TRANSCRIPT FROM ABC 20/20
MONDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1999

(This is an unedited, uncorrected transcript.)

CONNIE CHUNG Good evening, and welcome to 20/20 Monday. Jack and I are so happy to have you with us. If you drink alcohol or know anyone who does, our first report could change your life. Tonight, a little-known and potentially destructive side effect that may occur when you drink. Of course, everybody knows you can pass out if you drink too much. But under certain circumstances, certain conditions, alcohol can actually cause part of your brain to switch off, causing a kind of amnesia.

JACK FORD The phenomenon is called an alcoholic blackout, and young people who binge drink may be especially susceptible to it. Cynthia McFadden begins our story with what may be a prime example: a young man who drank too much, too fast, costing other people their lives and losing a part of his own.

CYNTHIA McFADDEN (Voiceover) If you caused this accident, do you think you could ever forget it?

(Severe car accident scene)

McFADDEN You don’t remember the accident itself?

KEVIN PRICE No, I don’t. I remember very little of that night.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) Kevin Price admits he was drunk when he caused this catastrophe. And yet he says he has no memory of it — no memory of driving 60 miles, no memory of making a U-turn and driving in the wrong direction, no memory of the explosion and flames that killed five people.

(Car accident scene)

McFADDEN What do you think was in your mind when you took the keys to that car?

PRICE No idea. I wasn’t headed towards my apartment. I wasn’t headed towards any my of friends’ houses. I wasn’t headed toward my parents’ house.

McFADDEN You were going nowhere.

PRICE I don’t know where I was going. I don’t know where I was going.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) It isn’t that he says he has amnesia or that he fell asleep behind the wheel. Price claims that he wasn’t too drunk to function, but that he was too drunk to remember.

(Car on dark road)

BOB PRICE From the earliest days in the hospital, he remembered nothing.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) Bob Price is Kevin’s father.

(Bob Price)

B. PRICE And there were reports of other motorists who were behind him just prior to the accident. They say he was driving reasonably slowly, you know, 50, 60 miles an hour, you know, and staying in his lane and behaving quite normally. Other than at the end he was going the wrong way on the Garden State Parkway.

UNIDENTIFIED NEWSCASTER A car traveling the wrong way on the Garden State Parkway in New jersey slammed head-on into a van.

RON LATHAN You’re saying that he doesn’t remember this happening? I just — I don’t understand that. How he could possibly come up with a story such as that?

McFADDEN (Voiceover) Ron Lathan’s mother, Henrietta, was among the five crash victims, all members of the same church who had been on a church outing. For their families, Kevin Price’s story is difficult to accept, even though he pled guilty to five charges of vehicular homicide and is now in prison.

(Henrietta Lathan; Lathan family; Kevin Price)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1 She was very vibrant, very active.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2 She was my friend, too.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1 He can’t imagine what he’s done. I know he’s in jail and he’s, you know, he’s supposedly in his own private hell, you know, but he really, really did it. He really did a number on us.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) Kevin Price admits he was drunk that night and had no business driving, but he now believes his behavior can be explained, at least in part, by a little-understood phenomenon known as alcoholic blackout.

(Highway on dark night)

McFADDEN Is there any doubt in your mind that alcohol-induced blackouts exist as a phenomenon?

Dr. CEDRIC SMITH Oh, I don’t think there is any question about that.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) Dr. Cedric Smith has studied the phenomenon. He is currently a professor at the University of Buffalo Medical School.

(Dr. Cedric Smith)

Dr. SMITH This is like a switch. It is as if the brain quit recording at a given point in time.

McFADDEN The alcohol almost puts your brain to sleep?

Dr. SMITH Clearly people are able to do things. Probably are able to calculate a bill, recognize faces, do lots and lots of things for which they have no memory whatsoever.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) But the things that people are able to do during a blackout do not always display good judgment. They are not always rational.

(Dark highway)

B. PRICE To me it helps me to understand how my son could have done this, because I think I know him really well, and I don’t think he would ever consciously do something that was dangerous.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) Actually, it is not clear what state of consciousness someone is in when having a blackout. Consider this footage which researchers say provides a rare look at someone actually experiencing one. Ruth Iverson, the bridesmaid on the right, says she has was drinking when this video was taken, and she has no memory of what you are watching.

(Car accident scene; wedding video)

McFADDEN Is this you?

RUTH IVERSON That’s me.

McFADDEN And you have no memory of standing next to your sister?

IVERSON Nothing. There’s nothing there. I can’t remember doing that at all.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) Ruth Iverson is now a recovering alcoholic who believes she has had many such blackouts. At her sister’s wedding, she says she doesn’t even remember her own son being in the wedding party.

(Ruth Iverson and Sylvia Chase looking at wedding video; segment of wedding video)

IVERSON I don’t know. Maybe he was. Was he in the wedding? I didn’t even know he was in the wedding. I’m serious.

McFADDEN Asking your mother who’s sitting over here.

IVERSON Right. My uncle Jimmy’s there. I don’t — wow, but I don’t remember him being there.

McFADDEN Able to walk and talk and meet everyone and act as if you’re OK. It’s sad to you?

IVERSON Sorry. It is sad.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) Sad and confusing. How is it possible that part of your brain can work while another part, the memory function, doesn’t?

(Picture of human brain)

Dr. GEORGE KOOB My favorite analogy that I use when I teach undergraduates is that it is a gap in the tape.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) Dr. George Koob is a neurologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, where he studies the effects of alcohol on the brain.

