http://www.kare11.com/news/2nd-teen-dies-from-drinking-dewshine/23542530
The “racing fuel” in dewshine is apparently methanol. First I’d heard of it. Makes you wonder who flunked 9th grade chemistry and thought this was a good idea.
Another Darwin Award candidate.
Racing fuel could mean gasoline, Nitro-methane, E85 or Methanol these days. Race grade E85 is ethanol and gasoline (and a dandy race-fuel) so you might get drunk before you die or Methanol (wood alcohol) that might make you go blind before you die. Race gas or nitro-methane… I can’t imagine someone trying to drink that. Imagine having a cigarette along with your drink!
Ignorance can be cured but… You can’t fix stupid.
they will die ,Methanol cannot be made non poisonous ,thats why windshield washer fluid will kill you.
I suppose it might be Indycar fuel, which is 98% ethanol and 2% gasoline. Since it is Nashville, I think more like E15 gasoline (NASCAR). It seems like the Indy fuel is probably referred to as ethanol. In any case, I’m sure that if the gasoline wasn’t present another denaturing chemical old be used.
Had a kid bud die probably mid 70’s huffing something or other. There used to be a lot of whipped cream aerosol cans drained of nitrous oxide for a buzz, remembering getting drunk off the fumes looking over a Jack Danials primary fermenting tank, one constant in civilizations is mind altering things, If you do not drive it is our life, if yo do it might be somebody elses life. Now texting is the new danger, but incorporating all this wireless cell bluetooth and internet connections and radio connections, seems over the top. In the new car ads, the car is not being promoted, all the connect to this and that is the major emphasis.
Just an old fart who does not need bluetooth connecting my phone to the radio, pay for satellite radio, siri on demand for surfing the web, all these distractions make driving the car a #2 priority.
Methanol is so poisonous mostly because of the metabolism byproducts. It gets broken down into formaldehyde and formic acid and this is what poisons you.
Methanol poisoning is often treated by keeping the patient drunk on ethanol, which keeps the body busy metabolizing the ethanol instead of the methanol.
Formic acid which is to methanol what vinegar is to ethanol is also the venom of ants, hence its name after the Latin word for ant, formica.
According to another article I found, it’s methanol.
I cannot understand what compels these kids to try this. I guess they figure anything that sounds even remotely like “alcohol” must be a substitute.
I hope an effort is made to saturate the media in areas where this is happening with educational announcements on the dangers of ingesting anything that’s not sold specifically for the purpose of drinking. I’m certainly no genius, but I thank God that I had the good sense to quit drinking after my son was born so my kids would not learn as they grew up that alcohol was a part of being an adult. I pray that they’ll pass this on to my grandchildren.
It can happen anywhere. My mother worked in a hospital. Some of the overnight cleaning crew got their hands on some alcohol and had a Christmas party. It was methanol, and some or all of them died. This happened in the 1950s/1960s.
I was a avid model builder as a kid in the 60s and early 70s, and though I had heard of kids sniffing glue…I never, ever had the urge to try it. It had never even crossed my mind to try it out, to see what the big deal was. I think that it may have been in the mid 70s that they refused to sell glue to kids without a parent present. By then I was too interested in fast cars and even faster girls.
I also vaguely remember my dad explaining about people being poisoned by drinking the wrong alcohol and I must have listened pretty good.
Both my mom and dad could count the number of drinks they had in a year on both hands. Maybe that helped a little…not always with a beer in hand…like a few other parents that I knew.
Dads and I both suffered once when we tried to paint an old Pontiac Wagon in the 2 car garage during the winter with all the doors shut and the pot bellied stove heating the place.
We had inhaled enough fumes from the paint to get a little loopy/silly, and decided to take a break to get some fresh air and a little nap. Wow, did we wake to splitting headaches.
Learned the hard way with that one.
I for one like my Southern Comfort, but it never bothers me to switch to soda or water for the night after I’ve had my two drinks.
I see way too many others that just cant stop drinking until they are under the table…or on top of it dancing.
I never could understand the enjoyment of waking up the next morning, feeling like crap the rest of the day.
Yosemite
People will try anything. The 15 year old younger sister of a guy I knew a long time ago died from the inhalation of aerosol Pam at a party. I never knew cooking spray could kill.
I never could understand the enjoyment of waking up the next morning, feeling like crap the rest of the day.
I have never woken up in the morning wishing to god that I had gotten more drunk last night.
People who drink to get drunk and abuse drugs are morons. Anything they do can be expected. We had a local moron who destroyed the front doors of a Dollar General store last weekend just to get the ingredients to make meth. He told the cops that he axed all the wiring so that that the alarms would not work. Trouble was…the cameras all worked and the cops recognized him immediately and went to his house and found a shopping cart full of evidence. The moron was sound asleep on the couch when his wife opened the door for the cops.
In NJ, back in the '80s, high school and college kids became aware of the effects of Nitrous Oxide and the fact that large cylinders of this stuff were usually just sitting around in the storage yards of the companies that produced the stuff. These companies provided no security for this potentially dangerous stuff, with the result that kids began cutting the chain link fences and stealing the Nitrous Oxide cylinders.
This situation had already been reported in the media, but then it came home to us in a very real sense when two of our students decided that it would be a good idea to inhale quantities of Nitrous Oxide while driving. One of our students died in the aftermath of the resulting one car accident, and the other one wound up with a huge scar across his face, as well as a permanent limp. According to the cops who responded to the scene of the accident, both kids were still convulsed with laughter in their totally-wrecked car when the EMTs arrived.
“I never could understand the enjoyment of waking up the next morning, feeling like crap the rest of the day.”
I agree wholeheartedly… now. However, when I was overseas during Vietnam drinking was the least of the drugs we used to kill the pain and fill the boredom. Understand that I am not in any way endorsing or excusing its use, but it may have kept some of us off harder drugs.
Drugs and alcohol may start out as recreational but can lead to addiction. Just like with tobacco, the users know that what they are doing is dangerous, they just can’t stop themselves. As for teens, they just don’t have the mental capacity to understand what they are doing. No, really, the frontal cortex doesn’t fully develop until the early 20s for women’s and mid to late 20s for men. Add to that the lack of life experience, and just about anything is possible from a young person. About the only thing parents can do is continually warn kids about the perils and hope that they take their word for it.
Golly… if the kids wanted to get drunk so bad, they should’ve just made their own. Alcohol is notoriously esay to make, to the point that, if you have a sugary liquid, you have to take effort to PREVENT fermentation! (If nothing else, it would get them to pay attention in chemistry class.)
Once again, there is no telling what crazy things kids will do. Don’t apply adult logic to them and expect that they should understand things as you would. They just aren’t built like that yet.
That’s true, @jtsanders … Although I don’t remember ever going through a phase in which I would have possibly thought that drinking race car fuel was a good idea. 