About a month ago, I did something pretty dumb. I had too much to drink at a neighbors house and on the way (WALKING) home at 2am, I tripped and fell in my driveway, landing on my forehead, which resulted in 18 stitches and a wonderful scar that I will use to for “crazy drinking” stories and kid lectures for the rest of my life. I have endured many jokes (many of them self-instigated) at home and at work. So I was thinking about ways to leverage my story to make it more of a life lesson. We now have, for example, an official rule that if you are drinking at a neighbor’s house past 1am, you have to spend the night there, even it if it a block or two away. I later found out that other dads in our school area had had similar experiences coming home from local poker parties, but on bikes instead of walking. One injury was a broken collar bone. The point here being that I live in a crazy neighborhood you don’t have to be driving drunk to be dangerous to yourself. In fact, you are probably more dangerous to OTHERS when you drive than you are if you are walking, biking, skateboarding, roller-blading, etc. Either way, you should know what your limits are.
The entire situation got me thinking about drinking and driving and figuring out when you have had too much to drink to a point where your judgment is impaired. Many people may have an idea as to what their limits are, but the more that you drink the higher that perceived range goes, to the point that when you are clearly inebriated, you judgment and logic are at a questionable level, frequently making you think and BELIEVE you are more sober than you actually are. And I, personally, had no clue how many drinks I could really have before I was at or over the legal limit. I thought that I knew but had nothing to back it up.
So this is where I decided to see if I could do a review a pocket breathalyzer. A few years ago, the only people that had these were those “protecting and serving” your community. Now, with the advances in technology, you can own one yourself! The one that I received was by a company called BACtrack and the model was the S75 Pro, their top of the line consumer model. BACtrack, a company based in San Francisco, does have many other models available, ranging from single-use to the S80 Pro (which is used primarily by Law Enforcement, Corrections Facilities, Military and Hospitals, for example). The key premise behind the breathalyzers produced by BACtrack is that they are “sleek, simple and accurate”, all at an affordable price. And I have to admit, if their top of the line consumer breathalyzer is only $150 currently on Amazon, it is well worth the money!
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