Making Healthy Decisions: Vaping, Alcohol, and the Developing Brain

My name is Avi Landanda for those of you who don't know Rabbi Landa. And I want to talk to you today about a really important topic. A topic that really spans many different subtopics. And we're going to try to touch on a few of those today. And I want to begin by it was clear from the romashiva. It was clear from the rashiva that we're going to be speaking about making healthy decisions in life and we're going to talk a little bit about understanding what some of the unhealthy decisions some people choose to make are all about and the consequences and the difficulties that are involved in those. Now, some of you I just want to start by just categorizing all of you into three groups. You all know which group you're in. Some of you are thinking to yourselves right now. This is such a waste of time. We just heard beautiful dra Torah from the rashiva. Why do we have to hear about not doing this and not doing that? These silly things. I'm never going to do those things anyway. I don't understand why some of my friends might do them. Some of you might be in the opposite extreme group thinking to yourselves, I don't understand why he's wasting his time telling me not to do these things. I'm going to do them immediately after this presentation is over. So, why waste his time? In fact, I was once in a certain place. I won't say where. And in the back row, I see you back row. In the back row, there was a guy vaping during the presentation and I acknowledged it and actually used it to my advantage in the presentation. So, that's the other opposite extreme group. Then there's the middle group who I'm obviously talking to. Some of you who feel like you're not sure if you want to try these things or not. There's some peer pressure. Some of your friends are doing it. You're curious. Maybe you've tried it once and you're not sure if you want to do it again. You're kind of in this middle group. You're on the fence. You're not sure. Obviously, I want to offer you education. I want to make sure you're as informed as possible to make the right decision. But what I want to start with is that I'm also here to speak to those two extreme groups. The group who believes, what are we doing here? I'm not doing these things anyway. What's the point? It's a waste of time. I say to you two things. Number one, you never know where you're going to be in 6 months or 3 years from now. What position are you going to be in? What location? What kind of friends are you going to have? It may be very worthwhile for you to have this education, so to speak, in your back pocket. But also for that same group, you have friends that you might know now and over the next few years who might be thinking about or engaging in these things. And it's good for you to be able to be prepared to be a good to be a good friend to help your friend out. And finally, to the group who's going to be doing whatever they're going to be doing in the bathroom, it sounds like um right after this presentation to you, I say, I'm not expecting anything I say today to change your mind and prevent you from going and doing that. What I am asking is just for one thing. Listen with an open mind. That's it. Just don't block it out. Listen with an open mind. Consider what I have to say. You may be 100% that even if what I say makes a lot of sense, you're still going to do what you're going to do. But maybe in a month, maybe in a year, I don't know, it might make a difference. Just listen with an open mind and consider the ideas that I have to share. So, let's get started with a general topic. And the general topic is understanding what it means to be at the age that you're at. You're at a very specific age, a time range in your life. You're not a child, but you're not an adult yet. You're a teenager, a bach in between. Here's an interesting question for you. What do we find in kazal is something that although you're all 13 bar mitzvah already but you're still not old enough to be able to do or to be included in any ideas raise your hand. What are you not able to do yet even though you're 13? Yeah married >> you can get married. We will not let you get married. But according to Kazal, you could get married. You can affect kaducian after 13. Yeah. >> Okay. So are not shy until what age? >> 20. What an interesting thing. Kazal speak about this age 20 a lot. 20 right past teenagehood. Okay. So Shayim like Shamayim not until you're 20. What does that say about in being in this tufa? What else? Yeah, >> I can. >> Fantastic. Please, Hanala Rabam, correct me if I'm wrong. I think you can buy ka, but I think the Mishna says you can't sell ka. >> What? Because real estate is the most real possession and the is that for you to sell it cuz you want money. Maybe you really want to buy something that you want to use in the bathroom or something silly like that and you're selling a piece of real estate to do that. So Kazal is saying no you're not mature enough yet. You don't have the level of das yet until you're 20. Same age 20 years old. Excellent. So what we see and there's more examples. What we see from these examples is that the Torah the rebonal is recognizing that you are at an age and a stage where you have a level of das but it's not complete yet