I’ve always understood that this was a potential danger with pesticides, or at least certain ones (DDT?) People would be exposed to “acceptably” low levels over long periods of time, and it would accumulate in body fat. If an overweight person went on a diet, enough of the pesticides would be released into the blood in a short time to make one very sick, or possibly even very dead.
A more reasonable explanation is that your step dad had personality traits that he could keep in check if he wasn’t drunk or under stress. No need to associate it with some holdover of his drinking.
No, that’s what it is, exactly. A behavioral pattern that did not depend on alcohol to play out. That was my point.
Even if that is a thing, it wouldn’t be something that would impair your driving. If you are driving irresponsibly because your are “dry drunk”, its just dangerous driving.
I also remember, from the depths of time, something about chronic alcoholics and water intoxication. Possibly a salt-balance reaction?
As in “chronic alcoholic gets drunk on drinking water”
Anybody?
Actually that seems to prove the point for me. I’ve been to Erie and I never would have considered it a major city. But with a population of 95,000 people it’s the fourth biggest city in Pennsylvania (Allentown is in third place).
Albany has a bigger population than Erie and it’s only the sixteenth biggest city in New York. So apparently Pennsylvania is a lot less urban than I had ever realized.
Water intoxication is a thing, and can happen to anyone. Not sure if alcoholics would be more susceptible. I read that it occurs with some regularity at the Grand Canyon, because people are urged to hydrate so much – some people seriously over do it.
But to be clear, it’s not “intoxication” like getting drunk. It’s
Yes – good point. We forget that that is what intoxication means – being affected by a toxin. The water intoxication cases I read about at the Grand Canyon were serious medical emergencies.
And “gets drunk on drinking water” is not what happens.
I’m not sure that there is such a clear distinction. Many mind/brain disorders are indistinguishable on the symptoms, and my dim memory from 40 years ago, from medical journals and people who knew alcoholics, was that alcoholics who got water intoxication appeared drunk.
It wouldn’t be ‘intoxicated’ on a blood alcohol test – but that wasn’t universal 50 years ago, cops were still doing “touch your nose, walk the line”, and it might have come up in court, and might have been something a registered nurse would have come in contact with.
FWIW, people with concussion from traffic accidents are still sometimes thrown into the cooler to ‘sober up’, there are several mind/brain disorders that can appear as ‘intoxicated’.