Today’s lesson: How drinking alcohol affects our memory?

Introduction

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We all enjoy having a good time with people that we like, going out for a drink with our friends or our partner and having a few extra drinks is something that has happened to probably everyone reading this and surely on more than one occasion. Alcohol, as we all know, is a very common substance in our society when we are in a social setting, nevertheless, it can cause a lot of damage to our body, both in the short and long term. One of the effects of drinking is the popular lack of memory after being drunk the night before.

This lack of memory, that can be experienced by certain people, have some reasons that clearly explain why this phenomenon happens. In this article we are going to cover this subject and leave no doubts about the causes behind this.

Why does this lack of memory happens?

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The lack of memory after having been drinking usually happens when consuming alcohol too quickly. When the level of alcohol in the blood is very high and increases rapidly, it starts to numb the part of the brain in charge of creating memories, the neurons located in the hippocampus stop working properly until the amount of alcohol in our blood begin to decrease towards normal levels. What actually happens is not that we do not remember anything after we have consumed alcohol, it is that we simply do not create any new memories whatsoever.

The hippocampus plays a critical role in the formation, organization, and storage of new memories as well as connecting certain sensations and emotions to these memories. | Source

Drinking alcohol and not remembering anything is dangerous, that's because, although there is a part of our brain that is numb, our mind and body are still functioning in some way. We behave differently, some people even more aggressive than usual, and we can even end up taking part in all types of complicated issues without remembering anything the next day. This type of alcohol induced amnesia is not something to be taken lightly, we can lose control of our actions and then find ourselves in problematic situations, without having any idea how we got into that problem in the first place. It is never something wise to voluntarily make ourselves lose control because that is like opening the doors for all sort of mistakes to manifest themselves in our lives, with the potential of causing havoc.

It appears that the brain of chronic drinkers has to "work harder" to keep things in mind, such as remembering a phone number, an address where you need to go, or a shopping list. | Source

Since completely avoiding consuming alcohol is not that easy especially if we have an active social life, what we could is to find a balance between consumption and self control. Every individual has a different capacity to handle the alcohol inside their organism, which means that not everyone will get drunk after consuming a certain quantity, it all depends on several factors, but what is clear is that having a stomach with enough food can be of huge help for avoiding the ugly side effects that come with alcohol consumption. Taking precautions is never a bad choice because we never know how crazy can the night get.

Lack of memory and its types

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We can classify the lack of memory in 2 simple types that will usually depend on the degree of drunkenness we had the night before.

• A partial lack of memory: these are the most common memory losses because they don’t require the consumption of too much alcohol, these are basically small holes in our memories of the previous night. For example, we can not remember a particular song playing or talking to an unknown girl, and just like talking, even the facial features can also be something we don’t remember.

• Total lack of memory: these are the most dangerous since they include large parts of the night or even the complete night, as if certain hours had never existed. The more alcohol is taken, the more difficult it will be for the hippocampus to create new memories, so that a total lack of memory happens because the person had an extremely high alcohol intake.

As the dose increases, so does the magnitude of the memory impairments. Under certain circumstances, alcohol can disrupt or completely block the ability to form memories for events that transpire while a person is intoxicated, a type of impairment known as a blackout. | Source

It is important to notice that, however accustomed one can be to drinking, people can generate tolerance at many levels, but no one can make the hippocampus (the area destined to create memories) generate a total tolerance to alcohol, so it will always have the same effect when reaching extreme quantities.

Handling the lack of memory

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If we find ourselves waking up what morning without having a clue about what happened the night before, the first step we should take is to simply remain calm, we will probably ask ourselves all sort of questions about what could have happened, and we even might end up feeling a little bit of anxiety, as well as a considerable concern, but what whatever is done cannot be changed back, and losing our temper is not a good solution. This can serve as a lesson and the next time we go out we should take into account this unpleasant feeling to avoid losing control when consuming alcohol.

Properly remembering a night full of drinking will never be easy and we will usually be unable to achieve this, however there are some things we could do to help us in joining together the little pieces of information we might have, and that way have some kind of idea about what really happened.

We could, of course, have a little chat with our friends that were there and perhaps they did not drink that much so they might remember everything better and be able explain in more detail what we did last night.

Checking our phones as well as our friend’s phones can also help us calm our nerves because nowadays everything is documented using pictures and videos, so by watching those we can also somehow construct a good idea about everything that happened.

Finally, and this is probably the most difficult way to handle our lack of memory, we could try to retrace the steps we took before getting to bed, like for example the places we visited and their correspondent order. Of course, if we are able to do this, that would mean our lack of memory is a partial one, which makes it easier for us to have a general idea about what happened.

Alcohol and behavior

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We all know that an excessive consumption of alcohol can lead to a seriously unhealthy addiction. We must not forget that, even though it is legal, alcohol can be a very dangerous substance. When drinking we might feel that we are a different person, this is because of all the effects that alcohol is producing in our mind. Besides the already mentioned hippocampus it can also affect the systems in charge of inhibiting ourselves, and our way of making decisions is totally altered, this is way we tend to do things we wouldn’t do if we weren’t drunk.

These changes of personality can be funny at the beginning, it is even possible that we become slightly more friendly and social. However, personality changes due to alcohol have the potential of being very dangerous and can cause fights while we are drunk, that we will later regret.

However, the real problem is not about suffering from a lack of memory, but it is rather about a lack of control when drinking alcohol. It is important to remember that we can have a good time with our friends or our partner without having to drink excessively.

Drinking profoundly alters mood, arousal, behavior, and neuropsychological functioning. However, studies have found that the specific effects depend not just on how much someone drinks, but also on whether blood alcohol content (BAC) is rising or falling; while in the process of drinking, alcohol acts as a stimulant, but as drinking tapers off it begins to act more as a sedative. | Source

Conclusion

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As much as we enjoy alcohol and the inoffensive effects it can have in us when consuming it in small quantities, if we are not careful we will end up damaging not only our health, but our social relationships as well.

It might be fun to watch one of our friends all drunk for the first time, but if it becomes a recurrent thing, it will stop being something enjoyable and become something really annoying. No one really likes to constantly have the responsibility of taking care of a drunk person, besides, getting seriously drunk every time can also be seen as a lack of maturity.