Last updated : December 16, 2024
Your best bud sidles up to you at a party and whispers, “Hey, you wanna try something new? Seriously, man, I heard about this way we can get totally wasted in, like, a snap. You funnel the booze, up your…you know. Major high, no fumes for the breathalyzer. Safe? Hell, yeah, it’s safe! You just get rid of it when nature calls, right?”
You’re a college student. You’re supposed to be smart. Why are you considering giving “butt chugging” a shot? Perhaps you killed too many brain cells the old fashioned way, so you want to try finishing the job as inglorious as possible.
An uncomfortable stupor
Your “best bud” is only half right. Butt chugging can definitely get you wasted quicker, but you’re not tapping a vein to put it directly in your bloodstream, so why are you trying something just as deadly? Why would anyone with a single, working brain cell want to pump liquor into sensitive and completely inappropriate orifices?
It’s not as if enemas have ever been listed among life’s more sublime moments.
Nobody knows for sure what skewed mental processes convince tiny minds the definition of fun would be inserting an enema tube or booze-soaked tampon where the sun don’t shine (called “plugging”), all in search of a faster, higher buzz. Is it boredom? Curiosity? A futile attempt to evade the morning-after hangover? The mistaken idea that wine inserted south of your equator doesn’t linger on your breath, thus hiding the reason you’re so far under the influence you can’t tell the cop which pole is north? Let’s say for a moment you won’t “blow” and get busted. You’re trying to hide driving drunk? Nevermind even that insanely stupid decision—what if you have to pass a different field sobriety test? It’s in your bloodstream, too. You are not smarter than the police. The fact that you think this is a good idea should be proof to you.
Whatever the misguided reason, supposedly smart college students do, indeed, abuse their bodies this way. Take the case at the University of Tennessee, where a fraternity member wound up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning, by way of box-wine enema.
See, that’s the problem with butt chugging. It can come back to bite you in a number of really unpleasant—even deadly—ways.
What are you thinking?
When you imbibe alcohol—hopefully, in a responsible manner, like a normal human being—it passes through the stomach and liver, where a number of very helpful enzymes shield you from up to 30 percent of your intake. You also get the benefit of the gag reflex, a critical warning that you’ve had too much. Granted, upchucking is quite literally distasteful, but it does help prevent alcohol poisoning. Finally, by the time alcohol washes through your colon in the direction nature intended, it’s been further diluted by your body mass.
Anal alcohol enemas circumvent that system, shooting vodka (or whatever) straight up your abaft porthole and into the colon, where some extremely sensitive tissues are hit with up to 40 percent alcohol. This is a good way to kill swaths of intestinal lining, so maybe fecal matter starts to leak into your blood, and you get septic. Fun times? No.
If you’re incredibly lucky, and that doesn’t happen, you’re still liable to rocket your system directly to a blood alcohol content (BAC) four to six times higher than the legal limit. “Hey, that’s awesome!” Right? Everyone is shaking their head from left to right and back right now.
- You’re now impaired and don’t have a clue how much booze you’ve already absorbed.
- You’ve bypassed your only natural defense mechanism for preventing alcohol poisoning, something that isn’t a guaranteed safety measure anyway (Yes, people die from drinking, but guess what? The percentages are higher for butt chugging!)
- The ER doctor may treat you, but there is more serious damage done than just the alcohol, which will be significant and long lasting
Stupid and deadly
Are we having fun yet?
If all of the above doesn’t put you off butt chugging forever, allow us to shatter any remaining illusions you may harbor. You won’t avoid a hangover. Your caboose will be red, raw, and wrecked. Because it measures alcohol in the blood—not in your exhalation—the “breathalyzer” will still rat you out and you shouldn’t be driving drunk anyway. That’s the point, not avoiding getting caught.
Butt chugging is all pain and no gain. Don’t be an idiot.