and it's very kadai and worthwhile for you to hear from your and from other adults what are the things that I should know about the different decisions that I could make in life. you're not yet at that full adult stage. Okay. So, we're going to talk today about a few unhealthy decisions that a person can make in life and we're going to elaborate a little bit on educating why a person should stay away from those things. Let's begin with the first one. The first one that we're going to talk about is vaping. And I'm going to begin with a question. How would you define Raise your hand. How would you define the difference in mechanism of action and how it works between smoking a cigarette and vaping? Yeah. >> Perfect. One is using electricity and one is using fire. That means when I light a cigarette, I'm putting usually a tobacco plant inside the flammable paper. there's usually a filter at the end and I'm inhaling the smoke through the fire burning the tobacco creating smoke into my lungs. Whereas with vaping, there's a small battery in the device that heats up a liquid. It vaporizes a liquid. It thereby turns the liquid into like a steam and that steam smoke steam we'll call it smoke for lack of better term goes into your lungs once again just like by the smoke by the cigarette except one's using electricity and one's using fire. But what's similar about them is that neither of them have anything to do with water vapor. And that's the first misconception that we want to talk about. There is no such thing as a vape device that's waterbased. Now, you might tell me that you could find some rare one that they made at some doctor's office or something like that. You might find some stuff that really aren't vapes that are just like aromomas. We could talk about that later. Is that safe or not? That's totally different from what we're discussing right now. We're discussing now what you what is often called an eig or an ecigarette, an electronic cigarette or a vape device. It's called vape because you are vaporizing the liquid that's in the device. The base of that liquid is not water. In fact, water vapor, if it was water, if it was just water, no flavoring, nothing else. One could argue that maybe it's even healthy for your lungs. Doctors sometimes talk about if you have a stuffed uh if you have a very bad cold and your lungs are hurting, maybe go into the bathroom, turn the shower on very hot, and steam up the room and breathe in that steam. If you go to certain exercise places, they'll have a dedicated steam room to breathe in the water vapor. It cleans out your lungs. It's water. But the vapor just means that the water is being vaporized. It just means that the water liquids being turned into like a steam. So we can have anything vapor. Water vapor not bad for you. But propyline glycol vapor bad for you, bad for your lungs. And the base of every single vape device is propyline glycol or a derivative of propyline glycol which from the 1950s has already been shown to be bad for your lungs. It decreases the coach, the efficiency of your lungs to transfer oxygen from the air into your bloodstream. We have these little tiny air sacks like microscopic the bottom of the lungs called alvoli. Hashem's miracles that we could take air and oxygen in the air and it gets into these microscopic little air sacks and it transfers into our bloodstream oxygenating our whole body, all our organs, our brain, everything. That's how it works. But when you vape propyline glycol vapor, which is what they all are, that's why I like so much to start specifically with this chemical, cuz we're going to talk about nicotine and other flavoring chemicals. Some vape devices have them, some vape devices don't have them, but every single one is going to have propyline glycol. And there's a very good reason for that. The reason is because if it wouldn't be propyline glycol, if it would be water, let's say, then what would it look like and feel like when a person vapes? Let's start with this. How many people here have ever seen someone vape? Raise your hand. Okay, so we have a few, maybe five people who've never seen someone vape or they don't like to raise hands at presentations. I have tricks to get around that, but I'll save that for later. So almost all of you raised your hand. If you would see somebody vape water vapor, the what it would look like is when you go out on a cold winter night and you breathe out, you would see a very thin, tiny, almost invisible stream of smoke. It's really the vapor of your saliva coming out into the air. It's almost imperceptible. But when people vape, what sells, what the market wants, what the consumers want is a very thick plume of smoke coming out of your mouth and they want to feel that smoke going in and out. So therefore, they use a chemical. It's actually a chemical that's perfectly safe to eat. They actually use propyline glycol sometimes to coat fruits and vegetables to preserve their freshness. But here to inhale, like I said, since the 1950s, we already know that it's damaging to the lungs. So vaping is not good for you. It's harming the lungs. It's decreasing the efficiency of the lungs to be able to transfer oxygen into our blood. And as people do it more and more, it damages and decreases that efficiency more and more. And