Why does drinking enough alcohol make cause a “blackout”?

Question

…and how does blacking out actually work? Do people actually go unconscious? Or do they just not remember?

In: 2

Answer 1

Alcohol has a whole range of effects on the body and the brain, which get worse as the dosage increases. One of those effects, when you’re fairly drunk, is that your brain stops creating long-term memories. Short term memory still works fine, so people who have a blackout still seem somewhat normal at the time (although very obviously drunk), but when they wake up the next day they simply have no memories at all from the blackout period, because the long term memories were never created during that time.

Now people CAN go unconscious from alcohol poisoning, but that is at even higher levels of alcohol intoxication.