The irony of blackouts was this: you had to have a spectacular alcohol tolerance to black out. Amateur drinkers passed out long before they put the hippocampus—those folds in the gray matter where memories are made—to sleep. She was a pro. Partial blackouts happened when the blood alcohol hit the magic 0.2; en bloc or total blackouts occurred when you ratcheted up the number to an undeniably impressive 0.3. The bar for drunk driving, by comparison, was a fraction of those numbers: a mere 0.08.
