Russia bath lotion kills 49 drinkers in Irkutsk

Water Cooler
#1

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38363441

Up to 20% of alcohol consumed in Russia is from medicines and perfumes. What the fuck?

#2

In Soviet Russia… actually… this is pretty depressing.

#3

Who drinks bath lotion?

#4

Kitty Dukakis? She drank rubbing alcohol, so why not bath lotion?

#5

First bath salts and now bath lotions? Time to ban all baths.

#6

Clean Lives Matter!

#7

Please take this to the feedback forum

#8

The difference being that people abusing bath lotion can only really kill themselves rather than posing a threat to people around them

#9

i thought vodka was basically free in russia? also, why don’t they make moonshine? why make lotion and sell it to people for drinking purposes?

#10

it’s all about getting top shelf product mate - only be sippin on gucci or laurent, none of this cheap boss cologne you are wearing

#11

Making moonshine isn’t really that easy. There’s a good chance of blowing yourself up or going blind. Plus, laziness. If you can buy cheap booze from lotions, cold medicine, or mouthwash…why not?

#12

I find old spice goes down a charm

#13

They make samogon which is their moonshine, and it has a naturally occurring methanol in the distillation process. Only marginally safer

#14

I have a coworker that moved to the US from Eastern Europe that did this. He was telling a story from his teenage years that started with “we got sauced up on cologne and water and went to the disco” like it was totally normal.

#15

^You know what also qualifies as normal these days? Use either Everclear (grain alcohol) or vodka and choose one of the following:

  • Use an eye dropper and drip alcohol into your eyes (sounds totally safe)
  • Use an eye dropper (hopefully a different one) or a turkey baster (depending on your…tolerance) and shove it into your anus and inject
  • (For ladies only) - Soak a tampon in alcohol and stick it up your who-ha

Any of these methods will get you FUBAR. Highly recommend before awkward holiday dinners. Let me know how your Xmas goes.

Happy Holidays!

#16

“I thought vodka was free”…

One thing that’s hard to understand for a North American raised in western culture, is the abundance of illegitimate products and overall black market activity in eastern euro. Best way to imagine it is, think farmer’s markets we have here, but there you can find a “market” for anything. Combine it with average salary being way below real-life poverty line and alcoholism being an actual problem imagine a common scenario:

You need your daily buzz, have the equivalent of $10 left (forget the basic necessities), and debating between spending $8 on a basic bottle of vodka at a “normal” store, or and going to the market and spending 10 on 3 bottles of the above mentioned "samogon". Vast majority of the times, the latter option will just result in a worse than usual hangover, but an occasional bad batch results in death. Oh and yea, serious shortages of and supplies did result in people consuming pretty much anything that had alcohol in it (most commonly cheap cologne), but you mainly saw that in post-war, pre-90’s era.

#17

this is not news

#18

a lot of folks in the country make moonshine, city folks for obvious reasons dont make it