As a recovering alcohol and the counselor for both in-class and online alcohol classes I am quite aware of how drunk people can get and still get behind the wheel.
When I was in college there were bars that had breathalyzers on the wall for $1. Instead of acting as a deterrent for drinking and driving these breathalyzers encouraged us to see how drunk we could get. Maybe that is why you never see them in bars anymore. As reported in www.reuters.com.
Contests to see how intoxicated one can get are far too common. Each year many people die, mostly young men ages 18 to 25 from alcohol poisoning due to drinking contests.
From my experience the highest blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) I have heard about was a .375. Even some of my drunkest friends never got over .30. In a story that sounds too strange to even comprehend comes a man who has to have had one of the highest recorded BAC levels of all time.
An Iowa man, Justin Clark, was arrested for driving under the influence. This was not your standard .10 or even .20. How high was his BAC? Try .627, or nearly eight times the legal limit.
A good friend of mine admits that he's never seen a percentage as high as that in his two decades of law enforcement.
What is really amazing is that the 24-year-old Clark was still operating a vehicle and most people don't make it above .3 — they end up passing out.
Not that he was driving all that well. Police had received calls of an extremely erratic driver hitting curbs and found him in the driver’s seat and unable to walk or speak clearly. He had no idea what day it was. When asked he answered, "Three, but now it is four."
Clark blew a .486 during a breath test at the scene. Later tests performed at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics found an even higher number of .627 percent. Clark is a walking miracle. It is believed that someone with a BAC of more than .4 percent is clinically dead.
I hope Clark takes a Iowa alcohol class and never touches alcohol again. He has been given a second chance at life.