Journalism: you're doing it wrong.

[mrissa]

I have a different question than timprov does about this Star-Tribune article in which teenagers are claimed to be inserting vodka-soaked tampons rectally in order to get drunk. The key line for me is, "Although no students have been caught in Minnesota as yet, no one doubts that kids are soaking Gummi bears with booze or finding other creative ways to get drunk."

We have no actual examples. But no one doubts that it's happening anyway.

Why not?

No one doubted that "teenagers these days" were having "rainbow parties" a few years back, either, and yet no one could find anyone who was doing it or even could make it work logistically.

We do not live in the Dubious Hills, people. Doubt is not a cuss word. Doubt is healthy. Doubt is, in fact, A JOURNALIST'S JOB AUUUUUUGH.

Okay. Okay, I'm okay. Really. Vodka-soaked gummi bears, whatever, this is not that different from Jell-o shots. So y'know. I hope the kids don't damage themselves too much with them. But seriously, gummi bears--how many of those would you have to eat to get drunk? Even if they're soaked in Everclear? That's kind of looking like a lot of gummi bears to me, and I have a really low tolerance for alcohol. But that seems reasonable as a thing people who are much more committed to alcohol than I am would do. So maybe the rest of the article is fine also!

Okay, maybe not. So here is their source for the vodka-soaked tampon thing: an emergency-room doctor in Phoenix has a nurse who has a daughter who has a friend who totally did that once and totally like passed out.

AUUUUUUUUGH.

This is journalism? Seriously? They describe this ER doc as familiar with this behavior. But he doesn't claim to have seen even one case. Ever. He worries about vaginal walls (so apparently it's only boys who are inserting them anally), and about if the people doing this do pass out. But he cannot point to a single one. And honestly? I know teenage boys are more comfortable with tampons than they once were. They already were when I was a teenager more than my parents' generation had been at that age. But seriously, unless you can point at even one actual teenage boy who is willing to shove a tampon up his ass under any circumstances, I think that this is what we in realityland call not a big problem.

Also also also--and this is probably too graphic for some of you--but I am willing to admit it: I have in my life used a tampon. And I have flung it in the toilet after. And what happens to tampons when they get thoroughly, thoroughly soaked, such as being immersed in a fairly thin liquid rather than doused with a more viscous one? They expand. They do not magically stay the same pre-insertion shape when they are sopping wet. This is physics, people! This is, in fact, how tampons work at all! It's like people are faced with an object for dealing with menstrual blood, and they lose all sense of practicality relating to the thing.

It frustrates me because it's emblematic of journalism not doing its job. (I would love to say "any more," but we can all point at examples of various scares perpetrated by the press over the last hundred years.) But it also frustrates me because the attitude is that teens are dangerous and horrible in completely foreign and unfamiliar ways.

I'm having my favorite 17-year-old over for dinner tonight. Is she an angel, pure as the driven snow, with never an unkind or unpleasant thought in her head, much less deed in her life? Of course not. (Seriously, I already said I liked her.) But what she is? Is a good kid. And her friends--some of them are really together, and some of them have no idea where they're going and what they're doing, and you know what? That's okay. They're teenagers. They will screw up in utterly predictable ways, and they will come up with new ways to screw up, and both of those are part of life. But what they don't need is to have wacky teenage rumors supported by adults going, "Oh yeah, that's totally true, I absolutely believe what Britney's friend Aidan told her Josh's girlfriend's cousin did. I mean, Josh's girlfriend's cousin! That's reporting gold! Put that in the newspaper!" We need to teach them better standards of skepticism than that. They will have natural doubts. Sometimes it's our job to reinforce them.

Comments

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Total TMI speculation: perhaps one could insert the thing and then use the string as a wick, in order to introduce the alcohol thusly.

I have no idea WHY one would do this, outside the realm of pure scientific inquiry, unless maybe absorbing the alcohol in that manner avoids the telltale alcohol on the breath?

