It's a somewhat bizarre phenomena, that you can talk and function and interact with people but your memory center has shut down and isn't processing what you're doing.
Generally you assume your memory is hazy or you "just don[t remember." But sometimes it's clear that you actually did stuff when your memory center was offline, and you were in fact blacked out. For me, it was mostly the end of a night (early AM) and driving home. Which is spooky and was certainly dangerous. That you were impaired enough that a significant part of your brain had just shut down. And yet you operated a vehicle around your hometown.
Once I was told I did something a bit embarrassing/uncalled for at a party, and I thought my friend was kidding. I didn't believe him. But a few days later I asked a few other people and they confirmed it. Nothing awful, but it was still weird and somewhat hard to believe you did something you had no knowledge of. So I assume there were other normal things I did in some very drunken conditions which I don't remember -- say just talking to someone or getting another beer or whatever -- which I didn't recall but which were unremarkable and no one would mention or know that my brain had been on the fritz.
One of the things I did, especially first year of college, was to smoke more weed to reduce my drinking. You got the same sort of high with less physical impairment and toll on your body (hangovers and such). By 3rd year of college I had really toned down drinking and engaged with studies and work and chasing after girls.
16-20 I was a heavy drinker. 18-20 I was a heavy smoker.
And then tapered off.
These days I pretty much just drink alcohol, moderately, on vacation. Probably have a drink maybe twice a year otherwise.
More into sports and health and don't really even like getting a tipsy feeling ("catching a buzz" which these days happens after one beer).
I was always respectful of girls. Probably too much so.
My high school/early college approach was if I was out with the guys I would get drunk and/or stoned and run wild. But in that state I wasn't interested or thinking about girls. And if I was out with a girl, even at a raucous party, I would tone things way down and stay relatively sober and be on good behavior. I never understood those guys who would get drunk and horny and start hitting on everything female. First off, it was usually done really poorly, they were very unappealing and it rarely worked. Drunk or stoned, my interest in girls was rather limited. I did know a couple guys whose personality changed when they were drunk.
This seems to have been the case with Kavanaugh, as now a handful of people have attested:
Brett was a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker. I know, because, especially in our first two years of college, I often drank with him. On many occasions I heard Brett slur his words and saw him staggering from alcohol consumption, not all of which was beer. When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive. On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.
If Kav was a sort of mean drunk, often got into stumbling condition, he likely blacked and passed out from drinking, likely took other drugs at times, and if you combine all that with an interest in girls when drunk, you could have a volatile combination.
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