Maybe a couple of weeks ago I read the new book from Brubaker and Phillips, Night Fever. It's fun. Not sure I like the ending, but everything else is a good time. It's about a promoter for a publishing house going to Europe for a convention only to get into some serious fuckin' trouble, especially when he blacks out in the presence of another character, but the panel above really spoke to me. As someone who has been a heavy, heavy drinker for almost two decades, I've had my share of blackouts, and I always wondered what was really in the driver's seat. Because it certainly wasn't me.
Brubaker continues: "You're not unconscious, passed out in some corner . . . You're just not there somehow. So what part of your mind is pulling your strings then?" An excellent question for which I don't have an answer. I think about the saying, "First the man takes the drink, then the drink takes the man." Is there a spirit (heh) to the alcohol that takes up residence like a possession? And only sobriety can exorcise the demon? Or maybe another you, like a split personality? Perhaps it's the lizard brain come out to play.
The scariest blackout I ever came out of was when I came back to myself behind the wheel of my car, going about 60 mph down an expressway. A tollway, at that. I do my absolute best to avoid tollways, so Blackout Me decided it might be a good idea to take one? What the fuck was he thinking?
(He asked, as if that was the most horrifying part of this anecdote.)
But most blackouts are pieced together the next day after I wake up, like a mystery. Has science tried to get to the bottom of this? We probably should do a study. If I was still drinking I'd volunteer in a heartbeat. Because I'd like to know, who am I when I've had so much to drink that I'm not me anymore?
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