This all started with a debate. Nowadays, debates are settled with one click on Google; but not this time.

My friend Mike said in his mid-20s he was pulled over by San Diego Police and given a field sobriety test. He passed the few tests and they asked him to use a breathalyzer. He blew a .07 and the officer said “You’re lucky. If it was a little higher, we’d take you in.”

Alcohol and a breathalyzer.

^{Photo by Josh Board}

Mike told me hours earlier he was drunker than he’d ever been and that he still had a big buzz going while talking to the officer. He hadn’t had a drink a few hours prior to driving, and was surprised it wasn’t higher.

I said that he probably wasn’t as drunk as he thought. Everything I’ve ever heard or read, states that when California lowered the limit to .08, people thought that was too low.

A quick Google search told me that to get to .08, it would be the equivalent of a 200 pound man drinking four beers an hour. In the past, I had heard two glasses of wine an hour as well.

As a group of my friends were discussing this, we realized that none of us know what it feels like to be at .08. We all felt we were passed that level at points in our life, and we drove anyway. None of us felt like it hindered our driving ability (although everyone seems to think that).

I called up a high school friend who is now a Sergeant with the Escondido Police Department.

Officer Craig Miller told me “I once tested with the breathalyzer, and when I got to .05, I felt like there was no way I could drive.”

That’s an answer I’d expect from an officer.

Miller explained, “There’s a lot of bravado people have when they drink. They think they can do anything. Often times, you’re more impaired than you realize.”

Since radio host Adam Carolla has commented on being able to drive drunk, I wondered if maybe there were certain people that could. Miller said, “Look, there probably are a few people that can. Statistics show that most people aren’t able to drive properly. I used to work a lot of checkpoints where we looked for drunk drivers. I’d sometimes be talking to a guy that was holding a conversation and wasn’t slurring his words, and he’d blow a .17. If you drink all the time or have a higher tolerance, you can pass those road side tests and not seem as drunk as you are. It’s still dangerous.”

He also told me that for the size of our city, we have the highest rate of drunk driving accidents.

A few days later, I was picking up a breathalyzer from Sergeant Miller. He said, “I chugged a beer before you got here. I had my wife drink one, too.”

He blew a .013. She blew a .04 – already half way to the legal limit. He had eaten, she hadn’t. She also weighed a lot less than he did. There are also studies that say men and women process alcohol differently.

Health Status.com had an article on March 17, 2009, that analyzed why alcohol affects women differently than men. It basically said that there were four main physiological factors, even if both of them are the same size. Those factors include:

--Capacity to dilute alcohol. Men have a concentration of water in the body at around 61%. Women have less water content, at around 52%. As a result, the man’s body dilutes the alcohol more.

--Metabolizing alcohol. Women have lower concentrations of dehydrogenase – the enzyme that metabolizes alcohol before it passes into the bloodstream. This means the woman’s body processes alcohol slower than a man’s body.

--Hormonal changes. Variations in the hormonal levels prior to menstruation can cause women to become intoxicated faster. And women that take estrogen-added medications (birth control pills) often experience extended effects of intoxication since the medication slows down the rate at which the body is able to eliminate the alcohol content.

--Body fat. This is related to the absorption rate and metabolizing of alcohol, and women have a higher concentration of body fat than men. Since fat doesn’t absorb alcohol, the content remains in a highly concentrated form in the bloodstream.

When it comes to tests, you always hear inaccurate things. With breathalyzers I’ve heard people say that the ones cops use on the streets aren’t used in court because of accuracy.

Miller responded, “These are all pretty accurate. We have them tested once a week, and they are used in court. It’s one more piece of the puzzle when we present the case.”

The drinking experiment.

^{Photo by Josh Board}

I was also told it’s a misconception to think you could just refuse a test. Miller said, “If you refuse a DUI test, we’ll take you into the station and test you there. We’re among nine states that have a no refusal.”

