By Samantha Nwaoshai
Students at the University know after a night of overindulging alcohol, they have to pay the price, with bloating, weight gain and of course, the dreaded hangover.
What would you do to avoid all these all too familiar symptoms? There is a company with a new invention that will do just that. The company claims its product contains low carbs, low calories and no hangovers, just a “sense of well being and a mild euphoria.”
Alcohol Without Liquid (AWOL) has set its sights on changing Friday nights and “Happy-Hours” forever. There is a small catch: you do not “drink” the alcohol. Instead of drinking alcohol as a liquid, you inhale it.
According to awolmachine.com, AWOL was created by 30-year-old British businessman Dominic Simler. He worked in selling oxygen to spas and beauty salons for years. One day he decided to make a machine that would vaporise alcohol. The AWOL Vaporiser was born. The user chooses the spirit he wants to consume. The liquid is loaded into a diffuser capsule which is loaded into the vaporiser. With the capsule in the machine, oxygen bubbles are passed through it, absorbing the alcohol thus creating a vapour. The vapour is then inhaled from the tube through the mouth. The user can inhale a half-shot of liquid in 20 minutes, at $10 a shot. Consumers are advised to take only 20 minutes within an hour and no more than two times within a day.
Since the alcohol is inhaled through the lungs and not digested through the stomach, there is nothing for your liver to process out. Since the liver doesn’t have to process it out, there is no residual alcohol in the body or dehydration. Also, the alcohol is infused with extra oxygen which is said to help prevent hangovers. This is the logic that AWOL gives behind its statements. (Whether or not there is any legitimacy behind their claims will be later discussed.)
It has already debuted in London, Asia and recently New York with much success and controversy. Now American distributor Spirit Partners is hoping that AWOL will have similar success in the United States. Spirit Partners is not only selling this to bars and clubs, but also to individuals who can pay around $3,500 dollars to own one in their own home.
Kevin Morse, president of Spirit Partners said, “AWOL is simply a fun, new, exciting way for adults to enjoy alcohol in a responsible manner.”
It debuted in Trust, a Manhattan night-spot, last August. The night club didn’t debut it with real alcohol, but used soft drinks and Gatorade, due to legality issues. Marketed as “the ultimate party-toy,” AWOL hopes to appeal to hangover haters and diet lovers (due to the lack of calories and carbohydrates being consumed).
The marketing gimmicks that are being made to aid sales are just that, gimmicks, with little to no truth behind them. Inhaling alcohol does not prevent the consumption of calories and or carbohydrates. Ethanol, a component of all alcoholic beverages, is the source of most of the calories contained in alcohol. Whether ethanol is ingested or inhaled, the calories are still there.
Amanda Schaffer wrote an article in Slate, an MSN online medical magazine, about AWOL.
Schaffer said, “Ethanol enters the bloodstream following ingestion or inhalation and is broken down by the body, releasing roughly seven calories per gram (compared to nine calories/gram for fats and about four calories/gram for carbohydrates and proteins) in either case.”
Also, the proclamations of AWOL being a low-carb alternative is a half-truth. Hard liquors, like gin or whiskey, don’t have any carbs to begin with. Sorry, no loopholes. You still consume the calories and you can’t reduce carbs that aren’t there. Beer belly is here to stay.
When it comes to the promise of “no side-effects” or hangovers it not quite as simple as it sounds. As far as any liquor bypassing the liver through inhalation, not true. Dr. Peter Daniel, a biology professor at the University, said when you inhale something it will go to your bloodstream, and all blood goes to the liver eventually. The liver is actually helping you, not hurting you. Your liver helps process the blood and get rid of toxins. If the alcohol were to actually bypass the liver, this would mean all the toxins in alcohol would still be in your system, and that means trouble. When it come to extra oxygen preventing hangovers, also a fallacy.
“There is only so much oxygen in the blood,” Daniel said. “Too much oxygen causes you to hyperventilate. I don’t see how it could help.”
Hangovers are caused by several factors including but not limited to dehydration, the effects of ethanol, and poisons in the alcohol. One of these poisons is congeners, a toxic by?product of the distillation and fermentation of alcohol. While it is possible that congeners could be left behind during the vaporisation process and not inhaled, all of the other symptoms of a hangover, like dehydration, are caused by ethanol, which you do inhale.
In an Aug. 11 article in The Vancouver Province, Canadian newspaper, retired Royal Mountain Police Chief Toxicologist Wayne Jeffrey stated “If you get very high that quickly, it will take you much longer to come down.” Looks like hangovers aren’t going anywhere either.
