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You need this like you need a bottle opener
That’s me a couple of years ago near Phoenix. My niece had graduated from med school and, since we were under the care of a freshly minted health care professional, we gathered at this Mexican restaurant to celebrate and drink lots and lots of tequila.
These very friendly members of the greater Phoenix law enforcement community were just outside the front door offering — get this — free blood alcohol tests. Did somebody say “free?” I am so all over that.
Their purpose, of course, was to give people who were about to get in their cars after drinking inside an idea if that was a good idea or not. For me, driving would not have been a good idea because, according to the thing I blew into, I was already clinically dead.
Of course I didn’t drive. (That made walking back to the restaurant the next morning at 4 a.m. in time to catch my flight a lot of fun.) But if you enjoy a pop or two and you drive, you — like me — have almost certainly operated a motorcar after a night of drinking and driven home…very carefully. And if you’re lucky, you’ve never got stopped for drunk driving.
So I was interested to play with the Alcohawk, which you can buy here. The one you can use lots and lots of times is about $45; the one for fewer uses is five bucks, which is a heckuva lot less dough than getting a DWI — not to mention avoiding the potential for killing or hurting yourself or somebody else.
It’s simple. You drink, wait 20 minutes, push the red button, wait for it to count down from 99 and blow. The other day, strictly in the interest of science, I drank four beers in 30 minutes, waited 20 and blew. I felt pleasantly relaxed but probably wouldn’t have hesitated to run back a few blocks to the store to get the three things I’d forgotten an hour before.
The thing said I was at .07, just shy of the legal limit. I was shocked. And it’s possible my BAC might have gone up a few minutes later as I metabolized the alcohol further.
Point is, or points are, these: Don’t drink and drive. If you’re going to even possibly drink too much to drive, get somebody pregnant so you have a designated driver. Barring that, get one of these and save yourself a whole lot of grief.
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