One possible explanation is that when you’re depressed or stressed, levels of the hormone corticosteroid rise in your body — and they stay high if you’re in a state of stress or depression for a long time. High levels of corticosteroid can damage memory signals in the brain. A single-session intervention for heavy alcohol use that incorporates feedback on an individual’s drinking behavior (e.g., how much or how often one drinks in comparison to peers, how many calories one consumes in alcohol, how often one uses a particular protective behavioral strategy). Participants reported their age, gender, weight, and race/ethnicity at baseline.
Sudden Memory Loss FAQs
Alcohol impairs your ability to form new memories while intoxicated. A person should speak to a doctor if they believe that they are experiencing symptoms of syncope, epileptic blackouts, or blackouts that are the result of medication. In cases of severe alcohol intoxication, a person may need emergency assistance. Another 2015 study suggests that overconsuming sedatives could cause memory loss.
Symptoms
Studies have shown that young adults under the blackout amnesia age of 25 are particularly vulnerable to experiencing blackouts. Additionally, blackouts may occur at far lower thresholds among younger populations. That’s largely because the parts of your brain responsible for decision-making aren’t fully matured until around age 25.
Are Blackouts a Sign of an Alcohol-Related Problem?
It is unlikely, however, that brain damage is behind acute blackouts. It is clear that processes in the hippocampus—the area of brain involved in the formation, storage and retrieval of new memories—are disturbed. Specifically, it appears alcohol impairs the so-called long-term potentiation of synapses at the pyramidal cells in the hippocampus.
Interrupted Memories: Alcohol-Induced Blackouts
Due to this, it is really important to get someone emergency help if their condition is deteriorating. If a person is showing symptoms of severe alcohol intoxication, it is important to call the emergency services for treatment. The paper “A New Model of Dissociative Identity Disorder” by Dell goes into more detail about partial intrusions from alters, complete co-consciousness between alters, and different manifestations of amnesia. More information is provided through Dell’s work on the Multidimensional Inventory of Dissociation (MID). Though all alters that are blacked out are losing time, not all alters that are losing time are blacked out.