it's not push it. The the evidence is still being researched right now. It's not push it at all. How long does it take to get back to where you were? Can you ever really truly get back to where you were, but how long does it take to at least undo a percentage of the damage? Takes a long time. It can take double and triple the amount of time that the purpose person was vaping just to get to a significant percentage back. So double or triple the amount of time that the person was vaping means they were vaping for 6 months. It could take 18 months just to scale it back 40%. And the research is still get getting these precise numbers more by studying people. You know the most biggest research on vaping just people who are vaping and not smokers just started in 2024 last year. So we really don't know a lot and we're seeing more and more people getting very sick when it comes to vaping. So ju just as a cute way to demonstrate what we mean when we talk about losing efficiency, we're going to do a quick exercise, but I'm going to begin this exercise with a challenge to all of you. I've presented this to many missifas across the country, many individual boys that I've worked with. It's probably close to counting all the groups, close to a thousand, maybe over a thousand now boys that I've presented this to. And I've said the following comment that no one has argued with me yet. I challenge anybody here to argue. If you want to raise your hand and argue in front of everyone here, that's up to you. Might be embarrassing to you, but that's up to you. I'm okay with that. If you want to wait till afterwards and come to me afterwards and tell me privately that you argue with what I'm about to say, that's fine, too. Even if you do that, I'll probably still give my presentation because I've done it with so many Bakram and and no one's ever argued. And here's the challenge. For anyone who's ever started to vape regularly, let's call it at least once or twice a week, a number of hits, a number of using their vape device. At least once or twice a week for at least six months. Every person who's vaped has admitted to me, "Yes, I can tell a difference between the way in which I was able to play sports or jog or run stamina wise before I started vaping and now. Yes, I can tell a difference. It has gone down. Now, I don't mean, oh, you're no longer the best basketball player." Maybe you were tremendously the best basketball player and now you kind of went down 20% and you're still the best basketball player. No problem. I understand. I'm talking about comparing you to you. You now after vaping for 6 months and you before you started vaping. You will notice a difference in your stamina, meaning in the efficiency of your lungs to be able to process oxygen, which is its main tacas. How sad. How sad that we would do that to ourselves. And for what? What are we gaining from vaping? Most boys I talk to eventually talk to me about how well, you know, it helps me with my boredom. So, you're bored and now you're bored continuing to do nothing except you're also damaging your lungs sitting there doing nothing. So, a cute way to demonstrate what what this means. What does this look like? I need a volunteer who's really good at whole. I actually purposely paused there to see if anybody would raise their hands before I explained what I wanted the person to be good at because some people believe that they're actually just really good at everything. So, I need somebody who's really good at holding their breath. Someone who thinks they could for sure do at least a minute, if not more, holding your breath. Anybody? >> Yeah. In the back. >> We got someone. We got someone. >> Okay. >> What's your name? >> What? Have a seat. Okay, we're going to have >> Get ready. Take a few deep breaths. Get ready. We're going to have Kim hold his breath. We're going to time him and let's see what he's able to get up to. On your marks. We're going to trust you on this. All right. You could hold your nose or not hold your nose. We'll trust you. On your marks, get set, go. Now, here's what's happening as he's holding his breath. The air is in his lungs. Air, by the way, is not 100% oxygen. That's why one of the first things Hutsala does, you can turn towards the wall if you need to. That's why one of the first things that it left or what? >> What? So, turn it this way. >> Let's try again. On your marks, guys. No, no making noises. On your marks, get set, go. So, one of the first things that Hot Solo will often do is they will administer 100% oxygen because that can make you feel a lot better. Just breathing air in the air is a pretty low percentage of actual oxygen. There's other gases mixed in. And what happens when you hold your breath is slowly your organs, every heartbeat, every muscle is using a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more of oxygen. And you start to feel like I need to take a breath. I need to take a breath to replenish the oxygen. And the question is, how much of that breath, how quickly and how much of it is going through those little microscopic air sacks into your blood to replenish the energy of your body? 42 seconds so far in counting. 