Drinking and Subconscious memory

[Lord Carnifex]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Black outs are not normal for normal intoxication.

No, blackouts are not normal. However, human memory isn't terribly reliable at the best of times, and alcohol can make things fuzzier even short of a full blackout. Alchohol can also bring things up out of the subconscious that are otherwise repressed and buried. Minds are funny that way.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Lord Carnifex

No, blackouts are not normal. However, human memory isn't terribly reliable at the best of times, and alcohol can make things fuzzier even short of a full blackout. Alchohol can also bring things up out of the subconscious that are otherwise repressed and buried. Minds are funny that way.

I guess my limited experience with alcohol of only three or four times drunk gives me too narrow of a view.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Lord Carnifex

No, blackouts are not normal. However, human memory isn't terribly reliable at the best of times, and alcohol can make things fuzzier even short of a full blackout. Alchohol can also bring things up out of the subconscious that are otherwise repressed and buried. Minds are funny that way.

Yeah, "How drunk were these guys?" is a very relevant question here. Somebody who is blackout drunk isn't forgetting things - They are never forming the memories in the first place, because the part of the brain responsible for doing that disengages faster than the part that makes you sleep with your friends and think you're an expert on everything when exposed to alcohol.

Short of that, drinking can affect the tricks memory already plays on you due to its interactions with your conscious mind, which are already pretty severe, by impairing cognition, but you will remember the false version if you convince yourself it's what really happened. Suddenly recovering the "real" memories by becoming drunk again would be a ... highly cinematic interpretation of the research in state-based recall, IMHO.

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Black outs are not normal for normal intoxication.

Depands on how much you drink. And what you consider normal intoxication.

[Lord Carnifex]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Short of that, drinking can affect the tricks memory already plays on you due to its interactions with your conscious mind, which are already pretty severe, by impairing cognition, but you will remember the false version if you convince yourself it's what really happened. Suddenly recovering the "real" memories by becoming drunk again would be a ... highly cinematic interpretation of the research in state-based recall, IMHO.

My impression is that the false memories were magically implanted. So I think we can fuzz around the science. Much like cinema for years has had a very... confused... vision of hypnosis and how it relates to memory.

More precisely, since alcohol can impair judgement and cognition, there's less of a filter of the conscious mind saying "Wait, that's not possible." and "That's not what happened. I remember what happened. We weren't cursed, we just chased girls all night." Getting intoxicated again allows the two sets of memories to exist simultaneously without invoking cognitive dissonance and rejection by the conscious mind. And state-based recall helps bring the "real" memories back up. Or that's how it would work in one of my games.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Lord Carnifex

My impression is that the false memories were magically implanted. So I think we can fuzz around the science. Much like cinema for years has had a very... confused... vision of hypnosis and how it relates to memory.

The impression that I got from JLD's original and later posts is that the compulsion was magically inflicted, but that the memory was not except insofar as it relates to them being magically compelled. So, assuming this is accurate, the characters would remember all the dialogue from the scene, but forget that they felt a change in their motivations when the spell was cast, making the other memory effects purely those of alcohol.

[Lord Carnifex]

Hmm...

I read "So their memory is erased" as an active, magical process rather than a side effect of intoxication and recovery from same. Could go either way.