As for side-effects, you are better off ingesting alcohol the old-fashion way. Since the alcohol is inhaled through the lungs, it enters the bloodstream much quicker than it would if it was absorbed in your stomach or small intestine. This means it affects the brain much quicker as well, even more so than drinking it because more alcohol enters your bloodstream. Inhaling alcohol can even cause alcohol toxicity also known as alcohol poisoning more than binge drinking. This is because since it avoids the stomach and digestive process altogether, it also avoids the protective measures (like vomiting) that digestion of alcohol offers to prevent alcohol poisoning. Also, since much more alcohol is going to your brain at a quicker rate, inhaling it is also very addictive.
“It’s a super fast way to get high,” Daniel said.
Schaffer said, “Indeed, as Robert Swift, a professor of psychiatry and human behaviour at Brown Medical School, told me, when researchers want to model alcohol addiction in rats-in order to study withdrawal and other phenomena-they often expose them to air mixed with vaporized alcohol. This method is useful because it’s hard to get rats to drink liquid alcohol and also because the desired dependence is achieved extremely efficiently, sometimes in a matter of days: ‘It’s a good way to addict animals,’ Swift said. And it would probably work for humans, too.”
Prolonged use of machines like AWOL are said to cause brain and nose damage. The full extent of the long-term side-effects of inhaling alcohol is also yet to be fully determined since the technology is relatively new.
Karen Fuhnugen, a member of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) of Saratoga County, said during a phone interview, “MADD does not have any scientific evidence of what this machine does, so we can take a stand on this subject.”
But that does not mean they are approving of the machine.
“There is no control of stopping the amount of alcohol that is being taken in, we do not recommend anybody using this machine,” Fuhnugen said.
AWOL’s stateside presence is not without opposition not only from protest groups, but also legal issues. When AWOL made its New York debut in Trust, they only used non-alcoholic drinks so they would be in accordance with The Alcoholic Beverage Control law. The Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) law, a law that was enacted in 1934, has two obscure provisions. The first of which is that separating the alcohol from the rest of the mixture is prohibited. Secondly, serving alcohol from a container other than the one it came in is also prohibited. AWOL from the looks of things seem to break both provisions, since during the vaporising process the alcohol could be separated from it liquid components, and its not being served directly from the original container.
Government officials are forcing bartenders to stick to pouring drinks. As of current AWOL machines and inhaling alcoholic liquids is legal, but much is being done to change this. As of October, John Murphy, a Legislator of Rockland County, introduced a law prohibiting the sale, purchase, use of AWOL or any other alcohol vaporising machines in Rockland County. Several counties in New York state, including Nassau County, are lining up to ban the device and Suffolk County has banned the device according to a Sept. 28 press release from co.suffolk.ny.us.
Other counties that are lining up to band the AWOL machine include, Westchester, Putnam and Monroe.
Diageo, the world’s leading wine, beer and spirits company also supports the AWOL ban until consumer risks are fully researched.
Outside groups like MADD, are also uneasy about AWOL.
“It’s a terrible idea, dangerous,” said Denna Cohen, MADD Long Island chapter president. “I think it could cause a lot more harm than good.”
Cohen is not alone in that belief. It is not surprising, but its not the drinking that MADD dislikes that is not what MADD is about. MADD has no problem with legal drinking, it is when the drinking gets irresponsible and someone goes behind that wheel or marketing alcohol to underage drinkers. Then you have a bone to pick with them.
“‘The ultimate party-toy’,” Cohen said. “They are not talking to people my age when they say that. It’s you, young people they are trying to entice.”
Cohen even finds it appalling that its being recommended for home use.
“I could see this machine on college campuses being used as a party tool. I don’t see this machine being monitored by technicians or people my age. I see it in frat houses, being monitored by ill-fit people and being abused.”
Cohen, like many other people, including state legislators, think that all the work done to lower underage drinking and drunk driving accidents will be undone. Especially since AWOL can alter breathalizer results, showing then to be lower than they actually are. This would cause law enforcement officials to rethink how they would test alcohol levels. That takes painstaking research that the goverment doesn’t want to fund. The odds are not looking towards AWOL’s favour.
In the end is AWOL worth it? No hangovers, wait that’s a lie. No calories and carbs, wait that’s a lie too. The safe alternative, not if there is higher risk of alcohol poisoning, probable brain damage and no quantity control.
Daniel said, “I can’t believe that it would be any safer.”
If you plan on drinking and don’t want to have a hangover, take a Chaser pill, or better yet, don’t drink at all.
Alcohol Without Liquid is demonstrated at various nightclubs using Gatorade and soda pop to show its users the advantages of using the machine. (Image courtesy awolmachine.com/newguys.jpg)