It seems to be a fact of human nature that in our youth, we rarely if ever, give a thought to our mortality or our state of health for the long run of a lifetime. Each generation differs in their priorities and choices of deadly risks, but each generation seeks its thrills and its “good times”. Hollywood and the media memorialized and influenced the youth of each generation, whether it was the game of Chicken made famous by the 1955 James Dean movie, Rebel Without a Cause, the game of Russian roulette make legendary by The Deerhunter, the 1978 film about the Viet Nam war, or today, the online YouTube videos, spreading the highly dangerous “game” of smoking alcohol to this new generation of young people.
The Technique of Smoking Alcohol
How does someone smoke alcohol, you might ask. One video this writer viewed was both an experiment in the efficiency of getting drunk, and how to do it. Featured was a technique of putting some dry ice in an insulated cup, pouring some Vodka over it, and sucking-in the dry ice “smoke” as it rolled up out of the cup. The individual demonstrating the technique was also determining the length of time required to attain a state of drunkenness, and the quality and immediacy of the high. The video instructions included the information that the dry ice caused the water and the alcohol to “vaporize” into an alcoholic fog.
Another foray into the technique of smoking alcohol via a YouTube video demonstration, offered-up a bit of a different way to do it, but with the same result. The catchy term for this technique is “vaporizing alcohol”, just a different term for the essentially the same thing. Three shots of whiskey at 45% alcohol into an empty plastic soda bottle, pump some air into it from a pressurized canister, and voila! Alcohol “fog” which can be sucked-in through the mouth, a hit that gives a bigger and faster buz. “Vaping liquour”, the advocates like to say.
The Consequences of Vapor Alcohol Use
Just like playing chicken, or spinning the chamber of a revolver in a game of Russian roulette and hoping that the one bullet in that chamber isn’t ready to fire when you pull the trigger, smoking or “vaping liquor” is not much different when it comes to taking your chances. Its main danger lies in the fact that the body’s natural mechanism of protecting itself from deadly alcohol poisoning is completely bypassed, and the “hits” of alcohol vapor go instantly to the lungs, then to the brain. The liver, whose function it is to remove the high levels of toxic alcohol when too much is consumed and before the body is poisoned, is completely prevented from protecting the body. Smoking alcohol could be considered very similar, if not the same, as practically instant “binge drinking”.
And in the case of alcohol overdose, the person, if they live, can experience irreversible brain damage. The “instant binge” quality of smoking or “vaporizing” alcohol is particularly dangerous due to the fact that the person can breathe-in a potentially damaging or fatal amount rapidly, and suffer the consequences with little or no warning.
To allow a generation of young people to fall prey to the misguided and false information regarding drugs and alcohol which runs rampant in our society, and travels like wildfire across the hot and fast lines of the internet, is the abandonment of our responsibility for this generation, and the ones yet to come. In the area of drug use and abuse, it is so much more effective, and prevents so much potential suffering and heartache, to factually educate our children and youth as to the true nature of drugs. When an individual learns what drugs really are and what their use and abuse does to the spirit, mind and body, he or she can make a sound decision to either quit, or never to start using at all.
For more information on effective drug education and prevention, and its success and workability, please contact the Narconon Drug Education Department at www.narconon.com or call 1-800-468-6933.