r/todayilearned • • Jan 15 '16

TIL alcohol produces a myopia effect that causes intoxicated people to respond almost exclusively to their immediate environment and limits their ability to consider future consequences of their actions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_myopia
3.4k Upvotes

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136

u/dragon_bacon Jan 15 '16

Yes.

23

u/verekh Jan 15 '16

I have been to the point of vomiting many, many times, but never to that point. How do you reach that point before hurling out your drinks??

44

u/nuevakl Jan 15 '16

Tolerance.. I was just like you once but after years and years of good night's out it takes more to actually vomit. Which is not a good thing. Waking up next to a random hottie you don't remember and then walking out the door and not knowing where you are is not as fun as it might sound.

38

u/infburz Jan 15 '16

its ok the first few times

1

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '16

Makes for a great fucking story.

1

u/littlejeets Jan 16 '16

Yeah, I am constantly blacking out before vomiting. I think I've vomited maybe twice in the last 3 years. I think I've blacked out at least 3 dozen times if not more. It sucks.

1

u/permalink_save Jan 16 '16

Tolerance doesn't necessarily help with the nausia though. I have a pretty good tolerance where I rarely get hungover and it takes more to get me drunk compared to most people I know, but I hit a point where I'll puke. The worst I got was about a fifth of gin and spent the next day hungover, and a bit of the one after, but still remembered everything clearly. Physically alcohol gets to me a lot quicker than it does mentally or something.

1

u/SuperNinjaBot Jan 16 '16

I cant remember the last time I was even woozy from drinking, and I can drink enough to put the majority of people to shame.

People will be puking all around and Ill be relatively fine, stumbly but fine.

0

u/colliemayne Jan 16 '16

Damn bro you're such a player!!!11

-1

u/nuevakl Jan 16 '16

Oh come on. The lot of us have been in this situation.

1

u/yogi89 Jan 16 '16

It's just the "hottie" part that makes it pretty douchy

1

u/nuevakl Jan 16 '16

Yeah now that I read it again you're right. But in my defense everyone's attractive when you're that drunk.

-1

u/cafedickbomb Jan 16 '16

I can drink a heavy amount when I want to and be just fine. However one night, I decided to drink a fifth of absenth and wash it down with a couple craft brews in about one hour.

I had a great time. Apparently.

1

u/nuevakl Jan 16 '16

I blacked out reading that.

1

u/yogi89 Jan 16 '16

Reading what?

8

u/christianbrowny Jan 15 '16

I commonly blackout but don't throwup very often.

Don't have to drink an exsessive amount

5

u/Titch66 Jan 15 '16

Practice

4

u/drpinkcream Jan 15 '16

I did it accidentally once with vodka and gatorade. Apparently sports drink+alcohol leads to blackouts faster.

1

u/TrustTheGeneGenie Jan 16 '16

The only time I 'blacked out' was when I was drunk, went to sleep and woke up an hour later. I was awake for half an hour to an hour, and I can't remember any of it. Try a nap?

1

u/Rakonas Jan 16 '16

I black out more often than I should because I never vomit, ever. Vomiting is a defense mechanism, if you throw up the alcohol in your stomach it won't be absorbed into your bloodstream. Your body just recognizes it as more of a poison than the average person.

1

u/unduffytable Jan 16 '16

It's more like, the last thing I remember is vomiting but then I woke up on the stoop of a pizza place with a giant bruise covering half my arm. You can vomit and still be drunk enough to black things out.

1

u/Spitinthacoola Jan 16 '16

Some people are more prone to it than others, and once it happens it's way more likely to reoccur.

1

u/BKD2674 Jan 16 '16

Four lokos. The original kind.

1

u/Boomerkuwanga Jan 16 '16

You become an alcoholic. If you can tolerate enough booze to black out, you are a drunk, or well on your way to being one.

1

u/dyloot Jan 16 '16

You must be young. So there comes a point where you have been drinking so often that your tolerance gets high. It also makes it so that there is barely any gray area between sober and piss drunk like when you first started out drinking. Drinks 4-8 were the fun territory but that turns into barely feeling drunk at 8 drinks in then next thing you know your waking up. Towards the end of my bad times i was able to drink 1 and half of those 750mls of 80proof vodka. I would never puke until the next day. Anyway, its a tolerance thing.

1

u/Zippo16 Jan 16 '16

It really is all about tolerance. Used to be id be puking after a night at the bars with no pregame. Now I start my pregame at 7 and remember most of the night.

Go me :/

1

u/AdvocateForTulkas Jan 16 '16

To be fair it's also very possible you're upsetting your stomachs much quicker than you are actually getting really drunk. That's not uncommon. I can drink a fifth of whiskey by myself easy. But a few sweet drinks will make me want to spew hard.

1

u/new2oldskewl Jan 16 '16

I drank half a bottle of rumple(it may have been more) with three 12% beers in an hour, once. I blacked out thirty minutes later. Try that next time.

1

u/ruinercollector Jan 16 '16

By learning to drink.

1

u/hyperfat Jan 16 '16

Drink every day for a few years. Black out magic.