When there’s alcohol, stay out of the water

I grew up in sunny Southern California, and in the summertime, I spent as much time at the beach as my parents would let me. When I was too young to go by myself, I’d beg my mother to take me. Problem was, when I was with my mom, or any adult for that matter, there was this rule that you all know: Don’t go in the water for a half-hour, or maybe even an hour, after you eat.

When I got old enough to be snotty about the rule, I demanded to know the rationale behind it. Well, she told me, when you eat, a lot of blood goes to the stomach, briefly starving the muscles. Then, when you go swimming, she said, your muscles will cramp and you’ll be out there in the water, and you’ll drown. She was pretty definite about that, and there was a certain logic to what she said.

Turns out it was an old wives’ tale that my mother was quoting well before she was an old wife.

According to Dr. Roshini Rajapaksa, a gastroenterologist at New York University of Medicine interviewed by The New York Times, the chances are pretty slim that most of us would swim vigorously enough to get cramps. Having a full stomach is just not one of the major risk factors for drowning.

But that’s not true of the two or three beers a person might toss back with a good beach barbeque. Alcohol does not mix well with swimming, diving or boating. In fact, the combination is often lethal.

Drowning is the overwhelming cause of death related to recreational aquatic activities. And studies report that 30 to 70 percent of drowning victims age 15 and older have alcohol in their blood.

One study reported that not only did 44 percent of drowning victims in that age group have alcohol in their blood, 30 percent had blood alcohol levels of .10or greater. (In Washington state, .08 and a car equal DUI.)

A study in King County of adult and adolescent drowning deaths between 1990 and 1995 found that although the proportion of deaths in which alcohol is involved had decreased significantly in the past 25 years, alcohol was involved in 31 percent of drowning deaths in people older than 15. A study of boating-related deaths, most of them due to drowning, found that people with a blood alcohol level of .10 had 16 times the chance of drowning compared to people who had no alcohol in their blood. Other studies have found that even small amounts of alcohol can increase the risk of drowning.

We don’t know why (except for the sheer stupidity that often accompanies the consumption of alcohol) drinking increases the risk of drowning. But it’s not just the fact that alcohol impairs judgment and performance.

Some researchers think that alcohol may have some direct effects on our physiology, making survival less likely once submersion under water has occurred.

It’s not an easy task to change our habits when it comes to alcohol consumption around the water. But in places that have tightened up regulations about drinking on or near the water, drowning deaths have decreased.

Teenagers often push the limits of risky behaviors. We parents don’t want to think that our kids might down a beer or two and then set off with friends in the ski boat. But all you have to do is walk into an emergency room on a holiday weekend to know it happens with some frequency.

Just as we warned our kids not to drink and drive (after we told them not to drink at all), and never to get in a car when the driver had been drinking, we need another message: Leave the alcohol at home when the plan is a day at the lake.

And the same goes for us grown-ups.