The Blackout Paradox

Have you ever blacked out from drinking too much? If not, I must say it can be quite an experience. It's like oversleeping, in a way. You expect to have been somewhere doing something, but you weren't. The major difference, of course, being that you actually ARE there after you black out, you just don't know it until you wake up strangely in your bed the next day and have to ask your friends.

But where does that time really go? I equate it most to that time before you are born, and that time after you die. This time is a black void. There is nothing there until you hit this world, and there is nothing once you're gone again. A blackout is just like that. It is a very peaceful place, and it passes instantaneously, though it may have lasted many hours. The billions of years before you were born passed as the blink of your eye until you got here, and the infinite time after your death will pass just the same. A blackout is, as far as I can tell, the best way to determine what it is like to die.

Now this may sound heady, and depressing or scary. In truth, it shouldn't be. Can you remember a time that you were angry, in pain, sad, or depressed in the middle of a blackout? If I could sum up what religion I most closely ascribe to, it would have to be the Church of the Blackout. The only way to determine what your afterlife will be, and the only way to come to grips with that, is by trying it out a few hours at a time here on Earth. Alcohol is my holy water, my mind is my church, and I have seen the black.