[footfootfoot]

Thought we needed a thread like this because, as the kids say, reasons.


Lately I've been having awful cotton mouth during the day despite drinking lots of water. That combined with not having had my teeth cleaned for over a year (I was due after the pandemic started) has led to horribly rank breath and me needing to brush my teeth and gargle with Listerine a few times a day; a workable solution until I get to the dentist.


Yesterday I was on a tear getting work done on the house (see what's making you happy) and was overcome with rankness because I didn't break off to brush my teeth soon enough. Still in the zone and not wanting to lose momentum I saw in the shop a bottle of Everclear that I use for dissolving shellac. (that should have been a clue)



Everclear is an ideal solvent because it is nearly 100% alcohol. It's nearly 100% because that's how they sell it, 198 proof, but also because alcohol will absorb water from the fucking air.


I know this. I know that you add alcohol to gas to removed water from it. I know that you can give parts an alcohol bath to drive off any residual water after cleaning in a parts cleaner. And yet...


Reasoning (as if) that Listerine uses alcohol to kill germs, and Everclear is alcohol it's just like Listerine without the menthol and food coloring, so I'll give my mouth a quick swig and rinse with Everclear. Problem created.



The initial pour was unnoteworthy and I swirled and swished it about in my mouth. Then the burning started and I spit it out, pausing briefly to consider what might happen if I lit a match so I could spit fire. Probably bad things worthy of a youtube challenge video so I moved on to consider what the actual I had just done.


My mouth got instantly so dry I couldn't swallow or even open it up. The dryness was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. I think I sprained my salivary glands trying to re-hydrate it.



After a few moments the dryness abated somewhat then the fiery burning sensation kicked in; it wasn't a Vindaloo kind of burning it was more like razor blades coated in broken glass that had been heated up in a skillet. I ran into the kitchen and started drinking and rinsing with water and the pain mostly subsided and left the inside of my mouth feeling wrinkled like I had been eating nothing but salt for a week. The inside of my mouth felt weird and woolly; I'm sure I had just killed all of the skin cells inside my mouth and not just the germs. I brushed and scraped everything inside my mouth to try to debride it and that helped a bit.



Should I have followed up with a hydrogen peroxide rinse instead? Who knows? For the rest of the night the area where my upper lip meets my gums felt like it had been cut and tasted of blood. Today it still feels a bit wrinkly and woolly where my gums meet my lips.


0/10 Shellac solvent isn't anything at all like mouthwash.