From: [l--p--d] at [uavax0.ccit.arizona.edu] (James J. Lippard)
Date: 19 Jan 92 20:05:00 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.drugs,talk.politics.drugs,misc.legal
Subject: Re: Drug Forfeiture: What It Is!

The latest issue of _Fortean Times_ (#60, Dec. 1991) lists five cases
of "DANGEROUS DRINKING" in which people were overcome by water intoxication.
The first of these cases is most relevant in this newsgroup:

   A flight attendant from San Mateo County in California had to take
   a urine test at her job in San Francisco International Airport.
      She clammed up, or, as the doctors would say, she experienced a
   condition known as paruresis, "an inability to void in a crowded or
   noisy location" (apparently about 30% of men and 25% of women suffer
   from this).
      She was encouraged to drink as much water as she needed and guzzled
   three litres in three hours.  Still she couldn't pee.  Hours later, the
   40-year-old woman staggered into Peninsula Hospital in Burlingame,
   her speech slurred, her thinking fuzzy, unable to perform simple
   multiplication.  At first it was thought she was having a stroke;
   but a battery of tests revealed water intoxication as the cause.  She was
   placed in a quiet, dark room where she voided three litres.  Her
   brain functions returned to normal in 24 hours.
      She was the first drug-test taker known to suffer from this,
   according to Burlingame doctors David Klonoff and Andrew H. Jurow
   reporting in the Journal of the American Medical Association (2 Jan
   1991).  There have been only seven other reported cases of healthy
   people with the dangerous condition, which causes water-logged brain
   cells and a dilution of body minerals.  One person died.  The
   doctors suggested restricting drug-test takers to one litre of
   water.  San Jose Mercury News via Omaha World-Herald, 4 Jan 1991.