Bath salts, glue, home cleaning products- the list of DIY drug agents goes on and on. A new one has recently hit the block that is not only inventive, but greatly life threatening; Colleges across the country have seen an increase in the use of alcohol enema. The procedure involves placing a small tube into a persons rectum and pouring alcohol into the colon. Because the alcohol is absorbed directly into the bloodstream, the person gets drunk faster. Our stomachs and livers have an enzyme known as alcohol dehydrogenase that breaks down ethanol to make it less toxic for our bodies. The lower gastrointestinal tract doesn’t have that enzyme, so alcohol molecules are absorbed into the bloodstream through the lining of the colon.
Eventually the alcohol would still make its way to the liver, but the high alcohol content would overwhelm the organ. In 2004, a Texas man died after his wife gave him a sherry enema, causing his blood alcohol level to soar to 0.47. *The legal alcohol level in California is 0.08.
Many teens and young adults believe inserting alcohol into another orifice of their body will reduce the chance that they’ll spend the night hung over a toilet vomiting. That makes it all the more dangerous, because your body can’t reject the toxin. When you insert alcohol rectally you may still throw up (as the body’s way to rid the body of alcohol when it is threatened with alcohol poisoning) but in these cases there is nothing to throw up. Which is like a point of no return once you put it in there that way.
