Has anyone ever done this? Reports around the internet and youtube seem to say that it works but I’m curious to hear a story. I am asking a factual question (does smoking alcohol actually work), but I’m also asking people to share opinions and stories so I understand if this gets moved to a different forum
There are at least 3 different ways to do it that I have seen:
1) Use a cork with a bicycle pump and a plastic bottle to pressurize the container with a small amount of alcohol, release the cork and a bunch of it appears to be vaporized, which is then inhaled.
2) Use dry ice… supposedly this causes the alcohol to vaporize rapidly and continuosly. I have my doubts about this… why would something very cold cause alcohol to vaporize?
3) Professionally produced device called a vaportini, which evidently has parents really worried?
So tell me about your experience with “smoking” alcohol! What was the buzz like, if you got one at all?
IDK but I inhaled ether once which is chemically similar but IIRC, either stronger or more rapidly acting. If that’s any indication, should be lots of fun, if ‘fun’ consists of waking up face down on the floor w/o being completely sure how you got there. Hunter Thompson is more indirect but also more colorful.
The woman who came up with this idea and is producing these happens to be a very close friend of mine. She got the idea when she was visiting friends in Finland. They were in the sauna when one of her friends poured a bottle of vodka on the hot stones. The vodka vaporized and gave them a buzz. She developed the idea from there.
I have tried the device a couple of times and would say the following:
[ul]
[li]To say you are “smoking” alcohol is completely inaccurate. All you are doing is inhaling vapor that is a mix of alcohol and water.[/li][li]I found the buzz to be weird. A definite buzz but very short-lived.[/li][li]The flavors come through to some degree but I didn’t find the experience anywhere near as satisfying as just having a damn cocktail.[/li][/ul]
I found this article from NPR to be a good summary of what this is and what the experience is like.
As is always the case when it comes to consuming alcohol, over doing it is a bad idea.
Anyone who sees this as “dangerous” should relax. The thing retails for $35 and IMHO is a very inefficient way to get plastered. I doubt if that will appeal to underage or college aged drinkers. They already have plenty of much more reliable ways to get drunk until they lose consciousness or worse.
Before I retired from full time law enforcement in 2007 (full pension but then took a patrol gig part time with another agency) I was an alcohol compliance investigator. Checking licenses, underage sales stings, and what have you. I had heard of this but never actually seen it anywhere.
The bit of it I had learned about revealed it was far less effective (and far more expensive) than an alcohol enema (yes, friends: kids are shooting booze up their ass. It’s not an UL. They’re really doing it!!!).
This may or may be not related, but one of my sons was, at one time, an assistant manager of a pizza place that made it’s own dough/crust. He told me way back in 2001 about how they would stick a large “super pixie stick style” straw into the dough vat and inhale the air inside. According to him the air was fermented and they’d get a short lived king sized buzz off it. I was a teen in the mid-seventies and thought I’d known every way there was to get high!:smack:
My point is, a certain amount of alcohol introduced into the human body, regardless of how, will result in a form of intoxication. The OP’s way just isn’t very cost effective. But it will work.
We drink Witch’s Brew (spiced wine) every Halloween, heated in a microwave. When you inhale the alcohol vapors from the glass, you can tell it’s alcohol. It’s not something I’d want to do as an end in itself, but the wine is warm, so the alcohol is there already.