Vaportinis and Oxy Shots risky ways of boosting the alcohol buzz

Move over alcohol enemas for the extreme crowd, the new rage is freebasing the booze (see article online). And doctors are not amused by the health dangers and potential increase in alcohol abuse and the disease of alcoholism.

The attraction: Inhaling alcohol cuts the potential weight gain out of getting intoxicated by bypassing the stomach and small intestine. And according to YouTubers, it produces a pretty intense high in addition to avoiding the extra calories. Claims that the practice is diet-friendly are unsubstantiated, as are suggestions that inhaling doesn't affect the liver. In both claims, the alcohol is still entering the bloodstream, where it is metabolized by the liver, and there are calories regardless of how alcohol enters blood, typically about 90-120 per 1.5 oz. depending upon the proof. (See "Alcohol plugs 100 calories into the average daily diet.")

They're called “Vaportinis” – an elegant (and trademark-pending) way of describing freebasing liquor by super-heating it over a candle or torch and sucking the escaping alcohol vapor, which is highly concentrated, through a tube. By skipping the glass and the mixer, the alcohol goes from 80 proof straight to nearly 200 proof and enters the blood and directly to the brain immediately via the lungs rather than 20 minutes later through the intestine, where 85 percent of alcohol is absorbed.

The concept brings a potentially more dangerous meaning to the phrase, “Inhaling your drinks.” But the concept is not new, it's only recently become more affordable. In 2004 a North Carolina company offered a bulky, $3,000, UK-patented machine to vaporize liquor for inhaling. Now a more simple device developed by a Chicago bar owner uses a $35 tea-light-fueled mechanism to bring inhalable alcohol downmarket. It's also accomplished by pouring 80-proof over dry ice and huffing the resulting gas.

Medical professionals warn that alcohol is a drying agent and can dehydrate mucous membranes in the nose and lungs when using it as an inhalant. The super-concentrated booze can also cause alcohol poisoning more readily than drinking would. However, research hasn't caught up – yet – with the specific medical impact of alcohol inhalation. “To my knowledge there have been no human studies on the effects inhaling alcohol,” said Dr. Thomas Greenfield, director of the National Alcohol Research Center. He notes, however, that in research laboratory rats have been known to be more perceptible to alcohol addiction through inhalation, which is how alcohol tests are conducted on the rodents since they will not drink alcohol. “Certainly the animals experimented upon have high levels of intoxication and addiction.”

The contrivance will not fool alcohol test devices, especially portable breath testers (PBTs) used by law enforcement in drinking and driving stops. For minors it's still illegal, even though there is no drinking, because the alcohol is “possessed and consumed.”

In Spain, similar alcohol misters or foggers (known as “oxy shots”) were banned in parts of the country after health authorities cited severe health risks associated with inhaling alcohol.
-- from my examiner 5/31 post
www.alcohologist.com

New .05 BAC proposal for drinking and driving: Too restrictive vs. not tough enough vs. not doable

Drinking and driving arrests could spike, temporarily, while drivers get used to new regulations if alcohol limit is lowered, according to one view of the NTSB's recommended lowering of the intoxicated driving threshold.  Some restaurant owners want what is safest for their customers (so they return), while some are looking at reduced margins if fewer diners imbibe with their meals.  Here's a synopsis of developments in the two weeks since the board suggested the change from .08 to .05, from today's article.
 
 
A May hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) produced ideas for reducing drinking and driving deaths, among the ideas, lowering the alcohol limit legal for driving from .08 to .05 blood alcohol concentration (BAC). One hundred other countries have lower BAC limits for driving than the U.S. The idea is being debated around the country because the board has no authority to make the recommendation a law.
 
The last time the NTSB recommended a BAC change (from .10 to .08) it took two decades and the threat of Congress withholding highway funds for the idea to become law in all 50 states. An Indiana state legislator, Senator Michael Crider, R-Greenfield, predicts that is what it will take again. "If you look at the percentile drops, it's a pretty significant drop in the legal driving limit for drunk driving. It's going to be something not necessarily real popular, based on what I saw last time."
 
