puritans are like mental cripples

[miriam_e]

Do you know why methylated spirits is called that? It is really ordinary ethyl alcohol (like in booze) with methyl alcohol added.

Do you know why methyl alcohol is added to it? It's because puritans have such a problem with people gaining access to cheap, raw alcohol that they add methyl alcohol to deter people from drinking it. So why add methyl alcohol? Because it makes you go blind. Obviously puritans must think that a person going blind is far preferable to them getting booze.

Previously they used to add ground glass to cheap alcohol, thinking that would prevent people drinking it, but puritans are notoriously stupid. People simply filtered the ground glass out.

Are puritans horrible mental cripples or what?

----
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Comments

[elffin.livejournal.com]

methyl tastes like rotting banana and usually kicks in the gag reflex -- UNLESS the person's a hardened alkie, in which case they just ignore the taste / are accustomed to it.

I know the taste from personal experience, and the phenomenon from one of my uncles, who drank a bottle of methylated rubbing ethyl a week for a decade because he was an alkie, and the court ordered him to not come within 200 feet of any establishment that sold or served.

I know the taste because said uncle served "slushies" to my brother and I, age 8 and 9. He died in a prison hospital a few weeks later from withdrawal, but not before being arrested for child endangerment, released on bail, going on a binge and driving his vehicle into a house.

His situation is not uncommon - the blindness results from formaldehyde and formic acid, which are byproducts of the liver breaking down the methyl. My uncle's liver was so bad that it didn't break down much of anything, his kidneys did it all.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Ouch.
I have had some friends who've been gradually destroyed by alcohol... or rather their inability to stop drinking it, though nothing quite so dramatic as your uncle.

Many people have no difficulty moderating their intake. Personally, I don't use it at all as I dislike the taste and can't stand to lose any control of myself.

I had often wondered how methyl alcohol caused blindness. Thanks for the info.

[belegdel.livejournal.com]

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Priceless quote, that one :)

[annie-lyne.livejournal.com]

I mean, isn't drinking pure ethanol going to kill you/do heaps of damage anyway?

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yep, though I guess most people would likely mix it with something to avoid burning their mouth, throat, and stomach.

The real crime is willfully adding blindness on top of that. It confuses and complicates matters. The puritanical decision to poison people more because they are poisoning themselves is.. insane. Obviously it isn't going to work because these people are already poisoning themselves and it hasn't stopped them yet. Poisoning them even more is committing an evil justified by twisted logic.

As far as I can see, alcohol is the visible part of the problem, and like an iceberg, it is not the main part.

Most of the problem is in social attitudes regarding drinking (and smoking, and gambling, and eating, etc). How many movies and books have you seen where someone is presented with devatating news and their response is that they need a drink? How many tales where drunks are portrayed as funny, cuddly, and harmless?

The other part of the problem is how some of the metabolites of alcohol affect some people's brains. I had a girfriend once who was the sweetest, most wonderful, charismatic person you could ever meet, but whenever she got drunk she changed into a sharp-tongued, horrid person who enjoyed being hurtful. She never saw the change and thought she was just having a good time. (She died some years ago, an alcoholic. A terrible loss to the world.)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

It is a great quote. I can't take credit for it though. I fetched it out of my enormous quotes file.