"Blacking Out" And The Problem With Assuming That Ford Was Attacked By Someone
I drank waaay too much as an undergrad. I barfed many times. I passed out a couple of times. Did I "black out"? Well, as I was saying the other day, I don't even really know what "blacking out" is. I always assumed it meant something like: drinking until you don't know what you're doing...but still doing stuff. To the best of my knowledge, I never did that...and I'm pretty sure my friends would have ridiculed me for it if I had. If I ever did it, it wasn't many times and it wasn't consequential. But I don't think I ever did. So I don't find it hard to believe at all that you could drink too much and not black out.
Furthermore, even if Kavanaugh did black out, it does not mean that he assaulted Ford. Unless he was blacked out at the alleged-and-so-far-as-we-can-tell-fictional party in question, this isn't even an issue. And unless he was blacking out with fair frequency, we've got no reason to think he was blacked out at that particular party. If it existed. Which it seems not to have.
Part of the problem here is treating accusers with kid gloves. One consequence of treating Ford with kid gloves was that everyone bent over backwards to claim that they were sure that something had happened to her--i.e. that someone had attacked her...the only question was: was it Brett Kavanaugh or someone else? That's ridiculous. And it's yet another way of stacking the deck against Kavanaugh. My own inclination is to think that nothing at all happened, and Ford is imagining things. The evidence we now have makes it very plausible that this idea mostly entered her head in therapy. And, of course, the culture now valorizes victims--in particular victims of sexual assault. Such things are fabricated by people all the time. One reason is: they can then attribute their problems to such things. Although I've been trying to ignore my subjective impressions of Ford, she frankly strikes me as a bullshitter. That is: someone insufficiently grounded in the truth. It's something about that whiney demeanor...and it really came out most clearly in that "I don't undertay-und" comment. It was a transparent effort to get sympathy and play the victim. It was this whole thing writ small...if you want to know my subjective impressions. I don't think I should be paying attention to that, but everybody else is paying attention to their subjective inclinations...so fuck it.
People keep saying that Ford's extremely credible...I don't see what in the world they're thinking. She's given absolutely no sign of credibility. She told a story without--apparently--giving many people any reason to think she was lying. But we're all really bad at telling who's lying. All she had to do was sit there, read her comments, and not, basically, run around in circles making chicken noises. Sounding credible is the norm, not the exception. To me, she gives off very strong vibes, and they remind me of people--women, to be exact--I've known in the past who didn't have the strongest grip on reality. (Dudes who lack a sufficient grip on reality have a different irritating demeanor, in case you're wondering.)
So: no, she wasn't particularly credible. She was averagely credible, at best. (Though if my impressions are to be trusted, she was non-credible.) It's about as likely that (a) she was assaulted, but she's mistaken about who did it as that (b) the incident she describes simply didn't happen. And the only reason we've made (a) out to be front-runner is because we are treating her as a victim or "survivor" rather than what she actually is--an accuser.
I've got no tolerance whatsoever for actual sexual assault. I want such people to hang. But that means I also have no tolerance whatsoever for false accusers. And we don't know which Ford is. And we have no reason to think that she's not just some flake who, over the years, allowed herself to spin out a story about sexual assault and how it ruined her life. In fact, I'd be willing to bet some money--though not a lot of it--that that's exactly who and what she is. (And if she is really a victim, then I'm happy to do my stint in purgatory or whatever for thinking those thoughts about her and saying thous things...not that I believe in purgatory nor any such place...) And by automatically treating her as a victim, we've stacked the deck against Kavanaugh. As Anon pointed out in comments, the argument seems to be that, if you've ever blacked out while drinking, then you can't be presumed innocent if charged with sexual assault. And that is insane.
posted by Winston Smith at
8:13 PM
7 Comments:
Blacking out means doing stuff while drunk that you do not subsequently remember. Though it usually involves a pretty high level of drunkeness, and so may also involve a person acting as if they don't know what they are doing, that is not in any sense what it means.
