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Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 25, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I have had plenty of drinks while on SSRIs, and I can't say it made a difference.

From what I'm aware of in the literature, the risk is minimal, and primarily due to alcohol worsening symptoms of depression rather than a significant interaction.

I do, however, lean towards it being hysteria that so many women confuse being "blackout drunk" with being roofied. Like, drink enough alcohol and that just happens, including waking up in an unfamiliar place feeling like shit. It's just not probably due to SSRIs making it worse, women have a lower alcohol tolerance in the first place.

I do, however, lean towards it being hysteria that so many women confuse being "blackout drunk" with being roofied. Like, drink enough alcohol and that just happens, including waking up in an unfamiliar place feeling like shit.

I've always been confused by the American tendency to conflate being blackout drunk with being passed out, completely helpless or doing things you'd otherwise never do even while drunk. All it means is that you drank enough for your brain to not store new memories (or store them very poorly) during that time (which could range anywhere from 30 minutes to many hours). There are many factors that can influence getting a blackout, such as how fast you get drunk (even if the level of drunkenness is the same), whether you ate anything, how tired you are, genetic factors etc, all without implying that you've lost control, are helpless or will pass out.

When I was much younger it wasn't that unusual for me to get blackouts when going out with friends to get properly drunk. It never worried me since I knew that my behavior didn't change all that much when drunk (other than being more talkative than usual and starting to tell really shitty jokes at some point) nor would I be any more helpless than normal. These days I skip the "getting very drunk" part and just progress to feeling like shit if I drink much. I guess that's age for you.

I had a bit hard time believing blackouts were a real thing rather than an excuse before experiencing one.

I don't seem to be able to get blackouts on alcohol alone, I can pass out but not blackout, I always remember everything regardless of whether I'm drunk or not. Then one night I had taken a combination of morphine, caffeine and a lot of alcohol and that made me both black out and act very out of character, not just lacking inhibition like when you're drunk but like a different person.

It made me have a bit more sympathy for people not remember things and acting out while drunk, but only a little. I was surprised and if that was the consequence of me getting drunk I wouldn't drink.

It really differs hugely on a person to person basis. I used to get blackouts quite easily but they would never last all that long - at the very least I'd have memory of finding myself at the entrance to my home. I've passed out exactly once in my life (some 20 years ago). I'd always puke my guts out much before I got that drunk (except for that one time). OTOH, I've never once felt drinker's remorse. Like sure, sometimes I felt slight embarrassed afterwards but that was always a rational reaction, never the kind of "OMG I want to kill myself because I was such an idiot" neurotransmitter imbalance that some people get from drinking (it probably helped that I learned in my late teens that no matter how much I drank, I never started acting much out of character).

It's not like being drunk and having patchy memories, or remembering the dumb things you did and wishing you couldn't remember, or needing to be prompted and then remembering. All three times it's happened to me the last thing I remember is taking my nth shot of vodka in x minutes on an empty stomach. Then waking up.

I've drunk the same amount of alcohol on an empty stomach many times, often much more. I think the critical factor is drinking high strength alcohol much too quickly. Much easier to do when it's just a little shot instead of a big glass of cold gassy beer.

I also used to think blue balls and jaw-dropping were merely colourful euphemisms for sexual frustration and surprise.

I think the critical factor is drinking high strength alcohol much too quickly.

From the few news clips I've read about the topic, I recall that how fast you got drunk is usually more important than how drunk you end up being when it comes to alcohol induced memory loss. Too fast and your brain can't keep up with the result that new memories aren't properly transferred from short term memory to longer term memory.

I think the problem is that people react differently to alcohol/drugs in general. I, for example, tend to get sleepy very fast from alcohol but never outright passed out, likewise I only threw up quite rarely, and by my own recollection and those of my friends I also never did anything I substantially regretted (and being religious country-side hicks, we drank A LOT). Which reflects my admittedly overall bias towards inaction. Other people seem to not get sleepy but quickly do stupid things they regret later, yet others seem mostly fine but throw up relatively quickly, and so on.

Though in agreement, I've seen quite a few cases where someone did something very much out of their own volition they later regretted, but being blackout drunk as well, they instead attributed it to another person taking advantage of them (it's a good way to conserve your own self-image, I admit).