lucid during a blackout.

You also could have gone home mostly sober and drank enough you can't remember the evening.

A friend had a similar experience, turns out someone somehow slipped her a "date rape" drug. She was unharmed, thankfully, by a stroke of luck, but that's what it was. She was conscious and reasonably sentient under its influence, but remembered none of it.

Doesn't hurt to see a doctor.

Ask HN: why are people using HN to post Google/StackOverflow-types of questions nowadays?

DuckDuckGo result includes a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdofbRjXHkQ&t=29s

You lost your memory after.

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