Georgia lawmakers are perusing data from an Atlanta Journal Constitution series that showed in 2001, when the state was at a .10 limit, there were 406 alcohol-related road deaths and in 2008, at .08, there were 416. There were fewer motorists in 2001 however.
 
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), an expected ally of the proposed lower limit, is not behind it, instead focusing on its own three-pronged agenda for reducing impaired driving. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also opposes the change to .05. Republican leaders on Capitol Hill say, "Leave it to the states to decide."
 
The states so far have voiced resistance. The Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway safety offices, says expect push back because, “It was very difficult to get .08 in most states so lowering it again won’t be popular,” according to Jonathan Adkins, an official with the states' group. “The focus in the states is on high content offenders as well as repeat offenders. We expect industry will also be very vocal about keeping the limit at .08.”
 
The industry, via the American Beverage Institute, expectedly called the proposal "ludicrous."
 
Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead told the Associated Press he would prefer to increase penalties for drunken drivers, but he is willing to study the recommendation. However, Mike Moser, of the State Liquor Association, said the change could criminalize social drinking. Moser said it makes more sense to crack down on heavy drinkers who are more dangerous behind the wheel, an idea that does not register with a Chicago trauma surgeon who notes impairment begins far earlier than severe intoxication. Dr. Thomas Esposito, chief of the Division of Trauma, Surgical Critical Care and Burns in the Department of Surgery at Loyola University Medical Center, says, "The rationalization by critics that it penalizes the person who only occasionally has 'one too many' or who only drinks 'socially' makes no sense. One too many is just that; it's about impairment, not the number of drinks."
 
Lab research indicates at 0.02 to 0.05 BAC, the ability to see or locate moving lights correctly is reduced as is reaction time and the ability to judge distance. Even if not obviously impaired, at 0.05 BAC drivers are twice as likely to have a crash as before they started drinking...At 0.08 BAC drivers are five times more likely to have a crash than before they started drinking. Over .08, the crash likelihood jumps to 10 times that of a sober driver. (See the article “What 53 feet means” for more on driver impairment.)
 
Highway alcohol-related deaths are 100 percent preventable. Passive alcohol detectors can measure a driver's BAC before starting the vehicle and render it unable to start. If the driver is intoxicated, he isn't driving. Critics claim the technology has not been perfected. However, the technology already exists for the non-invasive technique (See "Fingerprint scanner lets employers check workers for alcohol"), although the public appetite for the device does not.
 
Mandating these in-car alcohol detectors – the way seatbelts and airbags are required in U.S. cars – was among the 20 ideas the NTSB proposed at the same time as lowering the BAC threshold for drinking and driving. Detroit automakers have been testing in-dash systems since June 2012. The idea was suggested three years ago in the book What the Early Worm Gets as the way to conclusively eliminate all drinking and driving accidents.
 
“Our goal is to get to zero deaths because each alcohol-impaired death is preventable,” NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said. “They can and should be prevented. The tools exist. What is needed is the will.”
 
In 2011, 9,858 people were killed, 350,000 injured and $132 billion spent as a result of "alcohol-related" crashes. To Esposito's point, such classification does not mean the driver was over the .08 BAC limit, although usually that is the case, only that alcohol was present at the scene or detected on the breath or blood. No determination has to be made regarding level of intoxication, alcohol abuse or the disease of alcoholism but 4 million motorists admit to driving while impaired, according to NTSB estimates.
-- from examiner.com
www.alcohologist.com

SUNDAY SNIPPET, May 26

One of my favorite sections of Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud is the chapter on a major stressor for Alcoholics: Forgiveness. Not one of us expects a shrine built on our behalf just because we quit drinking. Some people, however, are hell-bent on never letting us move on.

 

 

A healthy recovery is going to rely upon you forgiving other people, too. We Alcoholics really suck at this. We grip resentments like a chubby trick-or-treater grips a bag full of Snickers. We have to—have to—knock that off and forgive, even the people who are downright hostile toward us.

