An Australian man nearly died last week after chugging sweet, sweet hand sanitizer in the attempt to quell his thirst for booze.
The man was at a Melbourne hospital being treated for, naturally, alcoholism, when he was discovered "nodding off" in his room, surrounded by six empty bottles of hand sanitizer. He blew a .271 during a Breathalyzer, more than five times the legal limit. "It surprised us that he drank this stuff," said a doctor at the hospital. "It's horrendous. You'd think it would taste pretty bad," he said (though a splash of tonic would probably work wonders.) The sanitizer had an ethanol content of 66 percent per 12.7-ounce bottle. Cheers!
It's hardly the first time mankind has desperately sought solace in the form of sanitizer: Wired has a full rundown of previous offenders, which include a prisoner drinking from a gallon bottle of Purell, a suicidal hospital patient who guzzled antiseptic hand rub (twice during a two-month period!), and a different patient who drank antibacterial rub straight out of the dispenser on a bathroom wall. Honestly, it doesn't sound that much worse than the Jolly Rancher-infused "Nutcrackers" the kids are into these days, so we're not going to judge.
