Is there any statistic for the highest blood alcohol level achieved by a human? The reason I ask is that there was a story here about a kid who drank an entire liter of Jack Daniels and was over .52 bac! He was hospitalized for 2 weeks. The sob actually survived!! What’s the highest anyone ever got and lived?
When I was in college, another student (whom I never met) was admitted to the hospital with alcohol poisoning with a BAC of over 1%. We couldn’t believe he wasn’t dead. 0.7% is usually lethal.
The Guiness Book of Records, 1994 edition has a record, but it doesn’t make much sense to me. It says
As best I can figure, (if pt. means pint) this works out to something like 0.15%, which shouldn’t be anywhere near a record. I can’t imagine why they would measure it in grains per 0.18 pints, of all units. I suspect a typo of some sort.
Got it. They must have meant 1.8 grams (not grains) per 0.18 Imperial (not U.S.) pints. That’s 1.8 grams/dL, more than three times the level mentioned in the OP and almost twice the level I remembered from college.
My friend who worked at a hospital in Reno told of a wino who was brought into the ER with a BAC of 0.58. The doctors suspect that he had built up a huge tolerance to alcohol since 0.40 is where most folks pass out (and stop drinking by default), 0.50 is where some people die. A police officer once told me about walking 0.4’s, i.e. fully conscious persons who blow a 0.4 on a breathalizer. He said these people are lifelong alcoholics who have to drink constantly just to keep from shaking and, unlike most DUI’s, they are just as likely to be driving drunk at 9 AM as when the bars close. Contrary to popular opinion, a high tolerance for alcohol does nothing to improve your driving skills after you’ve downed a fifth of Jack.
This is only a semi-hijack but a friend’s wife told some stories about how they treat serious alkies from her stint in pharamcy school. Some of the hard core types will drink anti-freeze, not because of what it does but because the treatment is to be put on a alcohol I.V. The alcohol keeps the ethylene glycol in suspension so it won’t form clumps in the liver, destryoying it. <shudder> Makes me glad I can just as easly turn down a beer as to drink it.
The record in Colorado is .8. Some guy in Fort Collins who had been a drunk for his whole life. He was walking across the street and got hit by a train.(yes in Fort Collins they train tracks that run right down the middle of the street, I never got over the shock of looking in the rear view mirror and seeing a train comming at you.) He was so drunk that his muscles were limp enough he didn’t really get hurt that bad, but they took him to the hospital anyway, and tested him.
Looking for a cite as you read this.
P.S. .35 is enough to kill about 98 percent of the population by supressing the function of the brain stem, and little things like breathing and heartbeat and stuff. Th
What units is BAC reported in?
A quick web search left me more confused than ever.
Grams of alcohol per decilitre of blood.
Measuring blood alcohol levels is one the the thigs I get paid to do, so ask away.
FWIW, Tolerance levels to alcohol in the blood vary a lot from person to person. This means that rules of thumb like 0.5% BA will kill you are only approximate.
That said 0.3% or 0.3 g/dL is a good general passing out range. And 0.5% or 0.5 g/dL is a good time to die range.
This is in no way campareable to the real hardcore alcoholic. I have personally seen levels as high as 0.9% blod alcohol, and have heard from co-workers that they have seen levels as high as 1.2-1.3%.
Also many people think of serious alcoholics as old winos. I have personally seen 3 people in their late 20s die of liver failure form alcoholism. Admittedly you have to drink 1-2 bottles of whisky a day for about 10-15 years to kill yourself this way, but it is possible.
I bet the highest BACs in history have to go to the Egyptians. I read somewhere about the Eqyptians giving alcohol enemas to those who passed out. Man did they know how to party.
Tonight, Jay Leno, impeccable news source that he is, says a man in Germany was tested to have a BAC of (if I heard right) 2.46. I’ve looked for confirmation online without success.
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- Cool! An event for the rest of us! Does the Olympic comittee know about this? - MC
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[hijack-nitpick]
The ethanol IV is because methanol and ethylene glycol are processed by the same enzyme as ethanol in the liver, alcohol dehydrogenase. The problem is that the metabolite from methanol and ethylene glycol is toxic (I believe both can cause blindness), so you have to competitively inhibit the enzyme from processing methanol/ethylene glycol by giving ethanol in excess.
[/hijack-nitpick]
Nobody knows for sure, and some of the MDs I’ve spoken to deny it, but legend has it that beer used to be on formulary at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital here (3rd largest US government building! Only 25 sq. ft. smaller than the Reagan Library!) for delirium tremens.