51. Let's see if we can get to 60, but please don't faint. >> 60. >> Was that hard? Good. Okay, turn around. We're going to we're going to need you Okay, now I want you to catch your breath, catch yourself refreshed. Okay, now what we want to do, again, this is obviously not the same thing. In fact, this is a healthy thing to do. When a person exercises, they need more oxygen because they're using their oxygen faster for a good purpose. When you exercise, you're using the oxygen to grow your muscles, to make yourself healthier, to increase your stamina. And when you finish your exercise, by the way, exercise is incredible for mental health as well. When you finish your exercise, your body refreshes itself and the lungs go back to normal. In fact, they may even have increased capacity as you continue to build up exercising your body. The problem with vaping is that it's it's destroying the efficiency. And so it it it will decrease that efficiency and it will stick there even for a long time after you stop vaping. Even though with exercise everything goes back to normal, you're not out of breath anymore when you stop exercising. Back to normal. Caught your breath. Yeah. Okay. So stand up now. Let's see you do one jumping jack. Just one. Go ahead. >> Good. Stop. Okay. Here's what we're going to have you do. You might have, if they're going to make you laugh, maybe uh face that way. Here you're going to hold your breath and do jumping jacks. Here we go. What? >> I don't think I can do that. >> Just try. We'll time you for however long you can. Okay. Just start with holding your breath and start the jumping jacks. And as soon as you can't do anymore, just stop the jumping jacks. Okay. On your marks, get set, go. Okay. What's happening now is that the oxygen is being used up much faster in his lungs because of the movement. That's why people who do holding breath contests, they have to be very still, as still as possible to maximize how long they can hold their breath for. 20 seconds. Very good. Keep going. Just don't faint. 24 seconds. Round of applause. Okay. Thank you, Caim. So, the point here is obviously it's just a cute way of demonstrating that look at the difference. The same person with the same lungs, but it depends on the situation. In one case, he could hold his breath for 60 seconds. In the other case, 24 seconds, less than half. what's going on over here? Well, obviously in this case, it was healthy. He was doing exercise. But with vaping, it's literally doing that to your lungs in a in an extremely unhealthy way. So, we need to be thinking to ourselves, is that what we want to do? And for what? Why do we want to decrease our energy, our capacity, our stamina? And like I said, no one's ever challenged me on that. Let's talk about some of the other chemicals in vaping. There's flavorings in vaping. That's often what draws people through curiosity to taste these vapes which potentially have cautious issues. But let's focus on the health issues. There's one flavoring chemical called diaetal. And diaetal is in some vapes to give it flavoring. It's also a chemical that's safe to eat once again. And it's found in microwave popcorn. It actually gives many types of microwave popcorn their buttery flavor. And decades ago, there was an accident in a microwave popcorn factory where a huge vat of this powdered concentrated diaetal got into the air. People, the factory workers didn't know the danger, breathed it in, and it caused permanent damage on their lungs. scarring on their lungs and because it happened around popcorn they called the condition popcorn lungs. So diaetal causes this condition called popcorn lungs that causes damage to the lungs and many vape products have this in it. Again I focus first on the propyline glycol that is bad for your lungs because it's in every single vape. Now we're just adding insult to injury. Some of them are going to have these flavorings that are bad for your lungs as well. By the way, there isn't much regulation on vape products. So, it's very hard to know with confidence what exactly is in the ingredients. So, sometimes an a company could not write diaetal, but there's a little bit in it and it's very unhealthy to breathe. If you're wondering, can I take a very strong whiff of my microwave popcorn bag right when it comes out of the microwave? Yes, that's totally safe. That's a minuscule amount. We're talking about the concentrated form either in the powder in the factory or in the liquid in the vape that's dripped into the liquid to give it that flavor. So, there's another chemical, nicotine. Nicotine is a highly addictive chemical. Highly addictive. And we're going to talk a little bit about what does addictive mean? What does it mean to become addicted to something? What's an addiction? But just for now, it's something that has tremendous addiction properties to it, more than many other addictive substances. People will say coming off of nicotine is much more difficult than many other even more hard substances, which means that you're causing yourself to become addicted to a substance that's bad for you. It's bad for your lungs. In addition, there are many studies that it's a machus about adults, but for sure for teenagers, until the brain stops developing in its basic initial growth, who knows what age do we say that the brain is growing until what age? Yeah. >> 24, 21, >> 25, 25 we say now. We used to think 21, which