WHO: Donald F. Sweeney, M.D., author of The Alcohol Blackout: Walking, Talking, Unconscious & Lethal (
www.alcoholblackout.com).
WHAT: Dr. Sweeney discusses alcohol blackouts – the most common, misunderstood and neglected brain dysfunction suffered by millions of people on any given day. He provides a new tool for determining if a person is in a true blackout and ways to keep yourself, your family and your friends safe.
WHEN: Dr. Sweeney is available for interviews upon request
(SANTA BARBARA) Kevin Price drove the wrong way on the Garden State Parkway, hit a van head-on and killed five passengers. One New Year’s Eve, Paul Cox left a bar, had a car accident and walked to his childhood home and killed the couple that lived there while they slept. Michael Newbury hammered his girlfriend to death. Aside from being tragic, what do these cases have in common? None of these men has any memory of committing these crimes because there were all in an alcohol blackout.
Does your audience know:
Long associated with advanced alcoholism, it is now known that blackouts can happen to moderate, social and even first time drinkers. People have blacked out on two glasses of wine.
People in an alcohol blackout do not forget what happened, as is widely believed. They never remember because alcohol halts their ability to form memory.
Blackouts are an epidemic on college campuses because of binge drinking
Women are at the greatest risk of suffering a blackout, rendering them defenseless
People in a blackout are actually unconscious
Their pre-blackout memory remains intact, enabling them to walk, talk, drive, travel, quarrel, have sex, get into fights – and have no memory of it
Most police, judges, juries, lawyers, doctors and medical personnel who deal with the effects of blackouts every day know little or nothing about them
Dr. Sweeney’s startling book The Alcohol Blackout: Walking, Talking, Unconscious & Lethal breaks the myth of this misunderstood, dangerous and often neglected problem. Blackouts devastate individuals and their families, and the price tag is enormous. In the book, Dr. Sweeney maintains that blackouts are largely preventable and recognizable while they are occurring and offers advice on how to help someone in a blackout from harming himself and others.
Dr. Sweeney can:
§ Provide examples of vivid, real life tragedies that have involved blackouts
§ Discuss how a simple word test of short-term memory will enable family, friends, bartenders, law enforcement, school nurses, social workers and medical personnel to recognize a person in a blackout
§ Discuss the causes and effects of alcohol blackouts and how they block a person’s ability to form memory
§ Illustrate how blackouts have fallen through the cracks of medicine and law.
