Most people think of a blackout in the context of a region losing all electrical power. On the rare occasion they occur, the safe thing is to stay calm, go to ground, and congregate with others for safety while waiting for dawn or the return of power. Blackouts are considered extremely serious, and there is a great amount of precaution taken so that they do not occur and if they do- countermeasures are rapidly developed. While some people do take advantage of these incidents of vulnerability to commit crimes, for the most part though, people tend to band together in the face of adversity.
Like most other well acquainted with alcoholism, I associate the word blackout with the absolute loss of memory and recall. Rare at first and usually only during extreme binge drinking, but as my alcoholism progressed so did the frequency and the unpredictability of my blackouts. As I approached the bottom of total dysfunction, they began to occur at normal BAC levels (relative to an alcoholic). Not knowing what took place the night or even week before can be a very scary thing, and there was only one way I coped with fear… so the blackout bouts only got worse. I was definitely vulnerable during these times, and so were the innocents that passed by me on highways I still can’t recall driving. I segregated myself from family and known associates after too many of those “do you know what you did” moments, but in blackouts still often returned as if on autopilot for an embarrassing encore.
Blackouts were not just dangerous; they robbed me of my confidence and stressed me to an extreme as I worried about what really occurred during these missing segments of my life. Not only was I powerless over alcohol, but during blackouts it took substance as my drunken doppelganger that did as it pleased.
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Fallout from blackouts were frightening to me as a child. My father would make promises when he was drunk, and when I mentioned them to him when he sobered up, he would go into a rage. He just knew that I was conning him into something he had never promised. His denial and lies to himself were turned on me, and I was the liar. This is how trust is destroyed in a child raised with an alcoholic, that has to be rebuilt as an adult.
The collateral damage of alcoholism is rarely understood by those outside of recovery circles- and even then with us, it is almost impossible to get a “big picture” that adequately covers the trust, resentment, guilt, and pain that interconnects the family of an alcoholic.