is where some of those age restrictions came from. But we understand now 25 is when the brain stops in its initial basic growth state from birth, which means it's much more vulnerable until 25 on average. And nicotine, everyone agrees, is not good for the developing brain up till 25. After 25, it's a debate amongst the researchers. Before 25, nicotine is bad for the brain. So you have chemicals that are bad for your lungs. You have a chemical that's bad for your brain. and it's highly addictive. Now, some people say, "Oh, no, no, no. I only vape zero nic zero nicotine." And those are more rare and rare to find these days, but they exist. Once again, I've never met a person who stuck to that long term. Yeah, maybe if they experimented with vaping for a week or two weeks, maybe. But if they're going months and months and months or close to a year, the second one of their friends comes to them and says, "Oh, there's a really cool new flavor." It's like, "Oh, but does it have nicotine in it?" "Yeah, it has this amount of nicotine." Nope. That's over my line. Nope. I won't. Once you're vaping, and that's what you do with your friends, you're probably going to end up doing that. So, we want to be careful with that. Once I'm on the topic of friends, if you have any friends who say something like, "Oh yeah, you want to hang out with us, so let's vape. That's what we do." First of all, what a pathetic way to define a friendship. Second of all, if they you're not the one telling them necessarily, don't vape, don't vape. Maybe you are. Good for you. But let's say you're not. You're not telling them don't vape. Why are they telling you to vape? They can't respect the fact that you're choosing not to destroy your lungs and brain because you found such a silly way to really not but trick yourself into taking care of boredom. Why can't they respect you for that? Find some new friends. Anytime you see someone vape and they're like, "Oh yeah, if you want to hang out with us, you got to vape. That's what we do." You should look at them and say, "Thank you so much for explaining to me what kind of person you are. I now know that I don't want to be your friend." So, let's take a look at a little video. Woohoo! All right. Okay. >> Yeah. So the video obviously the video obviously ends on a cliffhanger. Is that little creature going to once again use the substance or not? Obviously it's very clear the implication is if it does it's finished. And this is exactly what substances do that are addictive. They're damaging. They're damaging like we said with vaping already to the brain and to the lungs. And the nicotine creates this strong addiction where slowly but surely the body craves it, the brain craves it and gets headaches without it until you do it again. So now it's no longer just this fun thing. It creates like a little head rush. It doesn't really create much, but now it actually is solving what you artificially created as a headache, as a pain. It's an incredible thing. People who smoke cigarettes, vape, nicotine, they'll often describe how they can ah relax now that they've had their nicotine. They're on edge. They're nervous. They're like a little hyper. And then they light up their cigarette and they relax. Relax on the bench with their cigarette. You know what's crazy about that? Nicotine in its chemical categorization is a stimulant. It actually unlike alcohol which we'll discuss briefly in a few minutes which is a depressant nicotine is a stimulant. It stimulates it actually makes us more hyper and on edge. Why are they feeling relaxed? Any ideas based on what I just said? Why would they feel relaxed? Yeah. You you would go when you went like that. Yeah, >> cuz you created a chemical imbalance >> and >> now you have to balance it out. >> Yeah. Even right and even better than that, you've created a need and now you can relax. It's like when we all take a breath right now, we're not finding the our breathing to be particularly relieving relaxing. But if we hold our breath and then finally take a breath. Okay. So we def we created this artificial need to breathe cuz we held our breath. They say a famous story of Reverend Victor Miller like that. That one time his kids or his grandkids I think came into his apartment or his house and they saw him with his head. You know how you can plunge the sink and fill it up with water. His whole head was in the sink. His face was in the sink underwater. And they came in. They say Zadei what are you doing? And he said, I wanted to once again appreciate the air that the rebon shalom gave us. That's what he wanted to reignite his appreciation. So what are we doing with nicotine? With any addictive substance, we're creating an artificial need. We were perfectly fine without it beforehand. We had no need. Everything was great. Now we have the need, the headache, the pain, and we use it to just simply remove that negative that we've created. what are we doing to ourselves? So, that's something that we want to think about when it comes to addiction and when it comes to especially the powerfully addictive chemical nicotine that is in these vape products. >> That's what I want to say on vaping. Let's move on to alcohol. Before I do, do we have any questions on vaping? >> Yeah. >> Is that chemically glycerin? >> Propyline