Back on February 25 of 2005 I wrote a post detailing the steps I was taking to procure for myself an AWOL 1 liquor vaporizing machine. Within days of writing that post an AWOL 1 was delivered to my private estate, the SDF2, however no follow up post was ever written about the machine. Almost two years later let me pull back the curtain and reveal why this seemingly miraculous device wasn’t glorified on these hallowed pages.
The AWOL 1 sort of sucks and is pretty much useless.
I know. I didn’t want the dream to end either. Finding out there isn’t a wonder machine that will instantly fuck you up and leave you hangover free in the mornings is like finding out Santa isn’t real or that your mom and dad don’t actually love you.
As you can imagine when I first got the machine I was extremely excited. I took loads of pictures of the unboxing and the machine itself. I never posted those pictures after the machine’s disappointing results. I’d post the pictures now but I’ve long since deleted them and even though I’m using the AWOL 1 right this second as a footrest I’m too depressed about it to go to the trouble to take new pictures. The AWOL is like your retarded brother who’s not retarded enough to get doted on by the general public but too retarded to succeed at anything besides using the toilet by himself so society casts him aside.
Here’s how the machine works. There’s a Bunsen burner looking plastic device that connects to the shoe box sized main AWOL unit with some rubber hose. On the top of the Bunsen burner piece is a small cup where several plastic cones are supposed to rest inverted inside each other and while you would think them pointless the machine will not operate without the cones in the proper order which can be pretty confusing since no instructions are given concerning their proper order. You pour your liquor into the cup containing the cones. You don’t pour much liquor either, probably one third to one half of a shot (and don’t think about pouring more than that limited amount, the one instruction that came with the machine is very clear that more than that amount of liquor will result in an explosion – hurray!). On top of the cup goes a plastic funnel and on the tip of the funnel you put a cardboard tube that’s about an inch long. The cardboard piece is supposed to be hygienic since you can throw it away after all your whores use it, but yeah right am I going to throw away such a well crafted piece of cardboard, pshaw. When you first turn on the machine it seems impressive, vaporized alcohol immediately spews forth from the cardboard tube. It’s when you put the cardboard tube to your lips and inhale that all your dreams come crashing down. No matter how hard you inhale you won’t get all the vaporized liquor unless you cough which ruins it and vapor drops condense around your mouth and nose so you need a handy napkin. You sit there for a while passing the Bunsen burner-esque device amongst your friends and about 15 minutes later the cup’s supply of liquor has run out and it’s time for a refill. There’s the final rub. It takes 15 minutes to vaporize one third to one half a shot of liquor and in that time one person could potentially ingest 50% of the vapor. Think about how many real shots you could take in 15 minutes? Conservatively, I don’t think 3 shots in 15 minutes is out of line for some early evening drinking to get the party started. The reason you don’t get a hangover with the AWOL is not because you’re ingesting the alcohol in your lungs it’s because you never get drunk enough to have a hangover in the first place. The math just doesn’t work.
What’s worse (for me at least) is that if you put aside all the obvious snake oil and think about the device and the way it must work without getting caught up in the hype it’s pretty obvious what the result would be because there’s only so much liquor you can ingest as a vapor in your lungs. Every schoolboy knows that liquids expand when phase changing into gas so right off the bat you should know that a mouthful of vaporized liquor isn’t nearly as potent as a mouthful of actual liquor. In fact, that half a shot of liquor would vaporize into just about one cubic meter of gas. Let me bypass the mental heavy lifting by saying that before buying the machine some simple math should have told me that inhaling the vaporized liquor would take 100 times longer than just taking the liquor strait. Instant gratification my fucking ass.
So there’s the deal. The AWOL does actually work. It does vaporize alcohol and if one had the patience and didn’t mind sitting at home by themselves instead of going out one could get fucked up on the device though it would take at least 3 hours of pretty heavy breathing. But I didn’t want the AWOL for 3 lonely hours of huffing, that’s what the dumpster behind the Sherwin-Williams down the street is for. I wanted it for sexy parties where everybody got shithoused on my miracle robot and then I had to fight off women with a bat because they demanded the services of my hog. Alas, it is not to be. At least the AWOL makes a decent footrest and interesting conversation piece. Sort of. Not really. Whatever. Fuck you.