Found this article from mens health. I think some people gotta be bonkers.
The latest trend in drinking is not drinking.
No, we don’t mean abstaining from alcohol—we’re talking about vaporizing it.
A new device called Vapshot turns spirits into fumes you can inhale, which routes the alcohol directly from your lungs to your brain.
Why would you ever use something like this? Because breathing booze makes for a more efficient buzz: You get tipsy off a tiny bit of liquor and feel the effects almost immediately.
But it’s also risky, says Samir Zakhari, Ph.D., a former director of the Division of Metabolism and Health Effects at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and an advisor to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.
When you drink normally, your stomach and intestines absorb some of the alcohol, and then your liver tries to break down the rest, Zakhari says. The excess that your liver can’t deal with goes into your bloodstream and eventually to your brain—that’s when you get drunk.
When you inhale booze, however, it’s a much more direct line—and therefore a more powerful hit. The alcohol goes through blood vessels in your lungs and into your blood, which carries it straight up to your brain, says Zakhari.
The result? Your brain absorbs the alcohol like a sponge, Zakhari says, and it becomes concentrated there. “It will definitely give you a buzz, but it will have damaging effects,” he says.
If you breathe in too much too quickly, it would have the same potential consequences as getting tanked the traditional way—including possible death, Zakhari says.
On Vapshot’s website, the company claims that alcohol leaves the body faster when you vape it, making it harder to accumulate enough in your system to become dangerously drunk. But that may not be true, according to Zakhari and Vijay A. Ramchandani, Ph.D., Chief of the Section on Human Psychopharmacology at the NIAAA.
Sure, the liquor may leave your blood faster—but that could be because it’s being absorbed by your brain, says Zakhari. So while your blood alcohol concentration (BAC) may be low, your cranium might in fact be full of booze, he says.
And then there’s this kicker: Vaping could also harm your lungs, Ramchandani says. For one thing, you’re not supposed to introduce fluid into your lungs, because it can disrupt your ability to absorb oxygen, he says. Plus, you could end up harming cells in your lungs responsible for expelling dust particles, says Zakhari.
To Vapshot’s credit, the device does make it harder to inhale a harmful quantity by only vaporizing 1/60th of a shot at a time. The thing that worries us, though, is that lots of people are willing to try pretty hard to get sloshed.
The verdict: It’s probably not worth the risk.
“It always amazes me how people try to find different ways to destroy their bodies,” Zakhari says. “Why subject yourself to inhaling it? It’s using alcohol for the buzz, not for the taste and conversation. I don’t see any reason for it to be done.”
