Is pain like sex in that you can't remember it after you've had it?

I think I used to say stuff like that when I drank.

I think you may have misunderstood the meaning of my words.

When I drink, it's half a glass of red with a meal and friends.
It might happen only two or three times a year because most of my friends prefer coffee or herbal teas to alcohol.

I certainly wasn't drinking when I wrote my reply -
I meant exactly what I said.
It's just my reality as I experience it.




This post was edited by inky at November 30, 2018 8:03 PM MST

I think the misunderstanding arose from the way the question was written. 
I should have been more specific in my first answer.

I wrote,
"Not for me.
I remember both clearly.
And by the way my body reacts, I know it remembers acutely at unconscious levels."

"Not for me," in response to that question, meant I never forgot the feelings of either pain or sex.

"I remember both clearly," was a different way of emphasising the same thing.
I can recall the feelings, at will, consciously, at any time it is necessary.
As an example of necessary, if I'm writing a story, I may need to call on my life experience in order to show how a character responds to a particular situation or stimulus.

"And by the way my body reacts, I know it remembers acutely at unconscious levels."
When my body flinches, relaxes, or opens in response to a particular sensation, the autonomic reaction can be either direct or conditioned.
In the case of pain, the slight rub of a sandal on my foot may remind me of a severe blister;
the secondary conditioned reflex is to flinch at the relatively slight discomfort and immediately seek a band-aid to prevent damage.
The flinch in this instance is a reaction from unconscious memory, which happens instantaneously, before the memory comes to the conscious mind.

I don't believe this kind of awareness is possible for people who drink.
Alcohol has a depressing effect on the nervous system, blunting its sensitivity.
Above certain threshholds, it also causes alcoholic amnesia, the memories of what was experienced while drunk are not recorded by the brain, so there is no memory of what happened.
This is one of the reasons why drunks often have no awareness of the harm they cause.
Both my parents were drunks, so I know the syndromes well. This post was edited by inky at November 30, 2018 8:06 PM MST