 

You will be able to initiate the process with someone by whom you feel hurt in about two-thirds of the situations. Most of your injurers are not going to come knocking on your door seeking a clean slate for judging you, and the other third are likely to have slammed the door on you and moved on from your drama. Remember the “full” line you passed.

 

Forgiveness isn’t a pardon, releasing a person from accountability for the injury they caused. Pardon, a la President Ford pardoning Nixon, assumes one person has authority over another. Forgiveness isn’t forgetting either. Author Beverly Flannigan (Forgiving the Unforgiveable, Macmillan Publishing, New York 1992) says you have to remember to forgive someone. “To forgive, one must remember the past, put it into perspective and move beyond it. Without remembrance, no wound can be transcended.”

 

To transcend or close wounds with the two thirds who haven’t slammed the door to you, forgiveness is a transaction. The Transactional Model follows a sequence described in 1953 by J.A. Martin (“A Realistic Theory of Forgiveness,” in The Return to Reason, Henry Regnery Press, Chicago).

A) Injured accused injurer

B) Injurer admits it

C) Injured gives reasons he feels violated

D) Injurer admits he was wrong

E) Injured punishes

F) Injurer takes it

G) Injured seeks assurance it won’t happen again

H) Injurer promises

I) Injured accepts the promise and requires nothing further

J) Injurer trusts forgiveness is permanent

 

That’s pretty civilized, optimistic and tidy. And it works. You’ve probably practiced the model without the extensive analysis since you played in a sandbox. But the model is hardly realistic when you encounter the kind of bitterness and stigma Alcoholics face. The emotional sensitivity Alcoholics have in common doesn’t help, and creates an imbalance in the model because the belief systems of injurer and injured are out of whack. Steps C and D can become a snarl when one side doesn’t accept the difference between drinking problems and problem drinkers. If the bitterness persists, you may have to walk away with the satisfaction that you tried: You attempted the transaction.

 

There’s hope still, even when the Transactional Model fails or is inappropriate because someone slammed the door on you and is long gone, unable to participate in the transaction. They’re gone believing they have been injured. Without the opportunity to confront the injurer, you’re pretty much left to repair the damage and wipe the slate clean by yourself.

-- from Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud: Relapse and the Symptoms of Sobriety, pg. 68-69

www.alcohologist.com

 

SATURDAY REWIND: Many who fought wars, today fight alcohol

When battles end for men and women who serve in the armed forces, another battle – a battle with the bottle – begins for half of the troops. I retrieved this article about active duty and retired soldiers, the brave we honor this Memorial Day weekend, to demonstrate how their service on our behalf renders wounds unseen to many.


While most of America’s warriors return home without traumatic brain injuries or damaged arms or legs, beer and liquor are the crutches for an alarming and growing number of those who serve our country. Servicemen and servicewomen who fought abroad – from Korea to Vietnam to Bosnia to Afghanistan – return home to fight alcohol use disorders at a rate nearly two times higher than the general public.

Many of those who have seen active duty turn to alcohol to try to deaden the images of what they’ve endured. The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc. (NCADD) reports that of nearly 30 million veterans in the United States, 56 percent of male veterans and 41 percent of females have problems with alcohol and 23 percent of males and 14 percent of females binge drink.

Additionally, according to the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, one in eight troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan from 2006 to 2008 were referred for counseling for alcohol problems after their post-deployment health assessments. The number of soldiers enrolled in treatment after being diagnosed with alcohol use disorders has increased 56 percent since 2003.

Alcohol use disorders are divided between alcohol abuse and the disease of alcoholism. (See the related article, Know the difference between alcoholism and alcohol abuse, for the distinction.)

 

To gain a fuller understanding of alcohol use disorders among younger veterans and active-duty personnel, the Millennium Cohort Study is following a representative sample of U.S. military from 2001 to 2022. It is the largest prospective study in military history. Findings from this study suggest that Reserve and National Guard personnel and younger service members who deploy with reported combat exposures are at an increased risk for the onset of heavy weekly drinking, binge drinking and other alcohol-related problems.

