“Men We Reaped: A Memoir” by Jesmyn Ward: Are her alcohol-associated blackouts caused by the toxic effect of alcohol on her brain or by multiple personality?

In between her two National Book Award-winning novels, Jesmyn Ward published a poignant memoir about her traumatic childhood. In it, she repeatedly mentions her drinking, and at three points says she had “blacked out” (1, pp. 179, 209) or was “blackout drunk” (1, p. 238).

“I was sixteen when I had my first drink…when the buzz hit me, I was euphoric. All the self-loathing, the weight of who I was and where I was in the world, fell away. I lay with [her best friend from high school] on the sofa, watching television, and said, ‘Mariah, I hope this feeling never ends.’

     “ ‘With as much as you drank, I don’t think it’s going to end anytime soon,’ [Mariah] said.

     “We ran upstairs when her parents returned home. My euphoria turned to nausea…I spent the night with my face on her cool toilet seat, blacked out” (1, p. 209).

That Ward uses the phrase “blacked out” to mean remaining conscious, but later having having amnesia for that period of time (and not just passing out) is indicated by her prior use of the phrase: “I drank more through the night, drank until I would not remember what I did the next day, blacked out, and peed in alleyways like the homeless people I saw in New York” (1, pp. 178-179).

So at sixteen, following her first drink, and drinking to excess, she had an alcohol-associated blackout. I say “alcohol-associated” rather than “alcohol-induced,” because it is controversial as to whether alcohol can induce a blackout in a person’s first episode of drinking.

It used to be thought that alcoholic blackouts occurred only after years of excessive drinking, in chronic alcoholics. But that belief came into question when surveys of college students found that a considerable number had memory gaps after episodes of drinking, raising the possibility that some brains are just more sensitive to the toxic effect of alcohol on the brain’s memory circuits.

However, another possible explanation for memory gaps when young people drink is that they may have multiple personality, and that the reason for having a memory gap with drinking is that the alcohol promotes a switch to a preexisting alternate personality (by sedating the regular personality), so when the person switches back to their regular personality, they don’t remember the period of time that the alternate personality had been in control.

To figure out whether a person’s amnesia during drinking was a toxic effect of the alcohol or a reflection of some psychological process such as multiple personality, it helps to know whether the person has a history of surprising memory lapses even when she was not drinking. Jesmyn Ward had such a history:

“But even as a young teen, I was absentminded, forgetful. In the summer, I often left my key inside and turned the lock on the knob and pulled the door shut behind us, locking us out of the house” (1, p. 147). She had been given the house key by her mother, because she was the eldest child, and was considered to be not only very responsible, but highly intelligent, meaning that her memory was usually excellent. So it is doubtful that her regular personality would repeatedly have such memory lapses. Getting her locked out seems like a prank that an alternate personality might like to play.

As I have discussed in past posts (search “absent-minded”), puzzling lapses of memory in a person who usually has exceptionally good memory is suggestive of the memory problems seen in multiple personality when alternate personalities intervene.

Ward also had migraine headaches “since I was fifteen” (1, p. 119). Of course, headaches are a rather nonspecific symptom and do not prove a person has multiple personality. Nevertheless, it is true that some people with multiple personality do get headaches at times when they switch personalities. Headaches are the most common physical symptom reported by people with multiple personality.

She says, “Even though my girlfriends were dating, I didn’t want to. I was still reading books and playing with dolls in private” (1, pp. 153-154). Younger-aged alternate personalities (the most common type of alternate personality) might play with dolls when the person is too old to be doing that.

Comment

I have read Ward’s memoir as preparation for reading her two National Book Award-winning novels. Her traumatic childhood, blackouts, absentmindedness, headaches, and overage doll-playing certainly do not, in and of themselves, prove multiple personality. But these kinds of things are seen in persons with multiple personality, and it is worth noting when a person has a bunch of them. Whether I will find anything related to multiple personality in her novels, I don’t know.

1. Jesmyn Ward. Men We Reaped: A Memoir. New York, Bloomsbury, 2013.