Just to be clear, this appears to be A Thing. Human beings, usually in their carefree teenage years, are drinking racing fuel, often mixed with Mountain Dew. This is possibly the only Mountain Dew-based drink where the Mountain Dew wasn’t the worst part. Also, people are dying.
Earlier this week, two 16-year-olds in Tennessee died after allegedly drinking a racing-fuel cocktail, and there’s at least four cases of “dewshine” drinking reported in the state. And that’s just one state, and the just the cases that have been reported.
So, on behalf of the motor-enthusiast community, I feel like I have to make this little PSA that I can’t believe I have to make:
Don’t drink racing fuel, morons.
Save it for the racecars, who will do a hell of a lot more with it than convulse, die, and make many people miserable.
Racing fuel, the type used for drag racing, is just about 100 percent methanol. Sure, that’ll get you pretty drunk, but it can also get you blind, comatose or dead. A handy and charming little rule of thumb that I personally like to use is “if it’s fuel, don’t fucking drink it.”
I know the pursuit of getting messed up is fundamental to pretty much any teenage experience, but, please, for the love of carburetors, don’t drink racing fuel.
For legal reasons, I can’t say go out and get some other illegal but less-death-inducing drugs or booze, but let’s just leave it at DON’T DRINK RACING FUEL.
I can’t believe this even needs to be said. If it comes out of a gas-pump, it’s not a cocktail. Really, there’s pretty much nothing with the sequence of letters M-E-T-H that seems to be good for you at all. Methanol, Meth, Methadone, Methodism, Methodological Naturalism – it’s all trouble. Keep clear, kids.
Also, DON’T DRINK RACING FUEL.
Contact the author at jason@jalopnik.com.