 

All service branches, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are trying to address the alcohol crisis. In one project, researchers are using smart phones and wearable wireless sensors to record real-time responses to stress among veterans suffering from addictions and trauma. The VA offers a brief, anonymous and confidential tool on their website to help veterans who may have concerns about their drinking. The Drinker’s Check-Up is another easy-to-use website developed for veterans under a grant from the NIH.

 

The referral process and accessibility of treatment options for veterans with alcohol use disorders are only slightly better than the resources available to the general public today, however, the military was playing catch-up with their budgeting for such resources for the past decade. They are taking education, treatment and prevention seriously, today, as we welcome home more of our nation’s warriors from the Afghanistan war, but the resources are available to all veterans.

-- from examiner.com

 

Whether one agrees or disagrees with reasons for entering a conflict on foreign soil, those who serve and their families deserve our support and salute.  They are owed our help and attention, not the stigma Americans attach to alcohol use disorders. 

www.alcohologist.com

 

SUNDAY SNIPPET, May 19

Denial is a word tossed around liberally when it comes to the disease of Alcoholism. It's most often a reference to the very early phases of the drinking when the drinker denies (to himself) he has a problem when it is obvious to those around him he does have a problem. To get to any level of sobriety, an Alcoholic has already tackled that form of denial. What this excerpt from Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud addresses is a different form of denial that rears its head during recovery: The denial that life has, or has to, change because we lost something. It is a stage of the grief process.

 

 

“Alcoholics have a tendency to cling to their denial of their losses, not of their problem. By lingering in the stage, it only makes the cortisol worse. Even though the reason we linger in denial is simply that we don’t want to feel worse, we’re actually feeling worse because of the cortisol. To move away from more of continued Symptoms, the denial evolves into anger. Ashley Davis Prend identifies it as going from “Not me” to “Why me?” and it takes a long time.

 

“On average it takes one to three years to work through the disorganization and anger stage. That’s because you need to process the grief repeatedly so it can sink in, settling on deeper levels of consciousness over time.”

 

Simply put, you’re not going to be pissed off one time for one day, but you’re entitled to it and it is a healthy part of what comes naturally during mourning and recovery. Different anniversaries rekindle the anger. Social losses and financial ones have long tails and breed anger over and over. Impatience sparks the anger, too, because all of us Alcoholics have a little control freak in us.

 

Unfortunately, some of us never get past the anger because that’s where we lapse. We drink at the anger. Or if we don’t drink, we become what’s known as a dry drunk, a bitter and angry person who doesn’t and won’t drink. The dry drunk won’t find recovery, but will maintain sobriety because they cling to the anger. They become dry drunks because of a false sense of power anger provides. It does beat being sad. Sad feels so broken, anger feels powerful, but sadness is the next stage. Rather than moving forward, the dry drunk chooses the power of anger rather than feeling like the ornament at the bottom of the Christmas storage box. They’re usually more of a pain in the ass than they were when they were drinking.”

– from Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud: Relapse and the Symptoms of Sobriety, pg. 79

www.alcohologist.com

SATURDAY REWIND: Liquid divorce, or three of alcohol's impacts on sex and relationships

June is traditionally the big month for weddings. I pulled three articles from my news archive that demonstrate how alcohol use disorders can doom the "I do's" years later.


Divorce is predictable (article)

Couples who drink together may not stay together according to a study posted in the May 2013 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. The study concludes that divorce is more likely, though not by as much, if the couples drink about the same amount of alcohol, compared to couples who don't drink, study lead author Fartein Torvik of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said.

The massive study included nearly 20,000 couples in one county who were surveyed over a 15-year period. The researchers found that heavy drinking by the men or women increased the risk of divorce, even after adjusting to remove "light drinkers." No determination was made about alcohol abuse or the disease of alcoholism. The institute found that even when they filtered out demographic factors and mental distress, heavy alcohol use by one or both spouses was a predictor for dissolution of marriage.

The likelihood of divorce was especially high when only the woman drank. A different study presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Society in January concluded that men drink less after saying “I do” and women drink more. That study noted that being married to a man who is more likely to drink creates a new social environment that may promote drinking among women.

Torvik noted in a statement about the Norwegian study, "The risk of divorce is estimated to be tripled when the husband's level of drinking is low and the wife's drinking is heavy, compared with couples where both drink lightly."

The research found that couples where neither spouse drank had lower probability of divorce. "This study demonstrated that both the level of alcohol use and compatibility in alcohol use are important predictors of marital dissolution," the journal wrote as a conclusion.

Women drink more after marriage (article)
Men – or marriage – can drive women to drink. Women consume more alcohol after they say “I do” while men actually cut down after marriage, a January 22 study found.

Men are more likely than women to hit the bottle after a divorce, according to the survey into marriage and alcohol conducted by sociologists at four universities. The study was based on surveys of 5,000 men and women conducted over 47 years.

Lead researcher Corinne Reczek, professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati, said, “Stable marriage curbs men’s drinking, yet is associated with a slightly higher level of alcohol use among women. Our findings suggest that being married to a man who is more likely to drink creates a new social environment that may promote drinking among women.”

Reczek added, “Some research suggests that men are more likely to cope with stressors in “externalizing” ways such as drinking more alcohol, possibly contributing to alcohol abuse or the disease of alcoholism. Women are more likely to cope in “internalizing” ways such as depression rather than alcohol abuse.

The study found that while husbands drank less alcohol than single men and widowers, their consumption increased sharply if the marriage ended. Reczek insisted that men who fail to converge with their wives’ drinking habits in marriage may set a trajectory towards divorce and continued heavy drinking.

Men who cut back on drinking are more likely to have a happier marriage.

The study findings were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.



SEX (article)

Men who want to avoid taking erectile dysfunction drugs such as Cialis might want to back off the booze. Drinking alcohol can cause lasting damage to men's sexual performance even after abstaining from the drinking, a newly published study suggests.

Researchers said men can suffer "brewer's droop" for more than a year after giving up heavy drinking. Spanish physicians asked personal questions of 109 men from nine different treatment facilities over two years. The men were questioned while they were heavy drinkers and when they had scaled back their intake. The research found alcohol had a residual effect that lasted many months.

Academics from Santo Tomas University in Colombia and the University of Granada in Spain said their results “partially contradict those of other authors who argued that alcohol causes transient erectile dysfunction.” Results show that, overall, all dimensions (pleasure, desire, arousal and orgasm) were moderately impaired. Pleasure and orgasm were the two areas most significantly impaired. After even two weeks of abstinence, no relationship was found between drug abstinence and improvement in sexual functioning.

Writing in the January online “early view” of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, they noted: “It does not seem to be just a temporary problem, because erectile ability was still affected after a year and, according to the results, did not seem likely to improve just with [alcohol] abstinence.”

The researchers also found that heavy drinkers tended to enjoy sex less than those who only drank moderately, and were less likely to want sex.

They wrote: “Alcohol users were found to have lower pleasure scores. To the best of our knowledge, no previous studies have related alcohol consumption with impaired sexual pleasure.” The research backs up years of speculation about alcohol use disorders and how they affect male performance and overall reproductive health.


Alcohol acts a fairly efficient chemical solvent to dissolve adhesives, oil residue and paint.  It's also fairly effective at dissolving jobs, respect, self-esteem and bank accounts.  These three unrelated studies demonstrate how alcohol dissolves relationships as well.  The last of the three articles is purely a physiological side-effect from alcohol consumption, the first two articles show how the physical/psychological/sociological/legal/professional/financial consequences of alcohol misuse will dissolve a relationship.  Sometimes, it's easy to blame the other spouse for "driving us to drink."  In fact, that drink might be driving him or her out.
www.alcohologist.com

 

Are U.S. drivers – and lawmakers – ready for a .05 blood alcohol limit or even more severe mandates?

The NTSB adopted 20 recommendations May 14 aimed at getting intoxicated drivers off the road and reducing the number of alcohol-related highway fatalities.  Among the recommendations is a lower threshold for the definition of intoxication.  The NTSB's recommendations carry a lot of weight, especially when Congress gets behind them by linking highway funding with the proposals as they did when the legal limit dropped from .10 to .08 in 2004 and in the 1980s when the drinking age was increased to 21.