I mean, when I were a lass, I heard stories that it was POSSIBLE to absorb LSD by putting the blotter paper in one's eye, but no adequate explanation for why one would choose to do so, and, AFAIK, nobody ever did. It was just one of those bits of trivia.

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

I can see the party now. Everyone is sitting around with their pants down on bedpans filled with vodka, waiting for a tiny fraction of the vodka to creep up the string. "I think I feel something," one guy yells.

That is so much easier than just drinking it.

more about drug absorption than some people want to know

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Drugs have somewhat different effects, depending on how they are taken into the body. For example, injecting a given dose of opiate will make it take effect more suddenly than swallowing the same dose. Smoking cannabis feels different than eating it.

When a person swallows alcohol or some other drug, it takes time for the stuff to be digested and absorbed into the bloodstream. (More time, if the stomach is full, or the drug is dilute. That's why some people feel they don't get as intensely drunk drinking beer after dinner as drinking vodka on an empty stomach. The same total amount of alcohol feels different when it hits the bloodstream faster.) There is also an automatic defense against toxins built into the human digestive system--it's not perfect, but it helps sometimes. Some people who swallow a toxic dose of alcohol throw up before it can poison them.

An enema containing coffee or alcohol with get the active ingredient into the person's bloodstream very, very, fast. This is hideously dangerous, because the person can't vomit it up. (He or she won't even start feeling sick and stop drinking, as most people will if they try to swallow a quart of anything in a few minutes.) But a vodka-soaked tampon? A super-plus tampon is supposed to hold 15mL of fluid. That's ONE-THIRD the quantity in a shot glass.

Re: more about drug absorption than some people want to know

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Bringing actual facts into it--that's CHEATING!

It must be, because the people who share these stories never do it.

Re: more about drug absorption than some people want to know

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

People have died from wine enemas. Not to mention the fools who sprinkle cocaine on their more exotic mucosa. I remember medical reports of some guy who wanted to lick cocaine from his wife's vulva (she died) and another who decided it would be fun to dissolve it in water and squirt it into his urethra (he lived but lost his penis, several fingers, and several toes to gangrene from the subsequent blood clots).

Re: more about drug absorption than some people want to know

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

AAAAA wow. If I ever need another novel idea or short story idea I may come back to this.

Re: more about drug absorption than some people want to know

[coalboy.livejournal.com]

Not arguing, but, H. Toledo!

[weatherglass.livejournal.com]

...vodka soaked gummi bears? Does gummi even absorb liquid? As you say, the physics of this really don't hold up past the "fevered imagination" stage of thought.

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

Yes, gummi does absorb liquid--- if you leave a gummi bear in the water for a couple hours it can double in size. Plus get soggy and slippery, making it totally unsuitable as a stealthy alcohol-delivery device. But it might also just dissolve.

(Vodka jello shots exist; I would think that makes for a far more plausible stealth-vodka-in-school mechanism.)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

If you have vodka and you want to get drunk, why would you soak a tampon in it and shove it up your ass rather than, you know, drinking it?

Not to mention all your other objections, such as the fact that once its soaked, it can't be shoved up the ass! They're intended to be shoved FIRST, soaked SECOND.

[prock.livejournal.com]

Vodka burps are more conspicuous than vodka farts?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The theory put forth by the article--and not by any actual people who have actually done it--is that then you could get drunk at school! Or at school dances or school athletic events!

Where, as we all know, no teenager could ever become intoxicated by means of oral ingestion. That would just be silly.

[lynnal.livejournal.com]

Like the teenagers that were riding in the metro to a big festival. I had the misfortune of being in the same train compartment going from the airport to downtown. They all had water bottles of clear liquid. However, most people don't share water bottles and giggle quite so much as they were doing.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

I'll tell you what--the teenagers I know, via my own? Pretty much, if they want to drink the vodka, they are just going to drink it.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Didn't there used to be a thing about teenagers dissolving aspirin in CocaCola to get drunk/high?

