Phenomenological Aspects of the Alcoholic “Blackout”

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Abstract

“Blackout”, a confusing term sometimes denoting amnesia and at other times unconsciousness, has come in the alcoholism literature to designate memory loss associated with drinking alcohol. That alcoholics frequently experience amnesic episodes has been recognized since Bonhoeffer's time, and more recently Jellinek (1952) and others have popularized the notion that blackouts are an important predictor of alcoholism, a conclusion based on questionnaire data indicating that blackouts occur early in the course of alcoholism, well before the appearance of other alcoholic symptoms. Jellinek also believed that alcoholics often had blackouts after ingestion of modest, subintoxicating amounts of alcohol.

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Most cited references 9

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Donald A Overton (1964)

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Alcohol and recall: state-dependent effects in man.

Hanna D. Bremer, Joann Powell, H Hoine … (1969)

Male vollunteers performed four memory tasks either while sober or lunder effects of alcohol. Twenty-four hours later they were tested under the same or different conditions. In tasks measuiring recall and interference, learning transfer was better when the subject was intoxicated during both sessions than when he was intoxicated only during the learning session. In a task measuring recognition, transfer was not significantly affected by changing state. Thus, alcohol appears to produce "dissociated" or state-dependent effects in man, but not all forms of memory are equally sensitive to the phenomenon.