I know the effect from my former me and many of you might have experienced it, too. When drinking a lot of alcohol one tends to forget minutes to hours of what happened. Why does this happen? Are the cells storing the info dying? Is there a problem with passing the info down to the cells that store them? Are we just tired late at night and this is the reason why we cannot remember? Please help me to understand.
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You have several types of memory:
* Iconic memory, which handles the very now. The impulse, what happened an eyeblink ago.
* Working memory, which handles stuff you need to keep in your brain to function. What’s said in a conversation, math problems, what happened 30 seconds ago on that soap opera you’re watching.
* Long-term memory, anything further back than that.
Well. The long-term memory creation is handled by the part of the brain called the hippocampus and it needs several neurotransmitters to do that job. Alcohol is a GABA inhibitor (GABA is one of those neurotransmitters), so memories are fuzzy at best and non-existant at worst.
In short, trying to create memories while drunk is like trying to print out that funny image you found, but all the toner cartridges are on their last leg.
This is also why pretty much anything that interferes with the function of GABA can cause memory loss and blackouts (for example benzos and many date-rape drugs like GHB). In the case of fast acting ones they act so fast (within 10 minutes or so) that they can prevent your brain from creating the memory of taking the drug in the first place.
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