Straight up or on the rocks?

An Australian man nearly died last week after chugging sweet, sweet hand sanitizer in the attempt to quell his thirst for booze.

The man was at a Melbourne hospital being treated for, naturally, alcoholism, when he was discovered "nodding off" in his room, surrounded by six empty bottles of hand sanitizer. He blew a .271 during a Breathalyzer, more than five times the legal limit. "It surprised us that he drank this stuff," said a doctor at the hospital. "It's horrendous. You'd think it would taste pretty bad," he said (though a splash of tonic would probably work wonders.) The sanitizer had an ethanol content of 66 percent per 12.7-ounce bottle. Cheers!

It's hardly the first time mankind has desperately sought solace in the form of sanitizer: Wired has a full rundown of previous offenders, which include a prisoner drinking from a gallon bottle of Purell, a suicidal hospital patient who guzzled antiseptic hand rub (twice during a two-month period!), and a different patient who drank antibacterial rub straight out of the dispenser on a bathroom wall. Honestly, it doesn't sound that much worse than the Jolly Rancher-infused "Nutcrackers" the kids are into these days, so we're not going to judge.