I recently attended a music festival during which a lot of people drank a lot of beer. I was able to hold it in for awhile, but after giving in and urinating the first time, thereafter restroom trips became more frequent.
Why?
What’s the reason for the “breaking the seal” phenomenon?
GQGQGQGQGQGQ I’ll second that, with increasing urgency. I note in passing that this the first time I have heard the phenomenon referred to as “BTS” by a non-Australian.
The same thing happens to me when I drink large sodas. It really sucks when you’re skiing and feel the need to urinate while on the chairlift. Of course, that’s not as bad as it can get. I knew a girl who got scared on the chairlift and wet her pants. There was a yellow streak leading up the mountain.
I believe I know the answer to this, though I can’t couch it in obscure medical terms. When you drink the first one, two, three (or however many your initial “capacity” may be), they are at the “beginning of the line”, so to speak. It takes a certain amount of time for that quantity of excessive liquid to make the trip from stomach to outlet, which accounts for the initial period of great endurance. However, assuming that you keep drinking number four, five, and six, they are no longer at the beginning of the line, but just continuing the now-flowing stream of beer being processed (no puns intended). Initially everything is at point A, but 30 minutes later there is stuff at point A and point B, and 45 minutes later stuff at point A, B, and C. Think of it as feeding raw materials into a machinery line at the factory. When the first ingredients go in, they have to go alllllll the way through the empty line before finished product comes out the other end, so you have an initial period in which nothing, seemingly, is being produced. Once the initial finished product comes out, though, it is followed in a steady stream by all the ingredients that continued to come after the first batch (assuming you continued feeding it in without interruption), and since you are not waiting through that initial period of vacancy (empty machine line/empty bladder) anymore, it seems as though the flow is now continuous.
This is further borne out by the fact that if you stop drinking beer (and remain conscious), you continue to have increased output for a while, even though you are no longer adding more at the intake end (what was in the works is still making its way through), but once it’s all completed the circuit, your output returns to normal.
I like to think the body is clever enough to keep urine in until a bathroom is nearby. At that time, it thinks that the bathroom is now nearby & lets pee sooner.
Given the combo of “flood gates” and “breaking the seal”, I was anticipating that the thread was going to be one of those “Secrets You Want to Reveal but you can’t” or “Really unusual things that turn you on” kind of threads…