(Dr. George Koob; Scripps Research Institute; laboratory)

Dr. KOOB There are certain parts of the brain that involve — allow us to do our daily routines and work and even remember old memories, but there are other parts that are laying down the new memories, and it’s that function that seems to be touched by the sedative hypnotics like alcohol.

McFADDEN So, in the simplest possible terms, how does alcohol affect the recording of memories? Well, no one knows for certain, but researchers theorize that memory, recording a memory, is a chemical process that happens deep within the brain in this section called the hippocampus. Alcohol can interfere with that natural chemical process. Too much alcohol over too little period of time can actually stop the reaction altogether, resulting in a blackout.

CHASE (Voiceover) Kevin Price’s account of what happened the night of the accident is consistent with what scientists say may cause a blackout. On the night of the accident, he remembers getting together with a group of friends from college. They played a drinking game called Quarters. Kevin consumed nearly 10 beers in less than two hours.

(Kevin; alcoholic drinks)

Dr. KOOB There’s no time for any neurons to adapt, so the drug is producing its effects very fast and very dramatically. And that would be like a sledgehammer approach to the effects of alcohol.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) Kevin Price admits that, on a weekly basis, he would drink to get drunk. But ironically, as an undergraduate, he also founded a student organization against drunk driving.

(Photo of Kevin)

B. PRICE I don’t think he had a problem with drinking. I mean, I think he drank with friends and drank to get drunk. But he wouldn’t drink in between. It was — he was a binge drinker at a party.

McFADDEN But binge drinking is having a problem with alcohol.

B. PRICE Yes, I — you know, measured by today’s standards, yes, it is, but.

McFADDEN You sound like you don’t quite believe that.

B. PRICE I think he could have stopped if he had known the dangers involved. I think he would have stopped if he had known the dangers of it.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) Neurologists have found that young people, late teens and early 20s, actually are more likely to have a blackout than most adults.

(Bar scene)

Dr. KOOB A lot of young people in the United States have a pattern of alcohol intake that involves more or less the binge pattern, which means they party on the weekends, and they drink a great deal of alcohol.

McFADDEN How many people of college age will experience a blackout?

Dr. SMITH The largest surveys suggest someplace between 10 and 20 percent.

McFADDEN So, as many as two out of 10, one out of five? This is a major phenomenon you’re talking about.

Dr. SMITH Oh, yeah.

McFADDEN And not very well understood.

Dr. SMITH Not very well understood, and there is very little research being done on it.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) The numbers staggered us, but when we asked eight students at the University of California at Berkeley, they thought professor Smith’s numbers were low.

(College students)

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1 Three out of five, four out of five.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2 I think most people have experienced one.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #3 I think if you’ve gone four years in college, you’ve probably experienced one.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) And how many in this group had experienced a blackout themselves? Six out of eight. The frequency of blackouts is less surprising when considering recent surveys that reveal 40 percent of college age students last year were classified as binge drinkers, likely to consume more than five drinks in a brief period of time. Binge drinking, of course, is not new. Kevin Price and others his age may just be doing what their parents did.

(Students; students drinking)

B. PRICE I can think back on my days at college, and it was weekends and one or two nights a week. I suspect his life was pretty much like that as well.

McFADDEN But one or two nights a week and on weekends is, if we’re saying drinking to excess, that’s getting drunk three or four or five times a week.

B. PRICE Well, probably three times a week, but yeah.

McFADDEN Getting drunk three times a week? Does that not seem troubling to you?

B. PRICE It sounds like a college kid to me. Maybe because that’s the way I went through college. But I also graduated at the top of my class at Northwestern. I haven’t had anything significant to drink since. But it was, it was social life at college when I was there, and I think it was, it was and still is social life now.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) Most troubling about Kevin Price’s story is this. He admits that he had experienced several blackouts in college, and yet he continued to drink to get drunk.

(Kevin)

K. PRICE In hindsight, I would say, you know, I think I may have had one or two incidents in college.

McFADDEN Did that worry you?

K. PRICE No, because at the time I didn’t know — I didn’t know what it was, but there were a lot of instances of people who would say, ‘Oh, yeah, I passed out last night,’ or, ‘Yeah I don’t remember this,’ or ‘I don’t remember that.’

McFADDEN You didn’t think it was so unusual?

K. PRICE No, it wasn’t, I don’t think.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) Substance abuse counselors say blackouts should be taken as a warning signs for problem drinking. In Kevin Price’s case, the warning sign was ignored, which only adds to the pain of the victims’ families. (Students walking down sidewalk; Kevin; victim’s family member)

LATHAN With a prior episode such as this, that he should have been aware that things of this nature could have happened.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) The New Jersey Department of Corrections has granted him special permission to leave prison to tell his cautionary story. This afternoon, his audience is a group of high school campers.

(Kevin among crowd; high school students)

K. PRICE I know a lot of you may be sitting out there thinking, ‘Well that can’t happen to me,’ but we’re here to tell you that it can happen to you.

B. PRICE By all rights, Kevin should have been dead as a result of the accident, so I assume there’s a reason he’s still alive, and, you know, he’s — he’s going to live through it.

K. PRICE (Speaking to teen-agers) My dad said I have two choices: I can either sort of curl up into a ball and wither away, or I can accept what I did and deal with the consequences.

McFADDEN (Voiceover) For Kevin Price, the consequences are a prison term of 8 to 21 years. He has served 2 1/2.

(Kevin returning to prison cell)

CHUNG And one additional word of caution, the chance of a blackout and amnesia is even more likely when alcohol is combined with Valium, sleeping pills, or muscle relaxants.