Vaping Alcohol – The Dangers You Need to Know About
Any way you look at it, vaping has become a very popular pastime. People are quitting cigarettes and choosing e-juice. They are vaping their marijuana flowers and concentrates over smoking them.
Thus, it is no surprise that vaping alcohol would become a thing. However, unlike vaping e-juice or cannabis flowers or concentrates, vaping alcohol might not be better than the other major method of consumption. For many people, alcohol is an acquired taste. Some cannot even stand it blended with mixers – those juices and additions that make those wonderfully fruity cocktails and marvelous margaritas and those bodacious bloody marys. For others, a high alcohol tolerance can mean it takes a lot of drinks to get buzzed or drunk, and alcohol isn’t exactly cheap. n. Read further and see what we mean.
Vaping alcohol could be a solution to both of these problems. Raising the temperature of alcohol to its boiling point and then inhaling the vapors can get you feeling the buzz faster and on far less alcohol. Sometimes just a shot or two.
What Are the Dangers?
And therein lies the dangers. When you drink alcohol, it is absorbed into your intestines and eventually processed by your liver. If you are on a bender and drinking an entire bottle of tequila shot by shot, your body protects itself from alcohol poisoning by making you throw up. But vaping bypasses your digestive system. It circumvents a natural process designed to keep you healthy.
Vaping alcohol can very easily – and very quickly – lead to alcohol poisoning. It may take more than a puff or two, however. With devices like the Vapshot mini, each puff contains about 1/60th of a shot of alcohol. So, you’d have to puff a lot to suffer from alcohol poisoning.
Or would you? Users of alcohol vaporizers report that they feel a buzz very quickly using the devices. The trouble is that the buzz only lasts about 60 seconds or so per puff. It also feels different than the buzz from drinking alcohol. One source claims that it is similar to a mild whippet high.
Why You Should be Careful With your Puffs
You can bet that there are going to people who get an alcohol vaporizer and overdose just because they puff on it so much. Vaporizing alcohol bypasses the bitter taste and there’s no danger of throwing up because the alcohol isn’t going into your digestive system. So even if each hit is tiny, there’s nothing stopping someone from puffing the night away into real danger once the liver is overwhelmed. Furthermore, unlike traditional shots, there isn’t a good way to measure just how much you’ve consumed. It depends on the alcohol, the method of vaporization, and the design of the device.
Yet even if you puff just a little, there are other dangers. There is also your lung health to be concerned about. Ethanol, which is absorbed into the lungs when you vaporize alcohol, can damage the lungs and lead to infections.
And if you think that vaping alcohol helps you to avoid the calories – you might be wrong. Dr. Alfred Aleguas of the Florida Poison Control Center says, “You drink it, you smoke it, you inhale it, you’re still getting alcohol. So, if you’re getting alcohol you’re getting the calories.”
Is there Any Research Done on the Topic?
However, don’t look to find any long-term studies on the dangers of vaping alcohol – it hasn’t become a large enough trend so there is little research. In fact, most experts agree that alcoholics are not going to go through the trouble that vaping alcohol requires compared to just pouring a shot. You need dry ice, which the alcohol is poured over to create vapors, or you need to purchase a device which vaporizes the alcohol. These devices can be found online and range in price from under $100 to several hundred dollars.The Vapshot mentioned above retails for $699 or $899 if you want to spring for a stainless-steel version, so just buying a bottle of whiskey might be cheaper in the long run.
Vaping alcohol might be fun to try on occasion, but caution should be taken when doing it. Being able to get an instant buzz that only lasts about 15 minutes may sound appealing, but consider the harm that it may do to your lungs. And while you might have to buy less alcohol, you still have to buy a vaping device or dry ice. It might be cheaper, in the long run, to stick to a shot glass and just drink your alcohol.
Author
Michael is a marketing and creative content specialist at GotVape.com with a primary focus on customer satisfaction. Technology and fitness combined with healthy lifestyle obsession are his main talking points