* * * * *

Currently, the Federal Government is considering lowering the blood alcohol limit to 0.05 for drivers.

In the 2011-2020 National Road Safety Strategy draft, transport officials state a number of measures to lower the country’s road toll.

In Australia, the limit is 0.05. Sweden lowered their limit to 0.02. Their officials seem to think it significantly had an impact on their roads.

A few friends and I have gotten together to test just how you feel at those various levels, and comment on if we could actually drive.

I picked a friend that lives seven houses down from me and is female. This lets us get a woman involved in the study, and I can walk home after all the drinking (she agreed to let anyone else sleep over that couldn’t drive).

It wasn’t hard to get another female and a few male friends over. I was supplying the booze for them.

I brought bottles of champagne, whisky, wines, Margaritas, and a breathalyzer with 20 extra mouth pieces (you never know who is going to be a germaphobe).

We immediately had a few problems. Some of the subjects said they were only gone to have one or two drinks. One was going to be driving home in a few hours and didn’t want to be drunk. Another had to work in the morning.

The woman participating informed us she had a beer and shot of tequila earlier in the day. We tested her to see if they were still in her system. She was 0.00.

She took chocolate chip cookies out of the oven, and we were good to go (that wasn’t part of the study, but it made it more fun).

Mike,the teacher I originally had the debate with, insisted we have the same amounts of alcohol. Since his whiskey was 40% alcohol, and my Margaritas were only 11%, I had to drink four of those for every 7&7 he consumed (that’s Seagrams mixed with 7-Up).

After our first drinks we tested. I blew a .12. The crowd laughed with someone saying “Lightweight.”

I remembered that Miller told me you have to wait 15 minutes before testing, because “mouth alcohol” can hugely exaggerate the results. He also explained all the scientific details behind the breathalyzer, a lot of which went over my head. There was talk of four different components it’s testing, and how the machine gets “deep lung air,” which is why you need to blow on it steadily for more than just a couple seconds. He mentioned three chemical compounds and various other things that this small machine, smaller than a walkie-talkie, could test.

I quickly rinsed my mouth out with water, tested again, and was at .013. Bonnie said, “So it would be important for people to know after they drink, if they are driving, they should probably rinse first.”

Mike was doing this test with an empty stomach, and having ridden his bike for 3½ hours a mere two hours before the test. I had a big dinner of Mexican food hours earlier. And I was quickly filling my belly with chocolate chip cookies. We both weigh around 215, but he is 5-foot-5 and I’m 6-foot-1.

Bonnie said she had no problem telling us her weight, but then we got to talking about other things and I never found out. I’m guessing she’s 5-foot-7 and 150 pounds.

Mike’s first test had him at .017. Bonnie was at .021.

We immediately went for drink number two.

Someone made a crude joke to one of the women, who said, “I’d need to be drinking all night to even consider doing that.” We all laughed.

One woman said, “If there was ever a definition of responsible drinking, this has got to be it.”

After drink two, Bonnie was at .028. Mike was at .026, almost double from last time. I was at .021.

We ate more cookies, poured more drinks, and continued on.

After drink three, Bonnie was at .038. Mike was .027, almost the same as he was the previous time. I was at .029.

We insisted the Green Day CD be taken off the stereo. Bonnie replaced it with Billy Joel. We laughed when we heard the opening piano playing My Life. Someone joked about doing a drinking experiment while Billy Joel was playing (he drove his car into a building and was in another car accident while under the influence).

Mike said he was feeling some of the effects. Again, he had an empty stomach. I was slightly higher with my BAC and felt none of the affects.

After drink four, Mike was .041. Bonnie was at .052, and I was .050. The guy who had one drink said, “I’m curious as to how many times you’ve gone to the bathroom at this point.”

Mike and Bonnie were at two trips, I was at one. I noticed an abstract painting of a woman near the bathroom and jokingly said that she was starting to look sexy. I added, “Maybe by drink seven, her nose will look like it’s in the right place.”

