Minggu, 21 September 2025

METHANOL ETANOL

⚠️ Stay Safe: Alcohol Safety Checklist Abroad

✨ One careless sip can cost your vision… or your life. Stay wise, stay safe.

❌ What to Avoid

🚫 Too-cheap booze — if it’s cheaper than water, it’s not worth your eyes.
🚫 Free hostel shots — sometimes “fun” can be a deadly trick.
🚫 Homemade/local spirits unless you truly trust the maker.
🚫 Unsealed bottles — counterfeits hide behind famous labels.

✅ What to Choose

✅ Sealed beer, wine, or bottled drinks from reliable shops.
✅ Well-known bars, hotels, or restaurants — not street corners.
✅ Trusted brands in sealed packaging — always check the cap.

⚠️ Warning Signs

😵 Dizziness, nausea, confusion within hours.
👁️ Blurred or tunnel vision (like shadows over your eyes).
💔 Severe headache that feels “different.”
If you feel this after drinking → it’s not a hangover, it’s danger.

🚨 If Suspected

🏥 Go to hospital immediately.
🗣️ Say the words: “Possible methanol poisoning.”
⏱️ Every hour counts — delay can mean blindness or death.

🌍 Your trip is about memories, not risks.
🍷 Better to skip a drink than to never see the sunrise again.

Why people put methanol on drink?

That’s the key question — and sadly, it usually comes down to cost, availability, and negligence. Here are the main reasons people end up with methanol in drinks:

1. It’s cheaper than ethanol

Ethanol (the safe, drinkable alcohol) is often heavily taxed or restricted in many Southeast Asian countries.
Methanol is much cheaper because it’s used industrially (as fuel, solvent, or for cleaning).
Some producers illegally substitute methanol for ethanol, or mix a little methanol into drinks to cut costs and stretch supply.

2. Poorly distilled alcohol

In traditional or homemade distillation, methanol can form naturally in small amounts (especially from fruit).
Proper distilling should remove methanol (“discard the foreshots”), but if people don’t know or cut corners, dangerous amounts remain in the final spirit.

3. Counterfeit / fake liquor

Bootleggers may refill branded bottles with cheap spirits made from industrial alcohol.
Tourists see a familiar label (vodka, whisky, gin) but inside it may contain adulterated alcohol with methanol.

4. Mistakes in mixing or production

Some people mistakenly use medical alcohol (which may contain methanol) or industrial-grade ethanol (often denatured with methanol to make it undrinkable and avoid tax).
In cases like the Hoi An limoncello incident in Vietnam (2025), the bartender admitted to making liqueur with 70% medical alcohol — not realizing or not caring that it contained methanol.

5. No regulation or enforcement

In some areas, informal bars, street vendors, or small producers operate with little to no oversight.
Methanol-contaminated drinks can circulate until a mass poisoning event draws attention.

In short

People put methanol in drinks either on purpose (to save money, cheat taxes) or by accident (poor distilling, wrong alcohol source). The common thread is: it’s cheaper and easier to get than safe ethanol — but it’s deadly.

👉

Is it true drinking alcohol can be antidote? ( Methanol poisoning)

Yes — that’s true, but with important context.

Why alcohol can be an antidote

Methanol itself isn’t the most dangerous part. The real damage happens when the liver enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) breaks methanol down into formaldehyde and formic acid, which are toxic to the optic nerve (causing blindness) and other organs.
If someone drinks ethanol (regular drinking alcohol), the enzyme ADH will “prefer” ethanol over methanol. That means ethanol blocks methanol from being metabolized into poisonous compounds.
This “competitive inhibition” buys time until methanol can be removed from the body (by natural processes or with hemodialysis in a hospital).

How it’s actually used in treatment

In hospitals, doctors may use fomepizole (a specific antidote drug) if available. If not, ethanol (IV infusion or sometimes oral) is used as a substitute.
It must be given in controlled doses. Too little ethanol won’t block the enzyme effectively; too much causes alcohol poisoning on top of the methanol poisoning.
Even if ethanol is given, patients usually still need hospital care: monitoring, correction of acidosis, and often dialysis to clean methanol and its byproducts from the blood.

Why “just drinking liquor” is not a safe solution

It’s not precise: you don’t know the right dose, and you could make things worse.
The alcohol you drink could itself be contaminated (if methanol poisoning is from adulterated liquor, drinking more from the same bottle makes the poisoning worse).
Ethanol is only a temporary protective measure, not a cure.

✅ So yes — ethanol can work as an antidote in methanol poisoning, but only in medical treatment settings where dosage and monitoring are controlled.

❌ Not safe to self-treat by drinking more alcohol.

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