glycol. >> It's it's connected to glycerin. Yeah. A derivative. Yeah. So, some of them will be glycerin. Okay. Good. So, let's move on to alcohol and we'll save some time for questions and answers in general at the end. So, anybody know what the chemical in alcohol is that affects the brain? >> Yeah. >> What? Okay, good. Chemically called named Eth. EOH is the chemical in alcohol that affects the brain and does what it does as we know what happens when a person drinks alcohol. The first thing to know is how much of this chemical is in the particular drink that you're going to drink. So that's why on bottles of alcohol, you'll see percentages. On a whiskey bottle, you might see 40%. On a bottle of beer, you might see 6%. On a bottle of wine, you might see 13%. The point is that it matters tremendously what kind of alcohol you're drinking in terms of how much ETOH are you putting. And ETOH is actually a poison for the body. The body works really hard to get rid of ETOH when you put it into the body when you drink it. So you sweat more. There's literally ETOH alcohol coming out of your sweat. You go to the bathroom more. If it's really too much, you could throw up. All in an effort to get rid of the alcohol. So if you have a bottle of beer, a glass of wine, the wine a little bit less than the beer, those could have the same ETO. So how many drinks did you have? Well, two bottles of beer could be two drinks. Two glasses of wine could be two drinks. A glass of wine, a bottle of beer could be two drinks. A shot glass, just one one and a half ounces of whiskey is already a drink. Two shot glasses, two drinks. So even though the amount of liquid you had is way less than the wine or the beer, you've had the same ETO as two glasses of wine or two bottles of beer. So really important to understand just the nature of how alcohol is produced in terms of how much ETO is there in the alcohol. Now here's a question. What's the first bad decision? Because ETOH impairs our judgment and messes with our senses, our coordination. What's the first bad decision somebody usually makes after they start drinking? >> First bad decision. >> Yeah. >> Say again. >> So, how much to drink? Exactly. Not driving. No, that is a very bad decision, but usually not the first bad decision. It can be, but usually the first bad decision is Yeah. what they say. >> Yeah, for sure. Eventually they start to say terrible things or silly things that they regret >> and it affects the memory part of the brain. So they sometimes don't even remember it and then someone someone shows them a video and they're horrified by it. >> Yeah. >> Dangerous stuffing on cars. >> Okay. So just in general it's impairing your judgment. But usually the first bad decision because of the impaired judgment is how much should I drink? So, somebody might be going into a place and they're thinking, "I'll have two drinks." That means two little shots of whiskey or two cups of beer or two smaller glasses of wine. That's what they're thinking. Then they have those two and they're feeling good from it and their judgment is a little bit unpaired. So, they say to themselves, "I'm feeling good. I might feel even better if I have a third and a fourth." And now their judgment's more impaired and they're feeling like a little bit better and they're like, "Oh, I'll feel even better if I have a little bit more." And they end up drinking way too much. Because that's the catch 22 of alcohol is that you can't rely on your judgment later to say, "Okay, now I'm finished." Not only that, but here's another interesting idea. How do how do chemicals get to our brain? So the answer is through our blood system. Our blood is the highway in the body. It brings whatever we put into our body to our brain potentially. So we already said oxygen or anything you inhale goes to the brain through the lungs through the little sacks and there's an ability to transfer the gas into the blood through those microscopic alvoli. But how does it work when you eat or drink? So it goes and take a pill, take an Advil. How does it work? It goes into your stomach. it starts to break down. In the stomach, there are blood vessels. In the intestines, there are blood vessels. And slowly, the chemical goes into the blood vessels once again to the bloodstream to the brain. Sometimes people, if they need an injection, it can go straight into a blood vessel. And so, if it's an injection, it will affect the brain instantly within one second. If it's through the lungs, it could take 7 to 10 seconds to go into the lungs, absorbed, and then into the bloodstream. If it's through swallowing a pill, it could take 30 minutes, 20 to 40 minutes till it gets broken down. Depends on how much food you have in your stomach. So why is it that many people will say that when they drink alcohol, especially whiskey, but really any alcohol, they'll start to feel the effects within like 2 3 minutes? Shouldn't it have to go into the stomach, get broken down like a pill, and eventually 20 to 40 minutes later, you feel it? Anybody know the answer to that? >> Yeah. So shouldn't it still has to go through the stomach >> like when a child takes liquid when when a child takes child's children's advil liquid it doesn't work within 2 three minutes >> work >> what >> work break down