DRUNKARDS ON WATER

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28896, 16 May 1959, Page 13

DRUNKARDS ON WATER

“Hydroholics” In London

(Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, May 14 Seven women and two men who were chronic drunkards through drinking nothing but water had baffled the doctors at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, according to the “Daily Express’s’ science writer. Chapman Pincher The report said that after testing them for every likely ailment. two doctors at the hospital had decided they must be “compulsive water drinkers.” They were suffering from nothing more than the kind iot psychological upset which caused other people to become chronic alcoholics One woman had started “hitting the water bottle’’ when her husoand died Since then she had been drinking up to 35 pints of water a day. When the water drinkers were “loaded,” they had the symptoms of an alcoholic. Because of the dilution of their blood, their speech was slurred, they felt giddy, and they had feelings of being in a different world. Some had become bad tempered, suffered from headaches. and some were sick after “too many.” Like whisky drinkers, “hydroholies” might “go on the waggon” for months or even years. Then suddenly they would go on a “bender.” These relapses were often brought on by domestic strains according to a medical report quoted by Pincher. Most of the water topers began drinking water heavily after they were 50 In an effort to cure the water drinkers, doctors had tried drugs, and even electric shocks, but only one of the nine persons mentioned in the report was reported cured, and doctors were not certain that it was permanent.