After a night at the bars, Ethan Rabin woke up in his pajamas on a couch in a sorority house – and he had no idea how he got there.

‘I don’t normally get that drunk,’ said Rabin, a senior political science major. ‘That was a bad night.’

He likely suffered a blackout – a period of memory loss sparked by heavy drinking and extreme intoxication. Blackouts seem to be caused by alcohol’s depression of the central nervous system, and they’re often a sign of substance abuse and dangerous partying.

Researchers believe alcohol cuts off the communication between two integral parts of the brain – the lobe responsible for immediate sensation and the part that stores long-term memories.

If this connection is broken, it’s impossible for the brain to save the sights and sounds it receives. When a drinker blacks out, he or she is still awake and functional – but the brain no longer creates new long-term memories.

The sensations processed by the brain only last about 30 seconds in short-term memory, said Steve Maisto, Ph.D., a professor of clinical psychology. So if alcohol prevents the transfer of those sensations to long-term storage, they can be lost forever.

‘The person’s brain passes out, but the body doesn’t,’ said James Byrne, an options counselor in the Substance Abuse Prevention and Health Enhancement Office.

Other research draws a less direct link between alcohol use and the breakdown of memory pathways, Byrne said. When the central nervous system slows down due to high blood alcohol concentration, the heart may slow down with it. The reduced circulation could deprive the brain of the fuel it needs to function.

Not all blackouts wipe out an entire evening’s memories, though. It’s also possible to have gray-outs, Maisto said, in which only bits and pieces of the night’s events are saved as memories.

Rose Devlin, a sophomore communications design major, says she’s never lost large blocks of memory, but has experienced a gray-out.

‘I just remember parts of the night,’ she said, ‘like my friend helping me back to the dorm.’

ZERO TOLERANCE

Some evidence suggests that a high alcohol tolerance – the ability to drink more without exhibiting physical effects – can contribute to blackouts. Light drinkers may pass out or throw up before their blood alcohol concentration reaches a dangerous level, but a high alcohol tolerance causes these self-defense mechanisms to kick in less often.

‘One time I threw up 17 times,’ said Rita Manna, a junior communications design major. ‘But I never blacked out.’

Though alcohol tolerance projects an image of sobriety, it doesn’t change how the drug affects vital organs like the brain, liver and heart. Tolerance tricks the body into staying awake longer, allowing more alcohol to flood the nervous system. And when the brain’s memory pathway shuts down before the rest of the body, the drinker blacks out.

‘You’re not getting any memories, but you’re still drinking,’ Byrne said. ‘And maybe a year ago at that same blood alcohol level, you would have been asleep on a couch at a party.’

Despite popular notions that a high alcohol tolerance is an asset to the college lifestyle, it can be a serious detriment to a drinker’s health. When students drink more before their bodies react to the alcohol, it opens the door for consequences more serious than forgetting a few hours of a party.

‘It’s not a good thing to be tolerant,’ Maisto said. ‘Your organs are still being attacked by the alcohol.’

DAMAGE CONTROL

The aftermath of a blackout is often rife with bodily harm and social dilemmas. When Rabin’s friends regrouped after he escaped from the sorority house, they helped him reconstruct the awkward circumstances of his fateful night.

He had attended a pajama party, he said, and went home from a bar with a particularly dangerous girl. She said she’d been taking self-defense classes and demanded he test her skills. He resisted at first, but it wasn’t long before she convinced him to take a swing.

‘And then she beat me up,’ he said.

Beyond public embarrassment, the excessive alcohol use that triggers blackouts can cause permanent brain damage, and it’s often a sign of a more serious dependency.

‘Alcohol is bad stuff,’ said Dr. Steve Chamberlain, a bioengineering and neuroscience professor. ‘The first thing it does is impair your ability to make rational decisions. And then down the tubes you go.’

Many students have a warped view of the dangers of substance abuse, Byrne said, because the college community insulates them from many of the consequences of alcohol dependency.

Though drinking is an accepted social activity, the drug behind it is highly toxic. In low doses, it has some positive effects – but in excess, it’s deadly. The lethal dosage results in a blood alcohol concentration of 0.50 percent, Maisto said.

‘That means if you give 100 people that dose of alcohol, half of them would die from it,’ he said.

Some students, though, break the mold and take a responsible outlook on drinking.

‘I’d be upset (if I blacked out),’ Manna said, ‘because that would mean I’m way out of control.’

Even with all the hours doctors have devoted to research and the long nights students have spent on the front lines, the effects of alcohol on the human body remain veiled in mystery. The most reliable story, it seems, is that every person reacts to the drug in a different way.

‘Alcohol is the most understood drug that we introduce into our body,’ Byrne said. ‘And still there’s a lot more to know.’

Published on February 11, 2004 at 12:00 pm