- Joined
- May 27, 2016
- Messages
- 3,469
Yup - amazing how easily it happened.
I would not have believed how large a swig of surgical spirit can make it past the throat after absent-mindedly reaching for the bottle of orange juice cordial. Pretty much similar top plastic bottle right beside me while measuring a lathe bed. Surgical spirit is a version of de-natured alcohol that has similarities to what is known as "rubbing alcohol" in USA, but it is not just IPA and water.
Sunday 23rd Feb. I spent the late afternoon and several hours of evening in a NHS hospital A&E while they checked out how well I was metabolizing a mix of isopropanol (IPA), ethanol, and maybe up to 4% methanol as 75% to 90% alcohols with the remaining as water. Mine was the 89% variety. So ..
1) It burns - all the way down!
2) Even you open the mouth, and let spill what you can, and try washing out with real orange juice, the throat will remember!
3) To get a breath, the vapors in the mouth go straight into the lungs, and then straight into the blood, and a minute later, are into the brain. At least - it seems that way. Taking it via the lungs seems way faster than via the stomach!
4) A mix of panic, perhaps some psychologically induced symptoms, but you feel real sick, and madly light-headed, and the heat feeling in the stomach comes on, and you get some pangs each side in the tummy. One is still functional, and can have the coherent conversation on 111 (the NHS first call line), despite noticing that the perceptions are maybe like 4 double shots of JB in about 20 seconds. More ickky tummy!
5) The instant you mention the methanol on the phone, the advice gets real urgent. Get to the hospital!
6) Checking on the internet for symptoms is not the way to be feeling better. Only to be better informed. You know you just drank a guessed at number of mL of poison! For methanol according to internet, it seems to be blindness, insanity, and death in roughly that order. You find out on the net that propan-2-ol is absorbed 2 to 3 times faster than ethanol, and you can tell this is true!
7) At the hospital, we discover that the right antidote to trigger the right emzyme to deal with the IPA is unbelievably.. more ethanol, but only in extremes. For me, it was wait it out under observation through a period of crazy intoxication without any good feeling to go with it, and a sort of "hangover" that had characteristics of it's own, and thankfully not like the regular kind.
8) Then after 5 hours, a blood test - to confirm that despite my stupid efforts, I had not succeeded in poisoning myself.
I find it hard to believe anyone would deliberately drink stuff like this, but was told some do. I got it in the neck from my wife also, having blighted the whole day. I think I may still take the mug of hot coffee in there sometimes - but no plastic bottles!
I would not have believed how large a swig of surgical spirit can make it past the throat after absent-mindedly reaching for the bottle of orange juice cordial. Pretty much similar top plastic bottle right beside me while measuring a lathe bed. Surgical spirit is a version of de-natured alcohol that has similarities to what is known as "rubbing alcohol" in USA, but it is not just IPA and water.
Sunday 23rd Feb. I spent the late afternoon and several hours of evening in a NHS hospital A&E while they checked out how well I was metabolizing a mix of isopropanol (IPA), ethanol, and maybe up to 4% methanol as 75% to 90% alcohols with the remaining as water. Mine was the 89% variety. So ..
1) It burns - all the way down!
2) Even you open the mouth, and let spill what you can, and try washing out with real orange juice, the throat will remember!
3) To get a breath, the vapors in the mouth go straight into the lungs, and then straight into the blood, and a minute later, are into the brain. At least - it seems that way. Taking it via the lungs seems way faster than via the stomach!
4) A mix of panic, perhaps some psychologically induced symptoms, but you feel real sick, and madly light-headed, and the heat feeling in the stomach comes on, and you get some pangs each side in the tummy. One is still functional, and can have the coherent conversation on 111 (the NHS first call line), despite noticing that the perceptions are maybe like 4 double shots of JB in about 20 seconds. More ickky tummy!
5) The instant you mention the methanol on the phone, the advice gets real urgent. Get to the hospital!
6) Checking on the internet for symptoms is not the way to be feeling better. Only to be better informed. You know you just drank a guessed at number of mL of poison! For methanol according to internet, it seems to be blindness, insanity, and death in roughly that order. You find out on the net that propan-2-ol is absorbed 2 to 3 times faster than ethanol, and you can tell this is true!
7) At the hospital, we discover that the right antidote to trigger the right emzyme to deal with the IPA is unbelievably.. more ethanol, but only in extremes. For me, it was wait it out under observation through a period of crazy intoxication without any good feeling to go with it, and a sort of "hangover" that had characteristics of it's own, and thankfully not like the regular kind.
8) Then after 5 hours, a blood test - to confirm that despite my stupid efforts, I had not succeeded in poisoning myself.
I find it hard to believe anyone would deliberately drink stuff like this, but was told some do. I got it in the neck from my wife also, having blighted the whole day. I think I may still take the mug of hot coffee in there sometimes - but no plastic bottles!