the pill >> okay so I could hear you say maybe it should take 15 20 minutes on the lower end of the spectrum but it should take like a good 15 20 minutes even though it's a liquid. Yeah. >> Placebo. >> No, they've done studies on this. Although placebo effect is a very powerful real effect and that's a very interesting conversation in and of itself. But no, this is having a real effect and they can measure the BAC. They can measure how much alcohol is in your blood through your breath and through other ways um already even just within a couple minutes. So, it's actually going in. Yeah. >> Alcohol fuel. >> That's an interesting idea. I've never thought about that. I don't think there's strong enough fumes that that that's enough to create a difference. But there's another easy answer. Yeah. >> What? >> How? That's the question. >> So the answer is the answer is that when you're drinking alcohol which has a strongness to it and it enters your mouth, your mouth has these tiny capillaries all over in the gums and the tongue and the cheeks, the back of your throat. You feel that burn when you drink the alcohol in the back of your throat, which by the way, no one enjoyed their first drink ever, right? So, if you choose to say, you know what, I think I'm never going to drink hard alcohol for the rest of my life cuz why should I? It looks like it tastes horrible. Great choice. Why should you persist through that so that now Oh, now I got used to it. No reason for that. You could drink wine arbicos maybe on Purum and that's it. Kdish. Kdish. She could drink for kdish, wine, shabas. Okay, in moderation, minimum amounts. And that's great. That's amazing. There's no need to get used to these things at all. And the same thing I said about vaping with friends applies here. Oh, no, no, no. This is what we do. Okay. See you later. See you later. So, the answer is that this harsh liquid that has this toxin, this ETOH in it, it seeps in through your mouth already. But here's something really important to remember. Only about 20% of the ETO is seeping in through the mouth. 80% is going into the stomach waiting to be processed. Which means when I have a drink and I consider to myself, how do I feel? I'm making a decision based on 20% of the feeling of that drink, not 100. Which means if I say I feel fine. Okay, a few more drinks. How do you feel? Fine. Okay, another drink. How do you feel? Now I'm starting to feel a little drunk. I should stop. What happens now? 20 minutes later, 30 minutes later, 80% of the other drinks you had starts to hit you and you're done. So we have to consider how the chemicals are getting into our bloodstream and the effect that they can have and how it works and the time delay involved. Okay. So the first bad decision is going to be how much do I drink? Then there's all sorts of other impaired decision bad decisions that can happen impaired judgment bad decisions. One of which is getting into a car either as the driver or just as importantly getting into a car back seat, front seat with your seat belt buckled doesn't matter where the driver had something to drink or you're suspicious that the driver had something to drink. And I'll make a statement right now that I know all the Rabbi Felheims here will support, which is if you ever call them and tell them, you could do it, your parents, too, but I bet I'm right. They could tell me if I'm wrong. If you ever call them and tell them, "I'm in a stuck situation. I need an Uber or I need a ride home and I'm nervous to get the ride that I was supposed to take because the person had something to drink." They will make sure to either pick you up or pay for you to be able to get home and not get in that car with a potentially drunk driver. Is that okay? Okay. The point is the point is that you're cared about and it is extremely dangerous. I am personally involved with a case that has tremendous publicity right now because unfortunately the sentencing for this person is coming up right now. I am personally involved with this person. I went to the city where he lives. I presented in a number of the yeshivas in that city on his behalf to try to help the Baham and to try to help him personally. He's potentially going to jail for years because he went Friday afternoon to take a few drinks at a friend's house and he was running late and he made a last minute change of plans that he's going to go somewhere for Shabas in the same city. He's just going like a 5 10 minute drive away. He's not getting on the highway and driving 45 minutes. And he got into an accident and he killed a person. And now he's potentially going to jail for years for manslaughter with a vehicle, a non-Jewish person. He killed a baker. A baker just like all of you. Wonderful bakar. But once you start drinking, those bad decisions start coming. So again, just a fun cute way. I need one volunteer who thinks they're really good at Oh, you know where I'm going already. Who Who's really good at walking a straight line? That should be pretty much most of you. Thank you. Who do we got? >> You want to do it? Come on. Okay, these are actually really expensive. These are like $200 a piece. They have been worked on to do their best. Obviously, it's not going to be exactly the same. But in terms of the visual impairment, because like