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I often wonder if the mild alcoholism of my youth (drinking to blackout roughly once every month, starting at age 16) has given me any lasting impairment. Cert
by alki 16y ago
I often wonder if the mild alcoholism of my youth (drinking to blackout roughly once every month, starting at age 16) has given me any lasting impairment. Certainly, I have no terrible damage since I am highly functional at an intellectually demanding job. But I've always wondered if I took an edge off my memory. My "prospective memory" (remembering to complete tasks without reminder) seems to be much worse than average, but it's hard to tell if this is within natural variation and, even if so, if my alcohol use affected it.
I've read in a few places that alcoholism in children and teens leads to demonstrated long-term memory effects, especially for prospective memory. Does anyone know the level of alcohol consumption at which this effect becomes measurable? Is this damage permanent? (My google-fu seems inadequate.)
I suspect that researchers simply don't have the data to make precise confident statements about damage that is marginal (and, hence, is hard to measure).
- presidentender 16y agoI can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that my binge drinking in late high school and early college have robbed me of some intellectual edge.
- BvS 16y agoHow do you know "beyond a shadow of a doubt" that it would have turned out differently if you would have stayed abstinent?
- presidentender 16y agoThere may be confounding variables, making my comment hyperbolic. However, I once had a quickness of wit and a clarity of memory that I just don't any more.
- pmichaud 16y agoThe article doesn't seem to indicate that the memory interference is permanent. It just says that it interferes with the receptors, so I'm guess that once it clears from your system, the receptors go back to... receiving. I'm just speculating based on the article though.
- silentbicycle 16y agoTo my understanding, one of alcohol's many effects is short-term interference with the brain's production of vasopressin, an anti-diuretic hormone which (strangely) also has some effect on memory formation. I don't know about long-term effects on memory, but that's probably enough keywords for a medical journal search.
- alki 16y agoHeavy alcohol use among teens, even those who aren't dependent on it, has been shown to damage prospective memory well after the alcohol has cleared from their system. The damage lasts for months, at the very least.
- klochner 16y agoIt sounds like the alcohol contributed to your hypochondria [edit] lighten up, for the love of god. I'm taking the downvotes on principle here. He "often wonders"? Seriously, he should get over it - there's nothing he can do about it at this point, and he's admittedly a highly functional person at an intellectually demanding job. [2nd edit] Here's a desnarkified version of my original comment: Life is hard, and you're going to screw some things up, but you compound those mistakes by focusing on what you could have been rather than what you could still potentially be.
- silentbicycle 16y agoIt's still a good question: He's asking what extent hard drinking affects memory later in life. You don't need to be snarky about it. I've read studies in which a brain damaged by long-term alcohol abuse has shown significant recovery after roughly a year of abstinence, though I don't have a citation on hand. You're probably better searching medical journals for that kind of thing, though.
- alki 16y agoI think it's entirely appropriate to consider the negative effects of previous decisions even if one is unable to mitigate them. Choosing to ignore them seems like an unhealthy attitude which could contribute to future mistakes.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- sliverstorm 16y ago> I often wonder if the mild alcoholism of my youth (drinking to blackout roughly once every month, starting at age 16) Is that really only mild? I must be extra-super-special-crazy-lite.
- barrkel 16y agoOnce a month is pretty mild. Depending on the society, is only a little beyond what's normal. From my experience, an average college student in Ireland might expect to binge drink twice a week, on Thursdays and Saturdays; on Thursdays with your fellow students because it's the last night of the week before a lot of people go home for the weekend (it's a small country), and on Saturday with your friends at home. I say average, because what we'd want to call alcoholism would go further than what's normal in the society; it would need to be drinking to excess to escape your life, and ending up with other problems, like being kicked out of places, waking up in strange places (possibly with strange people), not remembering the details of the night before until you piece it all together out of fragmentary memories, passing out in parties, pubs, clubs etc. These are a couple of stages beyond mere "binge drinking".
- dejb 16y ago> Once a month is pretty mild. Yes but I think that drinking 'to blackout' > 'binge'. Intuitively one would think that if you can't remember things that happened the night before, then you could easily be damaging some memory systems in the long term as well.
- barrkel 16y agoOf course; I was just saying that when binging is normal (i.e. 8 to 12 drinks in a short night, no house party afterwards), blackout isn't a whole lot further; a lot of the time, it's just being a little faster, not more, or drinking something you're not used to (such as poitín).
- alki 16y agoNotice I said mild alcoholism, not mild drinking. On the scale of alcoholics (who generally can't get through a day without drinking) I think this is probably mild. But it's just semantics.
- loewenskind 16y agoI suspect it has more to do with how you optimize your mind. I can't remember anything without placing things in the right location (e.g. if I have to take gloves, put 'em with the coat that I have to wear because it's cold) and reminders. Since getting a mobile device that could provide me alerts my natural ability at remembering alert-type things has gotten even worse.