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Articles on Blackouts

Blackout: Problems with Memory and Suggestibility (Oorsouw, 2019)

Researchers examined how alcohol intoxication affects eyewitness memory and suggestibility across two field studies involving live interactions and immediate, delayed, or repeated questioning. They found that intoxication reduced memory completeness and increased acceptance of misleading information, while immediate testing generally performed better than a delayed-only test and repeated testing offered less benefit to intoxicated witnesses.

Blackout: Problems with Memory and Suggestibility (Oorsouw, 2015)

This 2015 field study examined whether alcohol intoxication affects memory for a mock crime and resistance to suggestive questions. The authors report that moderate and severe intoxication were associated with poorer recall, while the severely intoxicated group was more suggestible, with these effects also observed at a sober follow-up several days later.

Dubowski Scale (1980)

In this 1980 article, Kurt M. Dubowski reviews methods for measuring alcohol in clinical laboratory settings. It compares gas chromatography, enzymatic and chemical oxidation, and osmometry, describing their advantages, limitations, and relationships between blood-alcohol results and signs of intoxication.

Widmark Calculator

This guide walks through an approximate blood alcohol concentration calculation using the Widmark formula and an example based on drink quantity, body weight, and elapsed time. It explains that standard drink sizes and alcohol amounts must be estimated, and warns that the result is imprecise and may underestimate measured BAC.

Rohypnol

The Drug Enforcement Administration fact sheet identifies Rohypnol as flunitrazepam, a benzodiazepine depressant associated with sedation, reduced anxiety, muscle relaxation, and amnesia. It describes routes of misuse, effects on judgment and coordination, overdose dangers—especially with other depressants—and the drug’s legal status in the United States.

Sleep Disruption and Memory Difficulties

This 2007 study examines whether sleep before learning helps people form new episodic memories. In a small experiment, participants kept awake for about 35 hours showed reduced hippocampal activity during memory encoding and poorer later recognition than participants who slept, linking prior sleep loss with impaired memory formation.

Gender Differences in Alcohol Related Use and Harms

Aaron White’s 2020 review describes changing differences between men’s and women’s alcohol use and related harms in the United States. It summarizes narrowing drinking gaps, increases in adult women’s alcohol-related emergency visits, hospitalizations, and deaths, and research suggesting sex differences in susceptibility to several alcohol-related health effects.

What Happened? Alcohol, Memory, and the Brain

Aaron White’s 2003 review examines how acute alcohol use disrupts memory, with particular attention to blackouts and their underlying mechanisms. It explains that rising alcohol doses can impair the formation of new long-term memories while leaving brief working memory relatively intact, and discusses partial and complete blackouts in relation to hippocampal activity.

Review of Current Research on Blackout (2016)

This 2016 review surveys clinical research published from 2010 to 2015 on alcohol-induced blackouts, including their predictors, consequences, and possible cognitive or neurobiological mechanisms. The reviewed studies suggest that individual differences contribute alongside alcohol consumption, and that blackout-related consequences can include psychiatric symptoms and neurobiological abnormalities.

Intoxication During Police Interrogation

This study surveyed sentenced prisoners in Iceland about intoxication during offenses and police interviews, their mental state, and reasons for confessing. Respondents commonly reported confusion related to alcohol or drugs, while the authors identified perceived strength of evidence, internal pressure, and external pressure as major reported reasons for confession.