The Hippocampus
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| 7/3/2008 |
by Ames S.
amess@sober24.com
They say it’s the hippocampus that is the most affected region of the
brain when it comes to alcohol-induced blackouts. That being the case,
I’m guessing that my own hippocampus probably looked something like a
piece of Swiss cheese by the time I quit drinking.
I was never the recipient of a brain scan, but as blackouts were a staple of my existence – the rice and beans of my alcoholic diet -- I can only imagine that my hippocampus was hard pressed to function normally.
Technically, there appear to be two general types of blackouts: en bloc blackouts, which are stretches of time for which the person has no memory whatsoever, and fragmentary blackouts, which are episodes for which the drinker's memory is spotty, with "islands" of memory providing some insight into what transpired, and for which more recall is usually possible if the drinker is cued by others.
As the saying goes, I was an equal opportunity employer, working both sides of this particular fence, with numerous en bloc and fragmentary blackouts to my credit. As most people I’ve come in contact with during my recovery concur, blackouts were really nothing extraordinary in the regular course of events – they were something to be tolerated and, ultimately, even expected. The idea that I might actually be damaging my brain with my drinking never really crossed my mind, so to speak.
There are other issues with blackouts, too. I remember once in particular coming to in the morning after a night of intense, heavy drinking. I was half-dressed, shirt ripped, and there was blood on my clothes. I had a few bumps and bruises and a couple of scrapes, but it was very difficult to determine whether the blood on my clothes was my own or someone else’s. I remember sitting in my apartment in a rocking chair, hung over, trying to reconstruct the events of the evening before. It was a total blank and the more I couldn’t remember anything, the more concerned I became. I recognized in that moment (though the recognition ultimately faded and did nothing to keep me from doing it all over again a day or two later) that I could have done absolutely anything during that time, anything at all, from something as innocent as falling into a row of hedges in Central Park, thereby causing the scrapes and bruises, to things far more sinister, such as breaking into somebody’s apartment or a sexual assault. Judging from the drunken escapades that I could remember, I had to admit there wasn’t anything on that spectrum from innocent to sinister that I could actually rule out.
I’m one of the lucky ones, I guess, as there are countless alcoholics currently behind bars for crimes they committed while drunk – crimes they don’t remember committing. While I believe it’s not a way to dodge responsibility or accountability, I certainly do have compassion in cases such as those that grace the newspapers with regularity about individuals who did horrible things in blackouts.
I’d like to just blame it all on the hippocampus, but there’s far more to it than that.
Recently, I read a report on blackouts from an assistant research professor at Duke University that discussed a theory I actually tested out during my drinking: that people might be able to remember events that occurred while they were intoxicated if they returned to that state, the basic idea being that blacked-out memories might be floating around in the mental miasma, as it were, waiting to be snapped into place by a return to the psychological state in which the memories were originally formed. Essentially, it’s the same theory for hangovers, but applied to blackouts: the proverbial hair of the dog.
As background for this theory, the researchers cited a classic study in which divers who memorized word lists either on land or under water remembered more words when tested in the same context in which the learning took place (i.e., land-land or water-water).
Well, they should’ve just asked me. I could’ve told them it wasn’t going to work. Like I said, I used to do the same thing – not the underwater stuff, but stepping into yet another drunken experience in an attempt to recapture lost memories from the past. Unfortunately, my research prompted only more blackouts, more lost memories, and more damage to that ill-treated hippocampus of mine.
I’m not sure what the regenerative properties of the hippocampus are – I guess I’ll have to do a little more (sober) research to determine whether or not any lost brain function can be regained -- but, all in all, I can certainly say that since I’ve been sober my memory has definitely improved. Now, if I could just keep track of where I parked my car, I’d be fine.
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