alcohol

Why lemon gin won’t quench your thirst (YOUR thirst)

How many of you are furry all over?

If your ass looks like this in a thong, today’s heat probably felt at least 10° higher than actual temperature.

I love summer, but not because it’s hot. I love the summer drinks, and today I’m thinking gin-and-lemonade—Gin-Ade (Gin-Aid, if you ever consider sponsoring a charity show to raise money for the LBHQ gin supply). Surely Gin-Ade will supply all the refreshment and hydration a hairy bear needs.

But apparently doctors say not.

According to Robert H. Shmerling, who has considerably more letters after his name than yours truly, even though a cold alcoholic bevy may sound refreshing, it’s not the wisest choice to quench thirst.

OMG, why??!

When you’re active in on a hot day, you lose water and salt, which has side effects*:

  • Lowered blood pressure
  • Muscle cramps
  • Dizziness
  • Tiredness
  • Lowered muscle function

For bears like me, no problemo. Bring on the gin. But for you guys these things can be bad, especially if you lose more water than salt. This makes blood vessels constrict, increasing cramps and prompting the brain to send a chemical messenger (anti-diuretic hormone, or ADH) instructing the kidneys to conserve water.

In tandem with this, the brain’s thirst center kicks in, so you drink more. If you’re sensible, you reach for some H2O. If you’re a hirsute, thong-wearing bear, you belly up to the bar for another Gin-Ade.

So…good, right? Either way, you’re taking in fluids and therefore rehydrating. Wrong, according to Dr. Shrmerling. Those smart ADH instructions your brain sent to your kidneys to conserve water—well, alcohol inhibits those instructions. Your kidneys release water instead of holding onto it, and next thing you know you’re taking six consecutive trips to the pissoir where you crack comments like, “You can only rent a beer—*hic*.”

So your poor dehydrated body can’t hang on to the water it needs. And get you—you’re so pissed that not only does your ADH turn off; so does your judgment, and you order another round. And when you’re fully pissed, you have no idea how thirsty you are.

Throughout all this, of course, you feel increasingly clever and attractive and generally scintillating to everyone. If no one disabuses you of these notions (and perhaps if they do), you drink more, chasing the dragon that is your own magical charisma. You’ve screwed up, friend, and you won’t realize it till tomorrow, when you wake up dry-mouthed with a thong on your head.

Drinking on a hot day can start a spiral into dangerous dehydration. If you’re lucky and you don’t venture into epic excess, you’ll just end up with a wicked hangover. But keep an eye on those dehydration symptoms, or your Gin-Ade bender could eventuate in much worse.

As for Gin-Aid, let’s make it happen! Watch this space for more info.

* Luckily I don’t have blood, muscles, brains, etc. Not even genitals, I suspect.

 

 

A break from drunkenness

Like any other blogger I’m overjoyed to have followers, and I don’t know how many it will take for me to stop getting excited about each new one. If I’m not semi-comatose, watching a violent TV show with my dad, or modeling earrings and barrettes for the kids, I try to make sure I visit each one. I like to get a sense of the people (animals? koalas? frogs?) checking out the site. And if someone digs the antics chronicled in this space, chances are I’ll get a kick out of their posts too.

But today I’m taking a little departure from the usual paean to drunkenness. I want to address several new followers whose own blogs center around their battles with alcoholism, and often mention spirituality, whether holistic or referencing a personal savior.

Sobriety gets a little downplayed here.

I guess I’m a little perplexed at attracting followers of this nature. It reminds me somewhat of past followers (who’ve joined but not left) whose own blogs are dedicated to right-wing politics, country music, romance novels, creationism, etc., and who might find their interests lampooned at LBHQ with some frequency. And while these aforementioned subjects are all fair game in my liquor-drizzled world, I feel a guilty twinge at the idea that people struggling with alcohol might have, when they hit the Follow button, thought Liquorstore Bear was concerned with addiction and recovery in any responsible or mature sense.

It isn’t.

Regular readers know this, and for all I know, my new readers realize it as well. But I don’t want to be a dick and ignore the elephant in the room—alcoholism. Everybody at LBHQ recognizes alcoholism to be a very real and serious social problem. None of the humans at the house engage in heavy drinking, which is why the booze reviews here are thinly spread between specious astrological advice, apocalyptic predictions, Walmart pictures, and randomness.

The terms “alcoholic” and “alcoholism” are generally used facetiously, following the house philosophy that anything you can think of between A and Z is worth a laugh. A litmus test in our house might be this cartoon:

If you can laugh at it, you’re safe here.

But if a focus on alcohol plus attempted humor minimizing the gravity of alcohol abuse/addiction puts you, as a reader, in a negative headspace, please un-follow.

I won’t be offended.

By the same token you’re very welcome to stay. As mentioned, you may well know exactly what you’re here for, and it’s not my business to say you shouldn’t be here. I like having you here, and it’s up to you. Our world is full of booze—in advertising, movies, restaurants, public places—and I’d be an idiot to think this little site could tip someone over the edge.

Oh wait. I am kind of an idiot.

So I just wanted to make sure you really wanted to be here. Kay?

Wine versus wart remover—a confusing antithesis unless you live at LBHQ

Although I didn’t officially label it, yesterday was Day One of my involuntary dry-out. Today is Day Two of darkness, horror, and hopelessness.

When you’re alcohol-less and forlorn, it’s very hard to look outside yourself and find anything of interest. My on-again-off-again girlfriend Dolly pointed this out.

When my mum read yesterday’s post she agreed. She said it was unimaginably self-centered to make a quiz intended for public health all about oneself without providing any additional value to readers. She said I was bad for blogging and worse for addicts seeking actual information.

If I’d had a buzz this would have killed it. I didn’t have one, so I found some wart remover and started sniffing it.

“Do not recommend that to your followers,” my mum said.

“My followers are intelligent. I don’t have to tell them not to inhale wart remover.”

“So why do I need to tell you?”

“You don’t. It’s obviously only something one does when one doesn’t have a good bottle of wine,” I said. “Here, I’ll look it up. That way you don’t have to feel bad about not teaching me previously of the dangers.”

I like the way, right under the warning about that very wide trajectory from headaches to death, there are friendly wart-remover ads. Nice!

Cha-Cha links to related questions too, mostly for the judgment-challenged.

I like knowing that there are other people out there doing the same stupid shit I do—just usually not on purpose.

Wart removers contain salicylates and other acids that, when inhaled copiously, can:

  • arrest breathing
  • irritate the eyes, ears, and throat
  • cause the kidneys to fail
  • give you a rash
  • make you puke
  • make you dizzy, drowsy, convulsive, hyperactive and feverish; and—for those who succeed in gaining nirvana this way—cause hallucinations.

If you present in ER after huffing your Dr. Scholl’s, expect a battery of detox protocols, including intubation. OMG!

Luckily my mum had already used up most of the (no-name) wart remover on a hideous-looking middle-finger wart that had persisted for three years and is threatening to make a comeback. I didn’t have any sort of party on the fumes. I just felt forlorn afterwards.

And that’s my public service announcement for today: Day Two of the Dry-Out. No huffing wart remover. It won’t solve any problems.