Our Lady of Perpetual Inebriation

"I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."

Hm. I'm not really sure how I feel about this one.

Rarely has a happy-hour gimmick generated more legislative angst than Alcohol Without Liquid, or AWOL, a gizmo that looks like a medical device but is used to inhale vaporized liquor.

The contraption - marketed as a way to imbibe without calories, carbs, hangovers or telltale breath - has lawmakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey scrambling to prohibit it from bars and restaurants.

On the one hand, I'm very strongly against any legislation that limits a person's ability to purchase, own, or consume alcohol. Doubly so when those cackling hens at MADD get involved.

On the other hand, when it comes to alcohol, I'm also pretty big on tradition. Getting drunk without, you know, drinking, strikes me as a crime against both humanity and insobriety.

What strikes me most odd, though, is MADD's concern over alcohol taken that way registering on a breathalyzer. Breathalyzers gauge BAC by measuring the alcohol vapors that escape when blood releases carbon dioxide through the lungs during respiration. While the AWOL device also introduces alcohol into the bloodstream through the lungs, from there, it enters the bloodstream. Once it makes its way into the bloodstream, it will still behave the way it does if it was absorbed through the stomach. Alcohol vapor will still escape during respiration, in quantities proportional to the BAC.

Would I like to try it, though? Oh, hell yes.

I'd try it. I wouldn't like the Sour Apple fumes, I don't think that can be any kind of good, but if they just had a straight, hard alcohol vapor... see, I have this fear of a fungal spore finding purchase in the arable tract of my lungs, spreading unchecked in that dark, moist environment. Once in a while I just inhale the fumes off of whatever I'm drinking in an effort to stave off that condition.