I said, alcohol eh impairs all the senses and the memory. In terms of the visual impairment, this uh mimics the visual impairment of a BAC, it says here of about 0.17 to.20. By the way, the legal limit for driving is 0.08 BAC. Whatever that means, it's a certain amount of ETOH of alcohol running through your blood. And it's very easy and quick for the police officer or anyone to detect how much is in your blood with a breathalyzer test. You just blow into this machine and it instantly digitally reads out how much is in your system at that time. If it's 0.08 or above, you're in huge trouble. Even if it's 0.04 and above, they start to give you certain types of things on your record that it's not safe what you were doing. But they can't necessarily take your license away and make it like a felony crime until 0.08.08. You some people, by the way, it doesn't matter how big you are, how skinny you are, how small, doesn't matter. It matters how how your metabolism and genetics work. Some people they can literally have one and a half drinks and they're at 0.08. Now, when does it start to go down? It takes time. Usually by the hour. So, obviously every minute makes a difference. But usually, you could assume there's going to be a significant decrease every hour. But if you're at already not 08, but you're at 0.15, it could be hours until you go below 0.08. You never know. It's hard to know how many hours it will take to go back down. It's safe to say, you know, after 8 hours, generally any normal amount of alcohol consumption will be out of your system, but that's a long time. So, we're going to mimic the visual impairment. I want you to stand. Yeah, keep your glasses on. I want you to stand right here at the beginning of this line. I'm going to be the police officer. You are the truck driver. >> Okay, everyone. like space. Give space. Wait, wait, wait. >> Okay, let's see you walk a straight line. Go for it. Up. Stay on that line there. Try to stay on that line. Try to stay on that line. >> Now, imagine if the police officer was watching this. No, no. Come back this way. This way. This way. Right turn. Okay, you guys get the point. You get the point. Okay, stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. >> Okay. After after the presentation is over, I will have these available for whoever wants to try it. Please be careful not to touch the lenses. >> Can I be first? Can I have you first? >> I don't know how that's going to work exactly. We'll see. >> Okay. The idea is just again a cute way to portray the dangers of what alcohol can do to us. Would you want to be behind the wheel of a in a car where the person who can't walk straight like that is driving? In a car, we're making so many splitsecond decisions every minute of the drive. It's so so so dangerous. Okay, I want to finish off with one last video. It's a video that's been put out by a wonderful organization called Amuim. And I think it just again gives us a certain perspective on the dangers, the challenges, and what we want to be extra careful with when it comes to alcohol. Hopefully, we'll have a couple minutes at the end for questions and uh we'll finish up. Kyle, please. I believe on you. Where have you been? This is not okay. We're not finding All Why are you sticking my alone? >> Answer my sit back down. Are you sir? Just to wrap up real quick and we'll in an orderly fashion you can try the goggles. I'll wait I'll wait as long as you need for whoever wants to try them on. Give it 30 seconds or 20 seconds per person. So obviously extremely powerful message that this video portrays. We have to recognize what we're doing to ourselves, to our brains, to our bodies. The newest thing in this country, in many states, including this state, is marijuana. And how destructive that is to the brain. In fact, there are many people there are many people. You guys have part of uh you want to say part of the presentation or you have something to add or no? I'm saying because it can be very powerful depending on what you have to say about marijuana. I'm assuming it's like you know someone who Anyway, so the main the main chemical is called THC which is extremely psychoactive chemical. There are people who have had psychotic episodes from trying marijuana one time. one time bar. I'm sure it's not anything that's over here, but you should just know and be aware of what's out there and how dangerous it can be. And we want to be asking ourselves, why am I running to these things? Because of boredom? Because I feel empty? Why am I not feeling fulfilled in my life? What's missing in my life? And when we ask ourselves those types of questions, we can start to really think healthfully. Do I need to figure out maybe a different friends group to hang out with? Do I need to repair a relationship with someone in my family or outside of my family? Am I not feeling fulfilled in my learning or feeling a seook in that? And if so, why not speak to your about that? There's so much that can be done to help you feel great from the things that are truly rewarding in real life and avoid therefore the the need to get curious and then get hooked and addicted to these very unhealthy substances. So that's my message to you today. Please keep it in mind. Think about it with an open mind. Thank you so much everybody.