Alcohol, the thing of all good parties obviously has a dangerous side. Everyone knows about alcohol poisoning, liver failure and withdrawl seizures. But what about story telling?
As we drink more and more, the body starts getting deficient in vital nutrients because well - alcohol has none of them. Sodium and potassium are easy to become deficient in because alcohol causes you to sweat and pee causing loss of those electrolytes respectively.
But, one that is super easy to eat and thus hard to be deficient in is thiamine. It's mostly present in grains so bread, cereal etc have it. Once deficiency does set in though, people confabulate i.e. make up stories to try to fill in the black out periods.
I have had people tell me they are doctors, FBI agents, strippers, bouncers and make up wild tales about how they ended up in the hospital, along with a whole host of other things. But once we replace the thiamine and they are back to normal, they remember none of it! The scary part is that thiamine is involved in glucose metabolism so if you start eating sugar while having the deficiency - your confusion becomes permanent!
So, the alcoholics need to have a few sport drinks to replace the lost electrolytes and take a multivitamin to replace the missing nutrients! Yea try to think about that each time you are out getting drunk!