Puke Pot
To start, I am not anti alcohol. I’m over 21, I, as an adult, choose to drink. Even though my loss of sight was due to a drunk driver, it wasn’t alcohol that left me blind. It was an individual’s choice to overindulge and THEN get behind the wheel and speed down a busy street at midnight. In short, it was this individual’s lack of respect for the power of alcohol that left me blind. It wasn’t the alcohol itself. And again, I’m not anti alcohol. In fact, if you’re over 21 and a guest in my home, there’s every chance you’ll be offered a libation of your choice.
One of my buds in St. Louis just Tweeted an Instagram pic he took in the liquor section of a major grocery retailer. A puke pot. Seriously, a puke pot in the liquor section.
Anyone else find this a little disturbing?
As long as there’s been alcohol, there’s been novelty promoting alcohol consumption. It’s doubtful that, during Biblical times, there were alcohol enemas being given like those idiot students at University of Tennessee, but I’m sure the buzz alcohol caused was somehow responsible for some creative means of consumption, even in the days of Noah.
We humans have a long and colorful history with alcohol. Again, the sensations caused by drinking alcohol are pleasureable or else we wouldn’t do it, right? But, what I find disconcerting is how we, as a society, glamorize overconsumption. I’m not talking about using beautiful people in alcohol ads or poking fun at Otis the Drunk like on the Andy Griffith show. I’m talking about stuff like puke pots.
Drinking so much alcohol one vomits is, at best, unhealthy. At worst, life threatening. For the amount of Americans that consume alcohol, roughly 80%, it’s really shocking that there aren’t more cases of alcohol poisoning and death from alcohol poisoning. To me, just the presence of a commercially available puke pot glamorizes alcohol consumption to overindulge to the point of vomiting. And let’s not kid ourselves…when one gets drunk and pukes, it’s the body’s natural healing mechanism to rid the body the foreign (and harmful) substance that’s been ingested. At the very, very least, this is unhealthy.
Go back to the earliest days of movies and you’ll likely see loads of funny examples of intoxicated folks. Being an old fraternity guy, one of my favs is “Animal House” where the brothers are drinking and doing all sorts of ridiculous stuff. Does this glamorize overconsumption and intoxication? Maybe, but it’s still showing something enjoyable. Is puking enjoyable? I’ve put on my game face and set out for many a night on the town, but the idea of specifically drinking so much to induce vomiting is just a foreign concept. I think I’m probably in the majority of people…have a drink or two, get loose, have fun. Where then is the line we’ve crossed to where we think puke pots are funny? I mean, what’s next? Stocking the liquor store with ground charcoal and plastic tubes to stick down one’s throat when they’ve overdosed? Many a cop buddy has talked about having a drunk in the back of the cop car when the drunk can’t control his bowels or bladder. I mean, are we going to start selling adult diapers and framing it as fun when someone shits their pants?
Whether we like to admit it or not, the presence of puke pots desensitizes us to the potential harm of alcohol overconsumption. I hope that as a society, we’ll take a long, hard look at how we view intoxication. Is it something we want to encourage? Apparently, the producers and retailers of puke pots thinks so.
