Dwi

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Last evening, I had meant try to stop by jinwicked’s birthday party.

It was at 8:00, and I’d had a 2:00 wine tasting to attend in Kemah. I’m usually reluctant to attend alcohol consuming events that involve driving, and I quite often take cabs if I know I’ll be drinking. I reasoned that wine tastings usually involve smaller than normal wine glasses and I had six hours and it was at friends’ and I could hang out until I felt OK.

Come 7:15, I decide I’d better head on over to Dave and Buster’s (~45-50 miles). Leaving the wine tasting, I felt fine. I had no urge to crank up the radio, I wasn’t giddy, felt no desire to dance or make lascivious comments.

But as soon as I got on the highway, I realized I just could not get my damn eyeballs to do the teamwork thing.

I quickly surmised that 45 or so miles holding one hand over my left eye wasn’t going to be feasible. And the first cop to see that drive by was going to know he had one.

So I pulled into a Pappasitto’s (Tex-Mex chain) and went to the bar to order a cup of coffee. For the next two and a half hours, I drank coffee (I tipped the bartender $1 every time he refilled my cup - I spent $16) and watched hockey (who is Bobby Hull?) on a silent TV, while slowly extending my visual reach.

First, I got the bar to stop moving. That took almost an hour. Then I started working on focussing on the people out in the dining area. Finally, I spent almost another hour convincing myself that I could track cars on the freeway outside.

Damn! I hate that! I actively avoid drinking and driving. I do drink. I do drive. I can usually manage to avoid doing both at similar times. I take a lot of taxicab rides. And I haven’t driven while drunk in many years. But a set of circumstances cropped up.

So, anyway, I did finally remount the steed and drive home in a, by then, fairly eyes bright state.

For the moralists out there, yes, I felt like a pit bull’s chew toy all day today.

And that’s not to mention the wine I bought. Yes, it was that kind of wine tasting. Everybody else was quite relieved when I ponied up. Well, it’s my friend’s sister’s new job, which she needs to make work.

I rarely drink wine. I’ve done my Christmas shopping. For a couple of years.

2

So, coffee makes you sober, huh?

Cool.

I think.

3

No, but time does. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever drank so much that my eyes failed to function in unison. That’s a bit too much wine, IMHO.

4

Actually this makes an excellent sequential thread with the “THe Stupidest Thing I Have Ever Done” thread. Drove home drunk onece, couldn’t rmeember how i got home the next morning, couldn’t beleive I had driven myself and felt like a complete ass the whole day realizing how incredibly stupid I was for having doen that and thanking God I didn’t kill someone. Hell, whenever I still think about it, ten years later, I want to punch myself in the face.

5

Maybe next time you go to a wine tasting, follow the mantra, spit, don’t swallow :smiley:

6

I admitted a new inmate today, did his physical exam. I asked about his alcohol use, he was dodgy. I asked him if he had a problem with alcohol, he denied problem drinking. I asked himif he was in prison because of alcohol, he finally mumbled yes. When asked how many DUI arrests he had, he admitted to “three”.

At that point I told him that normal drinkers rarely got more than one DUI arrest. That a person who wasn’t compelled to drink would change his behavior after such negative consequences, to make sure it never occurred again. That three such arrests was pretty much a slam-dunk for a substance abuse disorder.

He wasn’t real thrilled with my analysis. :smiley:

7

One of my co-workers has six.
I told him to ignore his odometer, and just change his oil every time he gets a DUI. His car would run like a top.
:smiley:

Seriously, DUI’s are really dangerous. I’m glad you stopped driving Ringo. I know you know it, but it bears repeating; don’t drink and drive. Your taxicab idea is probably the best way to go.

8

As you were drunk at the time, I will forgive this.

Feynn and the other Hockey Dopers might not;)

Glad to see (read?) you’re okay, hangover (I think?) notwithstanding.

9

Back in my teenage-early twenties years, there were many times I woke up in bed, not remembering driving myself home. It’s a wonder I survived those years - I only had one accident due to my being drunk, and unfortunately I remembered everything that time.

10

I drank and drove for many years. Never thought anything of it. How I managed to not get arrested or kill someone is a miracle. Looking back on it I can’t believe that I could have been so foolish.

Then one day 10-12 years ago I just quit doing it, deciding it was stupid and criminally irresponsible. I guess it’s better to learn late than never learn at all. If I’m going to be driving, I don’t drink at all.

If you do drink and drive, check out this site and ask yourself if you’d like to be responsible for something like this.

11

Someone very near and dear to me had two DWIs. Did you know that they are now felonies? They weren’t when he got them, 15 years ago. It hampered his getting into Canada one time.

12

An observation made by a friend (the wife in the couple who hosted the wine tasting) has made me wonder. She’s a friend who’s known me for decades, and her observation was that I didn’t appear at all intoxicated when I departed their house. She wondered if it wasn’t my blood sugar thing.

As reported above, I did not feel intoxicated when I took off. It had been almost two hours since we quit drinking the wine. I have a known tendency to go into an “out of service” state when my blood sugar swings up, then down, too rapidly - this state includes having trouble with my eyes crossing, and has caused me to modify my daytime diet along some pretty strict guidelines.

And, I know that the net effect of imbibing alcohol includes the metabolic end result of having dumped a bunch of sugar in your system. Although I remain no stranger to a drink, I am usually home and in bed within 30 minutes of my last drink, so if there is some blood sugar swing, I’m usually snoozing through it.

So maybe I wasn’t actually DWI, but I’d still prefer to D while not dangerous.

13

I’d still say the best chance is it being systemic ethanol concentration rather than blood sugar swings, unless you are actually a diabetic on hypoglycemic agents.

There is an animal model in rats however, that does show that if starving rats are given straight ethanol, their glucose levels tend to plummet.

I’d tend to discount this effect for wine, as wine is loaded with carbs, while straight ethanol is not. But I suppose it’s not impossible that your sugar peaked on the simple sugars in the wine, and then crashed due to further fasting and lack of other fuel. Did you eat after tasting all that wine?

Too many variables to know for sure. Want to drop in to my lab for a week? I’ll strap you down and wire you up, and pump you full of chemicals and run tests on you. There will be a small co-pay involved. That and a waiver to be signed. Oh, and a will. :smiley:

QtM, MD

14

Just how does one “drop in” on you without committing a serious crime, QtM? Or series of them?

:wink:

15

Nothing good comes easy. Then of course, some bad things are quite difficult to obtain too.

16

Yeah, Qad, while I do appreciate the offer ( :slight_smile: ), I don’t think I want to qualify for your patient list right now. Perhaps if you move to minimum security.