Aaron is correct. Furthermore, people often do not realize at all that they have lost memories of a night of heavy drinking.
In my experience being a sober-through-undergrad person, if you’re puking from drinking, you’re not going to remember all the shit you did and said. It happened to my friends fairly constantly (especially as they gained sufficient tolerance to drink to that point without puking). They didn’t lose whole nights of memories on a regular basis, but to completely forget hours of activity was not at all uncommon. To wake up without knowing how they got to where they were, etc., was absolutely common.
It was colloquially known as “time traveling” among my more inebriated colleagues. I would be incredibly surprised to meet anyone who drank heavily and yet maintained a sober-quality memory of their activities while drunk; it is that common.
Yeah, that's what I always took "blacking out" to mean, and that's how I've been using the term here.
But no, puking *in no way* means that you are "blacked out" in that sense--not even close. There's a gigantic chasm between those things.
In my experience, as an undergrad-heavy drinker with friends who were heavy drinkers, though forgetting something here or there wasn't uncommon, "blacking out" *was*...if it means: not just forgetting something that happened, but being up and active for a significant period of time and not remembering it...and I suppose that means: not even when told about it later.
Whelp, you’re literally the only person I’ve ever known to assert he could be drunk to the point of throwing up on a regular basis, and yet, only very rarely, and only ever insubstantially, lose memories of the nights’ activities. I know of no one else who accomplished this. I’ve held a lot of hair back, and carted around a lot of drunks, and remembering with sober acuity one’s vomit-drenched drunkenness just isn’t common at all.
Getting black-out drunk as an undergrad, however, is. It does mean: forgetting substantial portions (minutes to hours) of an evening’s conscious activity. Often, people have spotty vague recollections when prompted to remember lengthy periods of time, but sometimes they irretrievably and entirely forget. It does seem to me to happen with great frequency (40-50% having it happen at least once as an undergrad seems like a reasonable estimate to me), and basically, unless you’ve got some sober friends about, it wouldn’t surprise me if you never knew it happened.
I mean, surely you’ve heard someone say that he or she doesn’t even remember how he or she got home? Or the whole “the last thing I remember was..” shtick that’s a movie favorite?
I’ve had friends wake up in jail and not know how or why they got there. I’ve been called to retrieve such friends, in fact. I remember a friend calling me to come get him at 4:00 AM from “a bush.” It had a stop sign next to it. He did not recall how he arrived there. I had a friend wake up in the apartment building adjacent to ours, having somehow gotten himself into the bed of a total stranger by drunkenly mistaking their apartment for ours (it was a cookie-cutter complex). At least, that’s what he presumes happened. It seemed to be a dude’s room, but he didn’t stop to ask the guy’s roommate when he snuck out of there.
None of that, eh?
Whelp, you're literally the only person I've ever heard assert that the degree of drunkenness required to throw up is roughly equivalent to the degree of drunkenness required to "black out."
And getting "black-out drunk" was considered a somewhat notable event when I was an undergrad.
I suppose that binge drinking might have escalated in the generation or whatever between our undergrad experiences--that's always possible...I guess... Though people were so trashed when I was an undergrad that I'd think there'd be widespread deaths if there were *much* of an increase...
Though Kavanaugh is my generation, not yours...
I don't deny that people *do* get "black-out drunk"...and that, in a university of 10,000 students, there will be many tales of such (often exaggerated...but probably just as often played down). I just deny that--at least back in the day--it was so common that every heavy drinker could be expected to do it with fair frequency--so that the mere fact of Kavanaugh's heavy drinking is proof that he "blacked out" enough to make it a lie for him to dissemble about it.
Of course people *do* forget how they got home. I did that more than once. But that's different than not knowing what you're doing at the time--which, as I thought I understood--was part of "blacking out"... If someone's around to remind you how you effected the deed, and you *still* don't remember...well, I'd say that's at least fair evidence that you didn't know what you were doing at the time, hence were blacked out...but by this point we've introduced enough unclarity that nobody's going to be convicting Kavanaugh of perjury in any court.