Bonnie said, “This is the point where I’ve been at clubs before, and I don’t drink anymore because I know I’m going to have to drive at some point. I think I could drive just fine right now, but I never knew if a cop did pull me over for something, if I’d be over the limit.

With her saying that at .052, I gave the first drunk driving tests of the night. Officer Miller had told me the ones they used, and we also discussed the ones you see on TV shows.

I asked her to count backwards from 75 to 55. She did it quickly and without pausing. The officer had told me that when they do a test like that, they also want to see if you’re going to stop at 55. He said, “Sometimes when someone is drunk they can only focus on one thing. So they can stay in their lane, but you see their speed going up and down dramatically. A test like that is a divided attention task.”

Mike was able to count down perfectly, too. I told him to stand on one leg and count backwards from 30. He did just fine, although we all agreed that standing on one leg might not be the best test. The officer told me they do realize that some people have bad balance.

We also wondered if walking in a straight line, with one foot directly in front of the other, was easier or harder on a carpeted floor.

After drink five, Bonnie was at .073 and Mike was at .079 – right below the legal limit.

Officer Miller said “A lot of people think the magic number is .08. If someone is between 0.05 and .08, but we feel they are significantly impaired, they’ll be cited for driving under the influence.”

I asked if that meant they were impaired by some other medication they may have taken, as well as the alcohol.

“Yes, it could be that. Or it could just be someone that has a very low tolerance to a small amount of alcohol."

We ran out of my Margaritas, so I moved on to champagne. We finished our sixth drinks, and I saw Bonnie over the sink. I asked “Are you barfing?” She responded, “No, this is my gargle.”

We laughed uncontrollably as she spit water into the sing and explained, “I’m getting rid of the mouth alcohol so I can blow into the test again.”

Mike blew a .084 and said “It’s weird, because I’m sober as shit right now. I could drive a vehicle with no problem at all.”

Ginger Walker was 22-year-old mother when she was killed by

a drunk driver.

^{Courtesy photo}

We were surprised to see Bonnie had gone down a bit to .071. I gave Mike a new set of tests, and passed them all. None of us were slurring. A few times we laughed at things we probably wouldn’t have found as funny with no drinks in our system.

I was .084. I also felt like I could drive with no problem. I’ve been at this level a few times in the past when I’ve driven. I also realized that I had enough of a buzz going that if a cop pulled me over I could be in trouble. I also thought this was a higher level than it was. If feeling the way I felt at .084 is how most people feel at .084, I think it’s weird that people complain about the number being too low. Most people could probably drive at this level, but laws are often made for the people that can’t. It’s the same with the cell phone law. Some people can do it and some can’t.

* * * * *

I do remember being at this level of drunkenness and leaving a party in Santee on the I-52. I was talking to someone on my cell phone, and drove right by the I-15 exit. It wasn’t until I was a few miles down that I realized, and had to take a slight detour. The combination of having that level of alcohol in my system and being on the phone, made me realize that both of those together are a distraction that is extremely unsafe. You can make arguments all day about that not affecting what happens on the road directly in front of you, but you can’t trust split second decisions you think you can make when impaired or distracted.

Before we took ourseventh drinks we tried taking the breathalyzer again. Often times it said “No go” on the machine. We had rinsed our mouths out and waited 15 minutes, and I’m not sure what the problem was. Maybe when you have alcohol in your system, a simple task like blowing steady into a machine can become hard.

We did find that lung capacity might have something to do with it. The women in our group often seemed to be blowing for 25 seconds before the machine clicked to give us an answer. They were on the verge of running out of breath.

After ourseventh drink, Mike blew a .24. We made him drink water to get the alcohol out of his mouth, and he was at .081. He had gone down slightly. As he headed to the bathroom he said “I’m going to go make room for my next drink.”

We’d occasionally make jokes while blowing into the machine. I told Bonnie she looked sexy doing it. Another person mentioned Miley Cyrus in a recent video shown smoking from a bong that had a plant called Salvia. As we were trying to figure out the name of the plant “Is it salvia, or salivia? It’s not saliva, that’s spit.”