Here's the report from examiner.com, followed by a surprising response from Mothers Against Drunk Driving as well as some other observations on driving under the influence.


A hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) May 14 produced ideas for reducing drinking and driving deaths, among the ideas, lowering the alcohol limit legal for driving. “Our goal is to get to zero deaths because each alcohol-impaired death is preventable,” NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said. “They can and should be prevented. The tools exist. What is needed is the will.”

Forty percent of U.S. highway deaths – or just under 9,900 lost lives – were attributable to driving while intoxicated in 2011, the most current year for which results are available.

The NTSB recommendation is based on results in other countries, 100 of which have limits below the .08 BAC limit in the U.S. In Germany, .05 is the limit, and 17 percent of traffic fatalities are alcohol related. In Australia, also at a .05 limit, 28 percent of motorists killed had a BAC over the limit. Fatal crashes decreased 18 percent in Australian states which lowered BAC limits from 0.08 to 0.05, despite having lower drinking ages and higher incidence of alcohol use disorders, such as the disease of alcoholism, than the U.S. Throughout much of Europe, the BAC limit also is .05 and alcohol-related traffic deaths were halved within 10 years of instituting the lower limit.

The Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway safety offices, says expect push back from states on lower legal limits to curb drunk driving. “It was very difficult to get .08 in most states so lowering it again won’t be popular,” Jonathan Adkins, an official with the states' group, says. “The focus in the states is on high content offenders as well as repeat offenders. We expect industry will also be very vocal about keeping the limit at .08.”

Drinking may seem to affect individual drivers in different ways, however, lab research indicates at 0.02 to 0.05 BAC, the ability to see or locate moving lights correctly is reduced as is reaction time and the ability to judge distance. Even if not obviously impaired, at 0.05 BAC drivers are twice as likely to have a crash as before they started drinking...At 0.08 BAC drivers are five times more likely to have a crash than before they started drinking. Over .08, the crash likelihood jumps to 10 times that of a sober driver. (See the article “What 53 feet means” for more on driver impairment.)

The lower BAC limit is among 20 recommendations in the "Reaching Zero: Actions to Eliminate Alcohol-Impaired Driving" report adopted by the NTSB. Also on the table is a system of passive alcohol detectors in all motor vehicles proposed December 19, 2012. (See related examiner.com article). The passive technology could be similar to fingerprint scanning presently used by some U.S. And U.K. companies to monitor employees in high-risk or high-profile positions.

The NTSB is an independent agency which studies traffic safety issues and makes recommendations for law changes or safety improvements, but has no-law making authority of its own.

-- from examiner.com


Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), an expected ally of the proposed lower limit, is not behind it, instead focusing on its own three-pronged agenda for reducing impaired driving.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also opposes the change to .05.  Republican leaders on Capitol Hill say, "Leave it to the states to decide." The beverage industry, naturally, called the proposal "ludicrous."

Where the rubber meets the road here is the question:  How far are we willing to go to save 10,000 lives?  If drinking and driving is the burning safety issue, there would be no push-back given other countries' experience with lower limits as well as ample research that proves "impairment" begins at .02.  That level is where Swedes set their legal limit for driving... and they rarely have an alcohol-related traffic fatality.

Rarely.  But they still have them.

Passive alcohol devices, as proposed in the 20-item NTSB platform, are something I mentioned three years ago in What the Early Worm Gets IF America really is serious about drinking and driving.  That's because...
... intoxicated driving deaths are 100 percent preventable with such a mandate.
NHTSA is behind it.  The Automotive Coalition for Transportation Safety is on board.  The U.S. mandated airbags in the name of saving lives.  The states mandated seatbelt use in the name of saving lives.  If we're interested in eliminating 10,000 entirely preventable deaths in the U.S., a passive detector mandate saves lives.  Lowering the limit still lets an impaired driver turn the key. 
www.alcohologist.com