But it's all over the interwebs..
https://wellness.ucsd.edu/studenthealth/resources/health-topics/alcohol-drugs/Pages/BAC-you.aspx
"0.14 - 0.17 BAC: ...This is when you may experience a blackout."
".20 BAC: ...Some people have nausea and vomiting at this level."
https://mcwell.nd.edu/your-well-being/physical-well-being/alcohol/blood-alcohol-concentration/
"0.06-0.099% ... Impaired reasoning and memory."
"0.160-0.199% Dysphoria predominates, nausea may appear."
"0.200-0.249% ...possible blackout."
https://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism-treatment/blackout/
"However, people who blackout frequently from drinking too much are also likely to have a higher tolerance to alcohol, so their BAC will often be higher than 0.15 when they experience a blackout. For people with a higher tolerance to alcohol, a BAC of 0.2 or greater leads to a blackout."
https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-2/186-196.htm
"Estimates of BAC levels during blackout periods suggested that they often began at levels around 0.20 percent and as low as 0.14 percent."
And also, relevant to other parts of the discussion:
"Fifty–one percent of the students who had ever consumed alcohol reported blacking out at some point in their lives, and 40 percent reported experiencing a blackout in the year before the survey. Of those who had consumed alcohol during the 2 weeks before the survey, 9.4 percent reported blacking out during this period. Students in the study reported that they later learned that they had participated in a wide range of events they did not remember, including such significant activities as vandalism, unprotected intercourse, driving an automobile, and spending money."
The BAC level at which people start throwing up is generally the same, or perhaps even a little after, the BAC level at which people start blacking out.
Now, all of those studies point out that not all subjects experience blackouts during the testing, but the smart money is not on the memory of drunks. If they are subjected to repeated instances of BAC levels that high, they gonna foe-get.
This is where my money be.
Also: I'd use the definition of blacking out provided by the NIH:
"An alcoholic blackout is amnesia for the events of any part of a drinking episode without loss of consciousness. It is characterized by memory impairment during intoxication in the relative absence of other skill deficits...
An alcoholic blackout may be complete (en-bloc) or partial (fragmentary, or grayout). An en bloc blackout is complete amnesia for significant events otherwise memorable under usual circumstances. The defining characteristic of a complete blackout is that memory loss is permanent and cannot be recalled under any circumstances. Fragmentary blackouts occur more frequently. In fragmentary blackouts, recall is usually possible and can be aided by cueing. Although initially the subject may be unaware that memory is missing, reminders usually help the subject remember forgotten events. It is, however, difficult for investigators to be totally accurate because people may often fail to remember having a blackout, or do not attend to all circumstances in which they might have had a blackout, particularly fragmentary blackouts. Therefore, metamemory deficit is an issue in this type of research."
You forget how you get home, you done blacked out.
The only one of those sources that looks reliable is NIH...and they don't give any BAC level for barfing, ergo they don't compare barfing and "blacking out" levels.
"Mcwell"...which...never mind...says that nausea may appear as low as .16..."*possible* blackout" as high as .249...
Obviously some people "black out"...presumably, generally, before they barf. So, whatever the average figures, it's possible for blacking out to happen at a lower BAC than barfing.
All I can tell ya is that I and everybody I knew drank a lot and barfed a lot...but "blacking out" was almost unheard of, and considered, basically, shameful. Some people played it up because they played up all aspects of their drinking. I find it *really damn hard to believe* that HALF of all students who have EVER had a drink have blacked out.
Perhaps the key here is in the contentious definition of blacking out; they include forgetting what you did, then remembering it with prompting. I wouldn't have counted that...unless the prompting required was really serious. I also thought there were overtones of not knowing what you were doing even as you were doing it--but apparently it's a contentious concept.
But I'll be honest...I just can't work up a lot of interest, largely because there's too much vagueness in the term for anyone to bust Kavanaugh for what he said under oath.
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