Wednesday, September 26, 2012

They Must Really Want To Get Buzzed

(bumped to the top 10 days after initial posting, and updated)

I'm reading the article Parents Beware: 11 Dangerous Teenage Trends All Parents Should Know About, and ohmigawd, I can't imagine my students' doing this:
Tampon Drunkenness

A tampon is soaked in alcohol and then inserted in a girl’s vagina or a boy’s rectum. The alcohol is soaked up by the vaginal walls, creating the feeling of being intoxicated without sipping alcohol directly. Besides the obvious risks to those private body parts, the tampon can soak up about a shot of alcohol, increasing the risk of alcohol poisoning.
My first thought is that if someone wants to get high that bad, maybe we should just let them.  On the other hand, if someone is going to do something so bizarre, maybe there are some mental health questions that need to be addressed.  Keep in mind, the above is in addition to other nifty ways of chemically altering perception, several of which are dutifully cataloged at the link above.

Comments?

Update, 9/26/12:  Snopes may say the above actions don't really take place, but this CNN story discusses some that are darned similar:
The University of Tennessee says it has suspended a fraternity chapter indefinitely and may refocus its alcohol education programs after police said a student was hospitalized following a weekend incident involving alcohol enemas.

Twelve Tennessee students were cited with underage drinking and one with disorderly conduct following the incident early Saturday at a Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity chapter house, according to a university spokeswoman...

"Upon extensive questioning, it is believed that members of the fraternity were using rubber tubing inserted into their rectums as a conduit for alcohol as the abundance of capillaries and blood vessels present greatly heightens the level and speed of the alcohol entering the bloodstream as it bypasses the filtering by the liver," Knoxville Police spokesman Darrell DeBusk said Monday in a statement.
In my mind this kinda settles the "is it true or is it false" debate.

6 comments:

Jean said...

Owie stingie!! I would like to hear of any real cases of that being done--I've heard about it but it's one of those things that sounds more like a scary rumor than a real thing people do. The logistics seem more difficult than is realistic (ahem, a soggy tampon is a floppy tampon), and it would be very painful too. Why not just drink the shot and be done with it?

Tamara said...

Unfortunately I have had students use this technique. It is quite effective at getting the person drunk. Although I don't know first hand about the stinging, burning, and whatnot, it is very hard to figure out how they are drunk. No alcohol on the breath, harder to detect.

Jean said...

Well, I stand corrected...but zowie, it seems like an unnecessarily painful and complicated way to get drunk.

Anonymous said...

http://www.snopes.com/risque/kinky/vodka.asp

Darren said...

Snopes and Tamara disagree. Who's right?

Ellen K said...

I've always been glad my kids weren't in fraternities/sororities. I'm sorry, I know some do good things, but the majority are simply facades for drunken charades. I've heard too many stories.