Bonnie broke into the Laverne & Shirley theme, singing “Schemeel, schlimazel, Hasenfeffer incorporated.”

I laughed uncontrollably.

With Mike going down, questions arose about the accuracy of the breathalyzer. I told them the cop said they are checked once a week (legally they need to be checked once every 10 days or after 250 uses), and they test it in the same alcohol based solution. I had asked him, “Is that solution a delicious beverage?” He said, “Oh no, you wouldn’t want to drink that stuff.”

He also told me their machines are .005% accurate.

I was at .095. Bonnie was at .114. Someone asked, “What’s the limit where they say you should be dead? Isn’t it when there aren’t zeroes in front of the number?”

People that have died from alcohol consumption are usually at .30 or higher. I know somebody in their 70s who told me “I was once at .34, and knocked over a street sign as I drove into a neighbors front yard. The police told me at the level I was at, they didn’t know how I was alive. At that point, I stopped getting behind the wheel after drinking. I also drink a lot less.”

After oureighth drink, Bonnie was ready to test again. We tried multiple times with the machine. It wasn’t giving us a reading. As she continued blowing into it, Mike said “I’m glad it’s not her birthday. We’d still be waiting for her to blow out the candles for the cake.”

Officer Miller told me, “We can tell if people aren’t really blowing into it. They make the faces [his eyes bulge and veins pop up in his neck as he shows me; it reminded me of O.J. Simpson making faces while he tried on the gloves in court].You don’t have to blow really hard, just steady.”

We finally got a reading, and she had only moved up to .115. I was at .111, and Mike was .084. He said “I haven’t had a drink in an hour, and I’ve gone up. It’s like a diet – easy to gain, hard to lose.”

It turns out he stopped drinking after reaching the legal limit and was wanted to be able to drive home soon. It was 1 a.m.

I figured I’d stop drinking, too.

The next time I tested at .097, I felt more drunk than I had at .111. That made me think this is the logic people use when they’ve been drinking for hours straight. Officer Miller had told me, “You could drink 8 shots in 15 minutes, and it might not show you’re drunk because the alcohol is in your stomach and hasn’t gotten into your blood yet.”

Bonnie tested at .136 and exclaimed, “I’m retiring to the couch if you need me for further tests.” She pulled a blanket over her. I asked if she felt she’d be able to drive in this condition. She said no.

I impressed everyone by saying the alphabet backwards, but I had learned to do that years ago.

The rest of us discussed the amount of drinks we consumed in a few hours. Some thought that’s not a realistic situation most people are in. Others said “That’s what teenagers do at parties.”

Which lead to me stating, “If you’re under 21 it’s against the law to even blow a 0.01.”

Before Bonnie fell asleep I gave her a few more tests. I told her to count backwards from 65 to 45. She did it perfectly, and there wasn’t even a slur in her speech. Soon after, she was fast asleep (I wouldn’t hear from her again until the morning, when she sent an email from work that simple said: “Bad idea. Hung over.”

The officer told me people that drink often can build a higher tolerance. Bonnie told me she only drinks a few times a week, and not heavily.

I tested again and was at .118. I thought I could drive with no problem, but I certainly wouldn’t. I could feel I had a lot of alcohol in my system.

I tested myself 15 minutes later, and was up to .122. I claimed to have felt fine, but as I look over my notes – I can read the writing, I just don’t understand some of what’s written. I have a story somebody told me about taking a cab home when they were drunk, but it doesn’t make sense enough to write up.

(In the morning I didn’t have any hangover symptoms, but did stumble for a second getting out of bed – and felt a slight headache and pain in my left arm I couldn’t explain).

I did notice, of the entire group, I was the only one that ever slurred. It wasn’t often, but every few sentences I’d slur a word.

After an hour and a half without drinking, Mike blew a .079. He seemed well enough to drive, and went home.

