This is Annie Grace and you're listening to this naked mind podcast where without

judgment, pain or rules, we explore the role of alcohol in our lives and culture.

Hi, it's Annie Grace. I am answering readers questions today and today I have a question

that is all about blackouts. And really what is the deal with blackouts? Like what are they?

How do they happen? What's important about them? What can we learn? So there's a lot to

cover on this topic. First of all, I want to share that I was frankly really confused

about blackouts. And so you might be too. And I think it sort of depends if you'd experienced

them a lot or not. So what I had experienced in my drinking, which I now know as a fragmentary

or partial blackout, which was actually a grayout, was never a complete loss of chunks of

time. I didn't experience that. I now know that that was because I was a really regular,

daily drinker. And it's funny because you can get into this debate of like, if I'm a

regular drinker and I look at somebody who's like a binge drinker or who's drinking really

a lot on just once or twice a week, I can look at them and they might be falling down

and totally wasted. I'm like, well, geez, at least I'm not like them. But then if you're

somebody who drinks once or twice a week and humongous amounts, you can look at somebody

like me and who's like drinking two bottles of wine a night and be like, oh my gosh,

well, at least I don't drink wine every night. And both things, although we think they're

very different, they're both the same sort of things in the brain. And there's a lot more

information about that in other videos. But in this one, we're going to talk about the

idea of blackouts. And so why I was confused is because I had never had a blackout. And

a blackout, what the term for it is in block. And that means complete and total blackout.

Now what I thought a blackout was because I didn't understand is I thought it was becoming

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