Mark Leyner - Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini

Action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger often find themselves faced with an interrogator who uses a truth serum to get the hero to reveal his secrets. In the movies, our heroes are able to resist these potions and hide the truth. Hiding the truth seems to also prepare action heroes for a successful career in politics.

They seem pure fiction, but truth serums do exist. Barbiturates such as sodium amytal and sodium pentothal were first used as truth serums in the early twentieth century. These drugs inhibit control of the central nervous system and were used by physicians to help patients recover forgotten memories or repressed feelings. They are also used for patients with suspected conversion disorder, a condition in which psychological problems produce physical symptoms.

An “amytal interview” is performed by administering a small amount of this drug intravenously. The drug produces a state of drowsiness, slurred speech, and relaxation. This condition makes patients more susceptible to suggestion, allowing the potential to uncover repressed feelings or memories.

Today these interviews are seldom performed. The “truth serum” will not necessarily make you tell the truth. Patients may lose inhibition but will not lose all self-control. Therefore, they are still able to control their behavior and lie. Studies have shown that during these “amytal interviews,” patients often demonstrate a distorted sense of time, show memory disturbances, and have difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy, so the line between fact and fiction becomes even more blurred.

We’ve all seen it in the movies. The bad guy grabs someone from behind, places a rag over the victim’s nose and mouth, and instantly the person slumps to the floor.

This isn’t exactly how anesthesia is administered in a hospital, but many people wonder if this rag trick is possible, and if so, what is the chemical on the rag?

Chloroform and ether are the two possibilities. In the mid-1800s, both of these chemicals were being used as anesthetics. Chloroform is the more common substance discussed in these cinematic knockouts but actually doesn’t work as swiftly as portrayed. It usually takes several minutes to induce a state of unconsciousness with chloroform. Chloroform also causes a lot of side effects including nausea, vomiting, and skin irritation.

Ether was discovered in the 1500s and later used as an anesthetic. It was also used to treat respiratory ailments such as asthma. Ether became popular and turned into an early party drug that people used to get high. Unfortunately, ether can’t deliver that dramatic takedown either.

Another option for the quick movie knockout involves secretly dissolving a pill in a drink. This is often referred to as “slipping a mickey” or a Mickey Finn. Spiked drinks in this sense contain Chloral hydrate dissolved in alcohol. Chloral hydrate is a sedative that is used in hospitals today, often to sedate children prior to procedures. Other modern movie knockout options are the so-called date rape drugs: GHB, Rohypnol, and ketamine.

In the movie Spinal Tap, Eric “Stumpy Joe” Childs, the second drummer in the eponymous band, died in 1974 from choking on vomit. As the movie reveals, “The official cause of death is he died of choking on vomit. It wasn’t his own vomit. He choked on somebody else’s vomit.”

This event is said to have been inspired by the death of John Bonham, the drummer of Led Zeppelin. In 1980, Bonham was found dead after a drinking binge. He apparently had passed out and choked on his own vomit.

This is a true and potentially dangerous possibility with excessive alcohol intake. Death from alcohol abuse most often occurs from aspiration. Aspiration is defined as breathing the vomit into the lungs, which causes the victim to essentially drown.

The 1976 TV movie Sybil was based on a book of the same name written by Flora Rheta Schreiber. Both of these accounts were based on a real-life patient and psychiatrist but recently there has been controversy over whether the real Sybil actually had multiple personalities at all. Other movies like The Three Faces of Eve, Psycho, and Me, Myself Irene have also dealt with multiple personality. Once this disorder was popularized in the movies, the number of diagnosed cases increased dramatically.

Multiple personality disorder is no longer the term used to refer to this disease. It is now referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). DID is defined as a disorder where two or more distinct personality states or identities alternately control or take over a person’s mind. This disorder is a result of many factors, most commonly severe emotional stress.

You can scare the pants off someone or be scared shitless, scared stiff, or scared out of your wits. But is it really possible to be scared to death?

There is significant evidence that psychological and emotional stress can increase the likelihood of a heart attack. So it makes perfect sense that the stress of fear could lead to sudden death.

In The Hound of the Baskervilles, a famous Sherlock Holmes story that has been adapted into film several times, Sir Charles Baskerville dies of a heart attack after being frightened by a ferocious dog. An article from the British Medical Journal in 2001 entitled “ The Hound of the Baskervilles Effect: A Natural Experiment on the Influence of Psychological Stress on the Timing of Death” examines whether this phenomenon is actually true. These researchers wanted to show that people are more likely to die of a heart attack when they suffer extreme emotional stress, so they focused on the death rate on the fourth day of the month. In Japanese and Chinese cultures, the number four is associated with death and is feared and avoided. This is not true in other cultures.

When the death rates between Japanese and Chinese Americans and white Americans were compared on the fourth of the month, the researchers found that death rates on this day peaked in the Japanese and Chinese but not in other groups. So it seems as though you can be scared to death — by the number four at least.

Even if you don’t end up choking on your own vomit, alcohol is still pretty dangerous. The consumption of even small quantities of some types of alcohol, such as methanol or rubbing alcohol, can be fatal.

With ethanol, the alcohol that is found in vodka and wine, for example, too much can certainly lead you to the pearly gates. People often wonder how much alcohol can be life threatening. In medicine, we use the term LD 50to describe the dosage or amount of alcohol that causes death in half of the population. The LD 50for alcohol is equal to a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.4 to 0.5 percent. That would be about four to five times the amount required to make you legally drunk.

To give an example of how much drinking this means, a hundred-pound person would need to drink about ten drinks in an hour to threaten his or her life. Our bodies tend to protect us from alcohol-related death by vomiting or passing out. The danger occurs when you puke and faint at the same time. If you are brought to the hospital, we will protect your breathing and wait for the alcohol to move out of your system. Stomach pumping for alcohol abuse is a myth since you do that yourself when you puke. Oh, and occasionally when it is a slow night in the ER, the staff will bet on who can guess your blood-alcohol level, just to pass the time….