|
CHAPTER 9
DYING OF ACUTE ALCOHOL POISONING
One minute he was alive, talking about a mountain bike trip and plans for the holidays. Ninety minutes later he was dead. Two fine young men killed themselves with alcohol in our town last year. One lived out by the State Park where we ride our horses and every time we trailer out there, I read a banner stretched on a fence along the road.
WE MISS YOU RUSTY!
And I mourn.
Rusty was a junior in high school. He and his buddy cut school and went to a friend’s house to do some serious drinking. Incredibly, the friend’s parents were home part of the time and knew or should have known what was going on.
They had a half-gallon of whiskey stolen from one of their parents’ liquor cabinet. They began to drink.
The drink of choice for killing oneself with alcohol is hard liquor simply because it has a much higher concentration of alcohol than beer or wine. The alcohol builds up in the blood stream faster causing deadly poisoning before the side effects prevent or reduce the intake. It is possible to kill yourself with beer, but the lower concentration (6% or 12 proof {1%=2 proof}) requires the consumption of much larger quantities. Before a fatal blood alcohol is reached, the beer drinker may mercifully vomit or pass out. The same is true of wine, which, at 10-12% alcohol (20-24 proof), requires the drinker to consume a larger quantity than hard liquor. With 80 proof whiskey, 100 proof vodka or tequila, 151 proof rum, or 198 proof grain alcohol (“white lightning” or “ever clear”), it is a much shorter journey into oblivion.
So when you are matching your friend drink for drink, guzzling several ounces of straight whiskey each time, you need to remember one critical fact. You can drink and absorb alcohol much faster than your liver and other tissues can metabolize and get rid of it, so the level is constantly rising. If it reaches 0.4% before you pass out, vomit, or somebody stops you, you may just die. Rusty did.
Click Here to purchase this book online through Amazon
Click Here to purchase this book online through Barnes & Noble
|