An hour after having any drinks, I had gone down to .104 (lucky I only had to walk five houses down from Bonnie). I still waiting another 30 minutes before walking (not sure how many people realize you can also be ticketed for public drunkenness).

* * * * *

Another officer called me a few days later asking if I’d like to talk to a woman who volunteered with MADD and did speaking engagements (as well as talking to people at checkpoints).

I told him I would, and a few days later Nina Walker called me.

I was worried she’d be this angry woman shouting at me, and saying alcohol should be outlawed. I was surprised and how nice and reasonable she was. At one point during our conversation she said, “I don’t care if someone wants to drink, and get completely obliterated at their house. As long as they don’t get behind the wheel.”

She told me her 22-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver 10 years ago, and now she’s raising her grandchild because of it.

She talked about the people in San Diego that were drinking, and did the car surfing thing (they hit a curb and were severely hurt). There was also the recent case of the man walking his 3½ year old grandson.

I asked Walker if she was involved in other aspects of distracted driving, like the cell phone law. She said, “I’ve chosen to focus on drunk driving.”

I asked her for a story about speaking with people that have gotten DUIs. I figured that would have a certain level of frustration for her, knowing these are the types of people that caused her daughter's death.

She said, “I enjoy doing that. One time at a court-ordered program, when the people walk in we ask for a donation. It really does support a good cause. A woman came through the line and was a bit rude. She didn’t donate, and I told her she could go sit down. I went up and told my story and when I was done she came up and said ‘I am so sorry. I just didn’t realize.’ She gave me the $20. You never know how many people you’ll reach, but if at least half in the room change, it’s positive.”

I realized after we hung up, I didn’t know the exact story of how she lost her daughter. I didn’t know the etiquette behind calling her up to ask her, but I did. She told me, “My daughter Ginger was a 22-year-old single mom, with a 3½ year old son. She was a nursing student at Point Loma Nazarene, and also worked as a waitress at Outback Steakhouse in Poway. She was a wonderful mother.

"She left work and went dancing in the Gaslamp with friends. I was babysitting Shaye. She was the designated driver and was taking a friend home around 1:15 a.m. Near the Balboa Naval Hospital, she entered a curve and was crashed head-on by a van which was being chased by a jealous boyfriend. The driver of the van and the girlfriend were being chased and bumped by the boyfriend. They had all been drinking [on Morena Boulevard], when the girlfriend left with another man, the van driver. Witnesses testified they saw the boyfriend chasing the van on University before they turned right on Florida. The van was travelling around 70 mph, and was propelled into my daughter’s car at an impact of over 100 mph.

"Upon impact, Ginger’s car flipped and she was killed instantly, suffering a broken neck. Her passenger had a broken leg, broken arm, and facial lacerations. The driver of the van was charged with DUI, paid a fine, and spent a few nights in jail. The girlfriend had a broken wrist and broken ribs. The driver of the car fled the scene and called police to say his girlfriend was kidnapped.

"He was ultimately charged with second degree murder and faced 15 years to life. He tried saying he was insane, but was ruled to be sane. Finally, he was sentenced two years after the crash, to 15 years in state prison. He was driving on a suspended license. I speculate it was for a prior DUI, which is why he was charged withsecond-degree murder. His BAC was over .20 several hours after the crash.”

The story gets bittersweet when Walker told me, “Ginger’s 2001 graduating nursing class decided to honor her memory and instituted a scholarship in her name. Each year the nursing students at PLNU vote to continue a scholarship in her memory and to this date recognize a student each year in her memory. One of the criteria is that the student must be a single parent and there have been quite a few touching stories about the recipients. For our family to return to PLNU each year once again realizing the impact of our loss, of such a beautiful young woman, is bittersweet for our family.”

I couldn’t control the tears when I read the email from Walker as I wrote this story near Christmas. It said: “Ginger’s birthday is December 24. She would have been 32.”