Memory Gaps, Explained

last night was

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The Book 1.69 Billion People Can’t Find

“The book 1.69 billion people have been searching for on Amazon—and can’t find.”

You wake up with a blank space where hours should have been. Your phone is full of messages you don’t remember sending. Friends reference conversations that feel like they happened to someone else. The questions won’t stop: What exactly happened to my brain? Why can’t I remember anything? Will this happen again?

Right now, if you search Amazon for “alcohol blackouts,” you’ll find one 11-year-old academic text, Sarah Hepola’s memoir, a brief mention in Malcolm Gladwell, and even fantasy novels—but no modern, comprehensive, scientific resource that explains blackouts in clear, accessible language.

Our book fills this gap. What Happened Last Night? Forensic Experts Answer Your Questions About Alcohol Blackouts is a 60,000–75,000 word book that reads like a conversation with the experts you wish you’d had in the room the morning after.

The tone is The Body Keeps the Score meets Atomic Habits—scientific authority with compassionate accessibility. We translate complex neuroscience into stories and explanations people can immediately see themselves in.

The Opening That Hooks: “Dr. X performed flawless emergency surgery at 2 AM. He removed the appendix, properly documented everything, saved the patient’s life. There’s just one problem—he has zero memory of doing it. He was in an alcohol-induced blackout.” This isn’t fiction. It’s one of hundreds of cases we’ve seen as forensic experts.

What Makes This Different:

Not another memoir—we complement the existing stories readers already love.
Not an academic text—we translate the science into everyday language.
Not a recovery guide—we explain the mechanism and what it means for your choices.
It is the authoritative answer to questions billions are already asking.

In a market dominated by either deeply personal narratives or dense clinical manuals, What Happened Last Night? stands alone as the essential scientific companion—the missing second book every reader of Blackout has been looking for.

Did you know

The Economic Healthcare Burden

Just one large university campus sees $469,000-$546,000 annually in emergency department costs from blackout-related injuries alone. When scaled globally, the healthcare costs of this hidden epidemic reach astronomical proportions that health systems worldwide are unprepared to handle.

Lightning-Fast Absorption

Alcohol hits your bloodstream in minutes, not hours! On an empty stomach, ethanol streaks through your stomach walls and small intestine so rapidly that it reaches your blood before you can even order your next drink.

Chemical Cousin to Anesthesia

Ethanol is just one hydrogen atom away from being ether, the powerful anesthetic that revolutionized surgery. This explains why alcohol acts as a depressant, sedative, and anesthetic - Civil War soldiers literally used whiskey for amputations!

The Blackout Reconstruction Phenomenon

People who experience alcohol blackouts become memory detectives, desperately trying to piece together their lost hours. They rely on unreliable drunk witnesses, scrutinize photos for clues, and hunt through receipts and text messages like forensic investigators reconstructing a crime scene.

False Memory Factory

When your brain can't remember what actually happened, it becomes incredibly creative at accepting fake information as real. Studies show 11-17% of people who experienced blackouts end up believing completely false events occurred during their memory gaps.

The Clinical Research Blind Spot

For over 60 years, researchers studying hospitalized alcoholics assumed blackouts were rare clinical phenomena, completely missing that they were happening to millions of healthy young people. The problem was always there—scientists just weren't looking in the right places until the 1990s.

The Hidden Global Epidemic

Over 1.28 billion people worldwide have experienced alcohol-induced blackouts—that's nearly one in five adults on Earth. This staggering number exceeds the entire population of China and represents more people than have ever received a university education or flown in an airplane.

About the Authors

Dr. Paul Simpson

Dr. Paul Simpson is a forensic psychologist with nearly thirty years of professional practice and a long record of service in both civilian and military courts. He has testified in hundreds of cases and trained thousands of legal and counseling professionals across all 50 states on topics including alcohol blackouts, eyewitness memory, and psychological evaluations in sex offense cases. Dr. Simpson has also served as an instructor for the State Bar of Arizona, the Arizona Supreme Court, and the U.S. Air Force JAG School, providing specialized training to legal professionals nationwide and overseas.

Author of Second Thoughts, which examined the dangers of “recovered memory therapy,” Dr. Simpson has been a consultant to national media outlets such as Frontline, 60 Minutes, Dateline, NBC News, and Vanity Fair, and has appeared on programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show and Fox News.

Dr. Joseph R. Richards

Dr. Joseph R. Richards is a forensic psychiatrist with over twenty years of experience in civilian and military mental health. Double board-certified in adult and forensic psychiatry, he completed his fellowship at Yale’s Law and Psychiatry Division and has testified or consulted in more than 70 court proceedings. Over the course of his military career, Dr. Richards held multiple leadership positions, including Chief of Medical Staff for the 59th Medical Wing at Wilford Hall Medical Center, and deployed in support of both the Pentagon following the 9/11 attacks and operations in Iraq.

Outside of the courtroom, Dr. Richards shares accessible and medically grounded perspectives on mental health with a wide public audience. Under the name "Joemyheck," he has built a following of more than 5 million across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

Ch 1

Part I: Understanding the Crisis