And on moral panic about The Young more generally, in 1961 in the UK it was chimerical yellow golliwogs (http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/977775.html).

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

What the hell ... what the hell. WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL

This is the best part

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

"We talked about it at our last meeting," said Ann Lindberg, chemical health coordinator for the West St. Paul-Mendota Heights-Eagan School District in Dakota County. "I'm sure it is happening here to some degree. We just haven't caught anyone at it yet."

--

If it's bad, oh mercy, those kids are doing it. We just haven't ... caught them yet. But they are doing it for sure! No, really -- they are.

[wldhrsjen3.livejournal.com]

I <3 this post so much. Well said.

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

I'm going there with you. Imagine a vodka-soaked tampon. Now imagine an anus. Imagine inserting the giant, wet cotton ball in the anus. Yeah, it's not going to work. I hate it when journalists don't check stuff, or make statements in articles that are not backed up by the sources they cite or quote. It's like they think if they have sources cited and quote, and then they also make assertions of fact in the text, that no one will notice that there is nothing backing up their facts. But me! I notice!

[stfg.livejournal.com]

I'm a family physician in Norwalk, Ohio. Our local hospital does a community health assessment every five years or so, and a booklet with the current findings was just published in September. They did anonymous surveys of teenagers and discovered that some of them were putting alcohol-infused tampons up their rectums. So it apparently really does happen and is not just a local Twin Cities phenomenon.

The teens in Norwalk said they were doing it to prevent their breath smelling like alcohol, though I'm not sure that makes sense. I think alcohol gets partially metabolized by the lungs, the products of which you breathe out? That's how breathalizers work. It makes more sense to me that the Star Tribune has it right and alcohol going through the rectal mucosa hits the bloodstream faster.

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

Did the survey specifically ask about this behavior, or was it volunteered?

Somebody actually tried soaking their tampon in alcohol, and the results were predictable (and non-insertable): http://tinycatpants.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/in-which-i-debunk-the-vodka-soaked-tampon-myth/

[stfg.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. Someone gave a verbal report on the findings of the study at a meeting I was at. I have not actually read the details, though the report is sitting on my desk at work. It seemed to me that the surveyors were surprised that this was happening, so I think the teens filling out questionnaire are the ones who brought it up.

[canonical-tom.livejournal.com]

An anonymous survey of ... teenagers ... and without a shred of empirical evidence, anyone takes this seriously? I guess it's easier for community health workers to clutch pearls over an imaginary problem than to address the more difficult actual issues.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

There's also the old teenage saying, "Let's not and say we did."

[stfg.livejournal.com]

That's certainly possible. :)

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Otoh, as Churchill may have said, it's hard to get a conviction for sodomy in a nation where half the population believes it is impossible, while the other half is actively engaged in it.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Couldn't they just cover up a tell-tale breath with Sen-Sen?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we got trouble.

I wonder if someone wanted the Star-Tribune to help them sell band instruments.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am thinking of a time a few years ago with a teen I know. She got called a particular unfamiliar epithet at school, so when she got home, she and her stepmother looked it up. Their reaction was, "Ack ack ack!" that the classmate in question was thinking of this particular sexual maneuver with my young friend. My reaction was, "Honey, you now know for a fact that $classmate is not having the actual sex. Because that's the sort of fancy thing that is probably possible for a small number of people and is probably a very very tiny number of people's major kink. But for the most part it's the sort of thing that sounds awesome when you are interested in bragging about how badass you are at something you've never done, and vanishingly few people ever do it."

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

The overwhelming thing is the way the Star-Tribune is treating unsubstantiated rumor as fact. It's not anything like an innocent mistake. They want the (respectable, adult) readers of the newspaper to enjoy the thrill of regarding teenagers with fear and contempt.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's not just teenagers, they do that with everything.

