Why do alcoholics repeat themselves?

There's actually a couple of reasons why alcoholics repeat things over and over again. If it's happening while they're intoxicated, that's because alcohol slows down your thinking to like a crawl. It's basically like the record just gets stuck on repeat. There's just one thought or two thoughts that are going around and around and around, and they basically don't remember that. They just said that if the repeating themselves is happening when they're sober, it means that they don't remember that they already have that conversation with you. I'm not sure which is the one going on in your situation, but it's probably one of those two. Now, there is a much more serious illness that can happen in very late stage alcoholism called Korskoff's disease. And that is a serious memory, basically a brain impacted illness. That's a whole different ball game.