Can One Really Get Drunk From a Spray?
A product introduced by designer Philippe Starck and scientist David Edwards, caused quite a stir after it was introduced in Paris this week.
Bloggers promptly passed the news about the product – a mouth spray called “Wahh Quantum Sensations” that has the ability to deliver tiny, 0.075 milliliter doses of aerosolized alcohol – around the blogosphere. Most bloggers’ translations from French described it as “a breakthrough in drunkenness technology,” adding further that it could deliver “full and instantaneous” effects that could disappear quickly, and are not detected “by any alcohol test.”
These descriptions, however, seem to be way beyond what the product actually does. The product announcement only promises “the briefest lightheadedness,” as well as “the possibility of enjoying the pleasure of alcohol without worrying about negative consequences.”
The announcement said further that the amount of flavored alcohol present in the spray is “far too small to stimulate drunkenness, being nearly 1000 times smaller than a shot of alcohol.”
According to scientists, it would take a thousand sprays to get the equivalent amount of alcohol in a typical drink – at about 40 to 60 ml – into one’s system.
Robert Pandina, director of the Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey, commented, though, that the “lightheadedness” promised by the product may be a “flavor-induced placebo effect.”
Pandina was quoted as saying “It is nonsense… It is patently, physiologically impossible to get intoxicated without sufficient alcohol getting to your bloodstream — something that would never happen with a bit a spray. Even if you held a whole shot of 100-proof liquor in your mouth and waited for it to be absorbed, you’d wait for hours.”
Tags: aerosolized alcohol, alcohol by spray, alcohol spray, Wahh Quantum Sensations
