Blackouts : By Any Other Name

The picture to the left is of yours truly, Zane Neumann, standing outside of his childhood home and smoking a cigarette--not a habit he picked up during his childhood, but damn near.

This picture was taken by his childhood friend Cyrah Hawkins, the self-titled Unlonely Traveller, who was passing through Pennsylvania on his way back down to Hotlanta and had stopped by to visit.

During those years of childhood friendship, Cyrah and Zane would spend countless hours with LEGO building blocks; worlds were created and characters created in turn, all to further enrich those fantasy worlds coming from the young boy's minds. Stories were built, brick by brick, and all made from those bright, geometric bits of plastic and imagination.

Cyrah was a close friend of Zane's and so it is sad to say that Zane was neither present nor pleased (or so he is told was his demeanor) with his friend's surprise visit that night the above photo was taken; Zane had drinking on his mind that night you see, and such a thing takes precedence over friends and warm, long-ago memories of make-believe.

Such a thing takes precedence over life itself and negates the presence of being that is synonymous with the very act of being alive.

And so the reason behind my strange lapse into third-person begins to make itself clear to you, I hope. Nope, I'm not yet (or should I say, "no longer?") crazy enough to use it out of egotistical eccentricity or a disassociative impulse to escape my own identity--this time, there's a method to my madness.

As I sit here now and type "I," I am aware of both it and myself. My mind is functioning; there is a symbiosis between my body and my essence. I am aware, I am awake and I am here.

When this picture was taken, I was not. I was "I" in body alone, in name alone; more an object than a true subject. "Zane" was only a word to describe a thoughtless body that operated on tainted instinct, semantic memory and cellular thirst; actions were done, words were spoken, all without context to one another or coherency pertaining to that context and flow of events. There would be no difference in calling that body "Zane" or calling that body "Mud;" a name is just a word when all semblance of character is absent from the body that name is used to identify.

In short, when this picture was taken I was in an alcoholic blackout and I cannot remember any of it.

In Donal Sweeney, M.D.'s book "The Alcohol Blackout: Walking, Talking, Unconscious...And Lethal" he compiled accounts, testimonies and a lifetime of his own research into the condition and created a succinct and accurate book on the topic. The fact that the actual "how" and "why" behind the phenomenon are sorely overlooked and malignantly ignored topics by most medical professionals makes Dr. Sweeney's work even more pertinent. Below is a link for anyone who may be interested in the book:

http://www.bookpleasures.com/Lore2/idx/11/1768/Health_and_Fitness/article/The_Alcohol_BlackoutWalking_Talking_Unconscious_and_Lethal.html

As Dr. Sweeney writes in his book, a person operating while in an alcoholic blackout does so in a state of constant "present"--and a constant state of "present" without presence.

A person in a blackout may do, and usually does, something that hurts or upsets a person that they care for. As is par for the course for people operating with awareness, this person will then admonish the blacked-out individual for their abusive or inappropriate behavior. The blacked-out individual will, in immediate response to this, either argue the validity of their actions or apologize...and then in the next moment forget the entire episode took place. Consequently, should the circumstances and situation remain the same and evoke the same feelings in the blacked-out individual again, they will repeat the previous inappropriate behavior again. Their mind is not capable of context; they are operating entirely without cognitive thought to guide them.

This all occurs because that blacked-out individual is physiologically incapable of creating any new memories and physiologically incapable of behaving any way other than how they are behaving in each moment of their blackout. This is the physiological truth behind the "not remembering" that occurs following blacked-out episodes and the disjointed, uncharacteristic behavior that occurs during them.

I can "remember" so many times over my years spent as an active alcoholic when I would wake up feeling sick. Hungover, of course, but also consumed with the dread and fear that comes along with waking up and realizing that you cannot remember anything from the prior night.

I spoke of living with the certainty of madness pertaining to the abuse and the escalating regularity of it directed at myself and my mother by way of my father; over the years, this same feeling of certainty grew pertaining to my own drinking, my own blacking out and my own not remembering. I knew that not every time I drank or even binged that I would blackout, but I also knew that every time I did blackout I became a monster. And, of course, I knew that after having become this monster I would remember none of the monstrous things I did while he wore my skin and bore my face.

At that point in my life the most direct and sane preventative measure--not drinking to begin with--was something I was incapable of. And so, I lived with that knot of fear in my gut and waited for the next episode of madness to unfold. And it always did. It always did, because after enough drinks, that knot of fear disappeared and was replaced with drunkenness. Drunkenness and, when circumstances aligned maliciously, another blacked-out night spent as that unknowing monster.

One such blacked-out incident was the final straw that destroyed a ten-year friendship and relationship. My drinking at this time was completely sub-human and there are quite a few instances of gray-outs (partial lack of memory formation) sprinkled amidst all of the dark in my mind; the only beams of light, in other words, are just a lighter shade of pitch. And so I can't say if this conversation occurred the day following my blackout or the day after that. I have absolutely no idea; no ability to place events in a coherent time-line.

What I can remember is this friend crying when I told her that I couldn't remember what I had said and done. "It isn't fair, Zane! It's isn't fair!" Those words, her hurt voice crying those hurt words, still echo far back in my mind. Her voice was breaking, much like her heart was, and I still hear it in my mind. I hear it because that echoing voice, that hurt voice, is speaking something that echoes my own sentiments.

No, it is not fair.

But that's so much of why I believe we strive to learn as human beings; so much of this world evokes the reaction of "It isn't fair!" from deep within our souls. We use those emotions as the motivations to look for explanations; the explanations do not take away the "wrong," they do not take away the hurt, but they do give us a chance to breathe and clear our eyes.

For myself, as with all who experience or have experienced blackouts, our inability to remember are not examples of Freudian repression or of cowardly guilt-dodging. The lapse in memory occurs because, during our time in a black-out, our mind is recording absolutely nothing and so there is nothing there for us to remember when we sober up.

We can be told, but we will never remember; what is done during a blackout is forever absent in the blacked-out individuals mind. But being able to be told is still, at the very least, a starting point for understanding.

Accountability is the focal point of recovery from active alcoholism; the foundation that re-learning, learning and growth can be set upon. During interventions, loved ones give tearful and painful ultimatums to the beloved alcoholic in their lives. During therapy and groups, addicts and alcoholics are told that they are not responsible for their addiction, but are responsible for their recovery.

Accountability pertaining to blackouts directly is more of a heated topic: can a person be held accountable for their actions when they are, in the truest sense of the word, unaware of what they are doing? Our legal system tells us that yes, of course they can. Our hearts tell us that yes, of course they can, when the "they" in question is a person that we love and trust and who has hurt us while blacked-out. And, I'm sure, there are many men and women in prison who are there for crimes committed during an alcoholic blackout who could lend their opinions and voices to the argument.

What I know is this: I will never remember the things I did while blacked-out. Unlike events done when drunk or when grayed out, these things will never return to me. I will never remember them; but what I can always remember is that very fact.

My name is Zane Neumann and I am an alcoholic. More on blackouts to come.