Cleanliness is next to drunkenness

11 thoughts on “Cleanliness is next to drunkenness”

1. Clean on the outside, clean on the inside??

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2. Clean mind in a clean body? Not quite … 😛

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3. Seriously? That's…just completely ridiculous.

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4. Well, goes right with chugging Listerine, cough syrup, rubbing alcohol, sterno … kids (and some adults) sometimes do completely ridiculous things for a buzz, or a high.

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5. I always thought hand sanitizer was toxic. Not that I'd want to drink it d:

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6. Well, technically, whiskey is toxic, too. I don't know which kind of alcohol is used in hand sanitizer — from what's described, it could well be the kind that is "strike you blind" alcohol. But, then, I can't imagine using drugs from a hypo, either.

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7. @Dave
   It’s ethyl alcohol. If it were whiskey or rum, it would be 120 proof. I know drunks will drink almost anything. A relative had to be kept away from the vanilla. I probably missed it (these days, I miss a lot), but the only people I ever heard about drinking squeeze were those whom we once called “skid row derelicts.” I think it’s probably too expensive for someone in that position now. Hand sanitizer is cheap. News like this always makes me want to go and bang my head on the wall.

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   1. @Ellie – Ah — right, I forgot about vanilla.

      @Avo – Yes, that’s the only place I ever heard that phrase used before, too. (Love that movie.)

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8. “Squeeze”? I know that only from The Andromeda Strain.
   🙂

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9. Re: Squeeze

   Much older than The Andromeda Strain, probably from the late 1920s — Great Depression time. That is a good movie, though.

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   1. @Ellie – Oh, it’s clearly older than TAS.

      Hmmmm … and at Wikipedia’s entry under “Sterno” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterno):

      There are many instances of people drinking Sterno to become intoxicated. The earliest documented case is of notable bluesman Tommy Johnson in his song Canned Heat Blues which was recorded in 1928.[3] “Woked up a-this mo’nin with canned heat on my mind, Woke just this mo’nin’ canned heat was on my mind. Think alcorub is tearing apart my soul because brown-skin woman don’t do the easy roll.”[4]
      The practice is said to have become popularized during the Great Depression in hobo camps, or “jungles”, when the Sterno would be squeezed through cheesecloth or a sock and the resulting liquid mixed with fruit juice to make “Jungle Juice” or “Squeeze”.[5]
      The 1956 American documentary “On the Bowery” includes footage of three homeless men straining Sterno cooking fuel to make “squeeze” and then drinking the alcohol. [6]

      Yuck.

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