I'm actually sort of surprised it wasn't a vodka-soaked newspaper. At least that would improve their circulation.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Maybe it is a vodka-soaked newspaper, in the corporate sense of the word, rather than the object.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!elventy!1

I recall a huge article about this deadly new drug called ice that was going to be the scourge of everything back in the 70s. Yup.

K.

[guppiecat]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but regardless of the viability of the method of delivery, wouldn't exposing mucus membranes to a fairly high concentration of alcohol result in a rather un-mild stinging sensation?

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

One would think so. I mean, the last time I swabbed a paper cut with rubbing alcohol it was Not Fun, and when I try to scale that up from a cut half a centimeter long by less than a millimeter wide to something with the general area of the mucous membranes in question my eyes get crossed just thinking about it.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Well, we run vodka through our mouths, and most of us don't find it that unpleasant (I personally prefer more impurities; say, good rum or whiskey of some sort).

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Very bad journalism: check.

Possibly teens freaking the mundanes adults: check.

Apparent technical difficulties: check.

Already mentioned, but something that should be spread around among people thinking of applying alcohol rectally: it's absorbed much faster. That means that an amount of alcohol that you can chug down and survive, can kill you if delivered as an enema. (The quantity a tampon will absorb isn't at that level; but once people are talking about this new way to get drunk, they need to know this. And regardless of whether or not they were before, they will be now. With luck, not doing anything about it; but talking about it.)

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

I think the Strib is desperate for Important Stories That Horrify People And Sell Newspapers. They've been flogging the stories about synthetic cannabis for some time now. Since nothing else is happening, like major nationwide protests or widespread poverty or police brutality, they have to find something to print. /snark

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, but with the synthetic drug stories, they have actually been able to find people to say, "Yes, I use that," or, "Yes, I sell that," or, "My child ODed on that." I was actually thinking of those stories, because those are the stories they write when they can find even a few actual people with experience in the matter. And this...wasn't even to that level.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Kids these days and their fancy alcohol delivery systems! Why, in MY day we had to make do with EVERCLEAR GRAPES.

My question always is...

[dlandon.livejournal.com]

Why don't they just drink the damned stuff, if they can get it?!?! I mean, why go through the whole soak in vodka and insert tampon *rolls eyes* if they have the alcohol?

I saw a Colbert bit about this that was hilarious.
- D

[catherineldf.livejournal.com]

Well, now I know how I'm spending my upcoming vacation. Oiy.
Seriously though, I hope you're archiving this post and the comments - this is priceless.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Silly reporter. The tampon isn't to get the teenager drunk. It's to get the gerbil drunk.

What's a rainbow party?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

A rainbow party was supposedly an event where the girls all wore different shades of lipstick and gave oral sex to all the boys, leaving a "rainbow" of rings around their genitals. As far as I could tell the news reporters never actually talked to anyone who did this or caught their teens at it, either, and the feasibility studies were entirely lacking. But oh my, was the media convinced it was The Downfall Of Our Youth for awhile there.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

I'm sure this is happening all over Atlantis.

[seabream.livejournal.com]

For journalism (and science!), Danielle Crittenden, blogger for The Huffington Post (Canadian Edition) performs an experiment (http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/danielle-crittenden/vodka-tampons_b_1105433.html), or series of experiments, depending on how you count, to verify the feasibility (not impossible) and effectiveness (not very) of the act described in the urban legend and then writes a humourous column that demonstrates just how unlikely it is that people are actually doing this. No I didn't go looking for it. The only reason I know is because Heather Mallick was writing (http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1090920--frum-and-crittenden-columnist-wants-to-know-about-those-vodka-soaked-tampons) about Crittenden's husband, also a native Torontonian, David Frum (Yes, that David Frum. In the States, that would be speechwriter to a former President. In Canada, it would more likely be son of late CBC anchor Barbara Frum.), and it came up.