As a bartender, your qualified instructor (Mr. Edwin Decker) has served up thousands of black outs. He also has over twenty years experience as a full-time rummy; having fallen off countless bar stools, sat in the back of a dozen or so police cruisers, and experienced every color in the black out rainbow inculding: The “Gray Out,” the “White Out,” the “Black and Blue Out” (when you wake to find bruises all over you body and no memory of how they got there), and of course the wretched” Green Out” (when you wake to find that all that remains of your rent money are some crumpled dollar bills, a fiver, and a guacamole-stained Taco Bell receipt).

Decker has written many articles on the subject of Aggravated Alcoholic Amnesia. His most recent, Tips, Hints and Strategies toward a More Manageable Black Out, will be covered in the course, as well as selected chapters from his new suspense novel, Why Am I Naked, and Bleeding, and Duck-Taped to the Dumpster Again?!

“Alcohol wreaks havoc on the part of the brain that converts short term memories into the long term,” explains Decker. “It’s called the hippocampus, and enough booze will render it entirely inoperative, hence the memory loss. This is why, for instance, a drunkard incessantly repeats himself – because he can’t store the memory of having said it in the first place. This is valuable information because it means that you don’t actually lose your consciousness in a black out after all, and can therefore create a strategy to manage it.”

Tips and Hints on Strategies to a More Manageable Black Out

• Learn to recognize your black out: One way to do so is play billiards. Black out victims can never remember what they are shooting. So, if you’re looking at that table, and can’t remember if that ball you just sank was the type of ball with the stripy thing down the middle, or the type of ball without the stripy thing down the middle -- chances are that you are already inside the mouth of the great, black whale of dark blackness.
  
  
• Remain Inconspicuous: Once a black out has been identified, the objective is to not draw attention to yourself. This means . . .

• No Dancing: Your inability to store memory will cause you to repeat the same, awful, dance move over and over – like the proverbial one armed man rowing in circles. It’s best to just avoid dancing altogether.
  
  
• No Insulting Other Customers: Chances are, it’s now the eighth time you called that biker, “a fat, smelly pig fucking baby-raper." I would avoid this language altogether.

• No Leaning Back on Stool: Your memory dysfunction doesn’t allow you to remember that you are already leaning back on your stool and that leaning any further back on your stool will likely lead to an FOS episode (Falling Off Stool).

• When an FOS episode is imminent: Always remember to stand up immediately, brush yourself off, and mutter something about how you are, “... grieving over a tragic loss in the family.”

• No More Mack Daddy Moves: You can not mack out, in the black out.

• Run now, ask questions later: If you hear a great crash, start running immediately. It just might have been you who threw that pool ball through the back bar mirror. Your hippocampus is so boiled, it is entirely reasonable to believe that you are the reason there is an overturned cocktail table at your feet and may explain why the bouncers are storming your way. Run now, ask questions later.

• Check yourself: If and when you are confronted by a bouncer or a cop, and he/she is saying something to you like, “Drop the knife mister,” May I suggest that you please take a moment to check yourself, thus decreasing the chance that you might further wreck yourself. Ask yourself some questions such as: am I brandishing any weapons; do I have any broken bottles, knives, or splintered pool cues in either hand? Have I taken a hostage? I know you don’t remember doing anything out of the ordinary, but just humor me and look. If you find that your fingers are tightly wrapped around the handle of steak knife, I recommend you set it down gently, mutter something about a “... tragic death in your family,” and exit quickly.