Disco Elysium: Why and how did Harry Du Bois lose his memory?
Hello my good humans and welcome to the new series of articles I very imaginatively have named “The Science in Video Games”. What this means is that every so often (do you like how non-committal that is?) I will choose a video game and break down a specific aspect of it and figure out the science behind the events, effects, or anything else that happens in the game.
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For this first article, we’ll look into Disco Elysium, a role-playing game developed and published by ZA/UM, an independent game studio based in the UK. The game is focused around the character of the 44-year-old detective Harry Du Bois… although you don’t know that until later in the game because when the game starts Harry is on the floor of a hotel room, naked not remembering how he got there, why he is there, he doesn’t even remember his name. In fact, you can’t even see his face in the character window because he doesn’t remember what he looks like. While a lot can be said and analyzed about the gameplay, the story, the politics, and the characters of the game, in this article I will try and figure out… how much abuse did Harry’s body go through in order for him to completely forget everything about his past.
Disclaimer: The calculations and discussion below are purely for academic purposes. By no means don’t use the below as a threshold to test yourself.
In order to get more information about Harry and try to understand his physical condition, we have to go to the source of the most credible information on the internet, a Wiki [source]. The Disco Elysium wiki informs us that Harry used to be a gym teacher, he joined the Revachol Militia 18 years before the events of the game, and that his downward spiral started 6 years before we met him when his fiance abandoned him and he decided to forget his problems through drinking and other forms of substance abuse. While this information is not exactly all we need in order to understand the physical and mental state of “Tequila Sunset” it at least gives us a starting point for our assumptions.
The assumptions are that Harry is:
Around 75 kgs
In a relatively good physical condition up until 6 years ago
A heavy drinker and heavy substance user for the last 6 years
We might not know all the details of his life prior to the events of the game but these assumptions will give us enough to see the effects alcohol and drugs will have on his body. As Revachol (the city in which DE takes place) mirrors many aspects of cities in our world we’re also going to assume that there are similar drugs there as we can find here. And by we I mean the other people who have access to drugs nobody that reads this article for sure…
We can start with alcohol since that is the drug that most of us are familiar with (at least I hope that’s the one and not anything else). First of all, let’s figure out how much alcohol you need to actually black out. For that, we’ll need to calculate the body alcohol content (BAC) of Harry. Let’s say the night before we found Harry on the floor of his hotel room he spent at least 4 hours drinking alcoholic beverages. The BAC is widely calculated using the Widmark method of calculating blood alcohol content. While this method will only give us an approximation of the alcohol content in his blood it will most definitely give us the number of beers that Harry drank that night. The formula to calculate the BAC is [source]:
BAC=100m/rM -βT*100%
with m being the amount of alcohol consumed, Μ is the weight of the person, r is a constant that depends on the sex of the person but also their BMI, in the case of Harry r=0.69, β is the rate of elimination of the alcohol and T is the relevant time we’re trying to calculate the BAC for. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the BAC level that is required to lose consciousness is above 0.31[source] which means our hero needs to have drunk approximately 9 UK pints of beer (that’s more than 5 liters) in 4 hours. Again these all are just calculations and nobody should use this example for a real-life test.
Now on to "the other" drugs. While the illicit nature of these drugs makes long-term research in humans a bit hard there has been some research to suggest that some drugs can cause memory loss. Cannabis for example has been shown to affect the way our brain processes information. Most of the information that we have on the effect of THC on the brain comes from animal research, but we have seen that long-term use of cannabis ages the nerve cells in the brains of rats[Source]. However, the hippocampus is important in forming long-term memories but even with a damaged hippocampus, you would still be able to access old memories and remember who you are, as it was famously shown when a patient Henry Molaison was diagnosed with anterograde amnesia when his hippocampus was damaged[source].
If I had to bet which drug would be the favorite of the “Firewalker” I would put good money on the party drug GHB. GHB is also known as “liquid ecstasy” and produces an initial feeling of euphoria but long-term use and a mix of the drug with other drugs like alcohol has been shown to affect long-term memory especially if unconsciousness is followed after GHB use (remind you of someone?). [source] While the researchers state that their work has shown correlation and that future work needs to study the causation it is enough of an indication for the purposes of this article.
MDMA or ecstasy has also been shown to have some effect on the memory functions of the brain. Specifically, it has been shown to affect the serotonergic functions of the brain[source] which in turn have been associated with memory impairment[source]. Serotonin is a chemical that carries messages between different parts of the brain and throughout your body. It helps you regulate mood, sleep, digestion, and as it turns out memory too. Research published in 2017 suggested that serotonin, or the lack thereof, is the driver for the onset of memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease. [source]
When it comes to other drugs like cocaine or mushrooms things get a bit more blurry. Psychedelics are a hot topic right now and there is much research on their effects on the human brain. A literature review that I found seems to suggest that psychedelics might enhance autobiographical memory[source], so it might have been beneficial to Harry in this case. When it comes to cocaine, there is a high risk of a stroke[source] which in term can cause memory loss [source]but I am not sure that this applies to our protagonist.
So it is safe to assume that a mixture of things is what resulted in us meeting Harry naked on the floor of his trashed hotel room. A lot of alcohol, GHB, and maybe some MDMA might have played an important role in his amnesia. As a “cherry” on top, if we also consider that Harry was suffering from depression then that could have also affected his memory. In 2013 showed that people with depression have a hard time recognizing patterns that might make people confused and misremember things [source] while a study in 2018 found that people with depression have a hard time remembering specific events from their life history. [source]
I hope this article made you at least interested to find out more about the effects different substances have on our bodies, and if you have played the game it might affect the way you see Harry Du Bois. You might better understand his motives, and the reasons he did what he did, and then maybe it will affect the choices you make in the game. It’s definitely worth playing…
Did you enjoy this article? Let me know below and share this around with your gamer friends. Also, did you ever play a game and wondered what would it take to bring the events of the game into real life? Let me know in the comments below!