One of the biggest causes of a blackout from drinking is consuming too much too fast. When you drink alcohol rapidly, your liver cannot keep up and metabolize the alcohol fast enough. This causes blood alcohol concentration levels to rise quickly until you reach the point of an alcohol blackout.

When this happens, this is known as an alcoholic blackout. It can leave people completely unable to remember where they were, who they were with, and what they were doing. An alcohol blackout can last just minutes, or it can last for several days.

Alcohol-related blackouts are gaps in a person’s memory for events that occurred while they were intoxicated. These gaps happen when a person drinks enough alcohol to temporarily block the transfer of memories from short-term to long-term storage—known as memory consolidation—in a brain area called the hippocampus.

Alcohol is a depressant which affects your brain’s natural level of happiness chemicals like serotonin and dopamine. This means that although you’ll feel an initial ‘boost’ the night before, the next day you will be deficient in these same chemicals, which may lead to feeling anxious, down or depressed.

Water can help reduce your BAC, though it will still take one hour to metabolize 20 mg/dL of alcohol. Avoid caffeine. It’s a myth that that coffee, energy drinks, or any similar beverages alleviate intoxication quicker.

“Since the body isn’t actually getting dehydrated, drinking water alongside alcohol has absolutely no effect on whether or not you end up with a hangover.”

Yes, how you drink matters. If you chug back a drink, those big gulps will get more alcohol into your body a lot faster. Sipping, on the other hand, allows the effects to kick in more gradually.

As alcohol leaves the body of a heavy drinker, the brain is flooded with more activity, the nervous system becomes hyperactive, and you may experience alcohol tremors or shakes. The shakes can happen as quickly as eight hours after your last drink.

How to sober up in the morning

1. Go back to sleep.
2. Take an OTC pain reliever to treat your headache.
3. Drink water to counteract the dehydrating effects of alcohol.
4. Drink a sports drink fortified with vitamins and minerals, like Gatorade.
5. Treat gastrointestinal upset with an OTC product like Pepto-Bismol or Tums.

It can be helpful to know the signs of being drunk so you can avoid possible harm to yourself by continuing to drink….Drinking alcohol can make you drunk, which is associated with:

1. slow and/or poor judgment.
2. lack of coordination.
3. slowed breathing and heart rate.
4. vision problems.
5. drowsiness.
6. loss of balance.

Never drink on an empty stomach – dairy including milk and yogurt are excellent stomach liners, so if you’re not going to be eating on your night out enjoy a small carton of plain yogurt with a banana, a bowl of cereal with milk or some cheese and biscuits before you venture out.

Eating before, during, and after drinking can help slow the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream. Drinking plenty of water can assist with dehydration and flushing toxins from the body. And drinking fruit juices that contain fructose and vitamins B and C can help the liver flush out alcohol more successfully.

Drinking alcohol to excess can lead to a host of hangover symptoms, including throwing up. Vomiting is your body’s response to excess toxins from alcohol in your body. While vomiting may make you feel awful, the risks from excess toxins can be damaging to your system.

Eat small bites of bland foods, such as toast, crackers, or applesauce to keep your energy up. Again, wait a little while after you’ve vomited to reduce the chance you’ll trigger the vomiting reflex again.

Alcoholic gastritis is when alcohol damages the stomach lining and can cause a variety of symptoms from abdominal pain to vomiting. Alcoholic gastritis may not always present immediate symptoms, but over time, it can eat away at the body’s digestive tract.

Benefits of throwing up the alcohol Throwing up after drinking may reduce stomach pain that the alcohol has caused. If a person throws up shortly after having a drink, the body may not have absorbed the alcohol, potentially lessening its effects.

FACT: Research has shown that vomiting cannot get rid of all the calories ingested, even when done immediately after eating. A vomit can only remove up to about half of the calories eaten – which means that, realistically, between half to two thirds of what is eaten is absorbed by the body.

Sleep drunkenness is a sleep disorder that describes feelings of sudden action or reflex upon waking up. It’s also called confusional arousal.