Blacking Out

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/13/my-drinking-years-everyone-has-blackouts-dont-they

I know we as students are not all 21, and although I'm sure a majority of our class has had a drink before, I know that we don't all get "drunk" or that we don't all drink. However, I do and have been since sophomore/junior year in high school. It's become a significant part of my life, many good times to recall that are unfortunately over shadowed by really dangerous, scary and embarrassing moments. I wouldn't say that my drinking is necessarily a "problem." the majority of the times I drink, which I do consistently every weekend, I don't have a lot. My mood will be altered but i am rational and more importantly making decisions that don't put me in harms way. However, occasionally this is not the case and I go over board and have more to drink than I should. Over board for me is falling in the water and immediately sinking 100 leagues.  These rare instances of extreme drinking have caused problems. Uncontrollably crying at my cousins wedding after double digit glasses of champagne because I thought my parents weren't proud of me, perhaps right then they weren't. Or losing ride privileges from a friend cause one drunken night I saw the mcdonalds I just ate for a second time as i spewed it all over the back seat of her car. Or much scarier situations such as slipping and hitting my head on ice covered brick after drinking far too much only to wake up in a girls house who'd I'd never met because she thought I was unsafe at the party, we are friends to this day. I have put my self into a lot of tuff situations because of my drinking and unfortunately I only know of a lot of the situations because of the stories my friends tell me the next day, the are black outs. I just experienced another black out this weekend, very similar to the one the author describes in the article I've attached. That experience today had me confused, probing friends for clues and feeling extreme guilt for my actions toward the person I was with, mostly because I don't remember what my actions were. A black out is essentially when the level of alcohol in your blood gets so high that is shuts down the hippocampus in your brain, or the part of your brain responsible for long-term memory. You might still be able to function and carry conversations because you still have short term memory but as far as the next day there will be whole chunks of memory that won't be there. Too me blackouts and how i've experienced them really make me interested in creating work on the subject. A lot of people, especially in our class this semester, have made pieces concerning memories but what about the important moments in your life that you don't have memory of. Situations that i've gotten in because of alcohol perhaps, but can't remember because of said alcohol. Im not sure yet what type of work could come from this but I really feel like I could make something powerful through investigating the experiences I've had and also perhaps learn a lot about myself.