Categories
Humor News of the Weird

One quarter of my heritage at its finest

I’ve probably never mentioned it before, buy I’m 1/4 Lithuanian. Here’s something one of my cousins sent me to make me “proud” of that heritage:

VILNIUS, Lithuania – Lithuanian police were so astonished by a breath test that registered 18 times the legal alcohol limit, they thought their device must be broken. It wasn’t.

Police said Tuesday 41-year-old Vidmantas Sungaila registered 7.27 grams per liter of alcohol in his blood repeatedly on different devices after he was pulled over Saturday for driving his truck down the center of a two-lane highway 60 miles from the capital, Vilnius.

Lithuania’s legal limit is 0.4 grams per liter.

“This guy should have been lying dead, but he was still driving. It must be an unofficial national record,” Saulius Skvernelis, director of the national police traffic control service, told the AP. “He was of high spirits and grinning the whole time he was questioned.”

Medical experts say anything above 3.5 grams per liter of alcohol in the blood is lethal for most people.

“A person this intoxicated should be in an intensive care unit, not behind the wheel,” said Tautvydas Zikaras, head of the dependence illness center in the country’s second-largest city, Kaunas. Zikaras said he had never heard or read of someone being so drunk.


Personally, I’m not so sure that this is anything to be proud of. It just goes to show that it’s possible to develop an enormous tolerance to alcohol, given enough time. I’m sure that genetics has something to do with it as well. In any case, I’d sure hate to see what this guy’s liver looks like.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

Comments are closed.

Discover more from RESPECTFUL INSOLENCE

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading