# Water Vs. Alcohol

**URL:** <https://pheromonetalk.com/t/water-vs-alcohol/538>\
**Category:** Men's Pheromone Advice & Field Reports\
**Created:** [July 31, 2006, 9:38pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/water-vs-alcohol/538 "2006-07-31T21:38:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![MHarris](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/mharris/32/2107_2.png) [@MHarris](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/MHarris)\
**Post date:** [July 31, 2006, 10:28pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/water-vs-alcohol/538/2 "2006-07-31T22:28:40Z")

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> [@catlord17](#):
>
> I got some EW a while back, before I got myself LAM, and I diluted it in water. Someone suggested that wasn’t a good idea, and now I see why: It’s become a horrid stench unbelievable in any sort of way as “Essence of Woman”. Essence of dead woman, maybe. So today, I dumped it out, washed out the bottle with hot soapy water, and re-filled with isopropyl alcohol and 8 drops EW.
> 
> I know that’s not perfumer’s alcohol. But why use perfumer’s alcohol? I don’t understand what the difference is.

Smell and safety.

Perfumer’s alcohol is sort of like very strong vodka… very neutral odor. (unlike vodka, it does have a profoundly bitter taste, due to the “denaturing agent” added to deter consumption)

Ethanol is safe for application to the skin. Even if it absorbs, your body knows exactly how to metabolize it into harmless byproducts, like acetic acid (vinegar).

Isopropyl alcohol stinks in a very upleasant way, and is not safe for ingestion, and thus shouldn’t be thought of as safe for skin application.

I know, I know – it’s sold as a topical skin disinfectant at pharmacies. But that’s quite myopic. It’s really NOT safe. It’s an EXCELLENT skin penetrating agent, and you do get some into your bloodstream.

The liver metabolizes isopropyl into acetone (found in nail polish remover, for one), for goodness sake. Would you drink acetone, or put that on your skin? 🙂

That’s why it has toxic warnings on the side of the bottle, telling you not to drink it.

In alternative medicine, it’s even been implicated as being a food source for parasites. Have no idea if that’s true or not (or if it could even easily be proven), but it’s an unpleasant thought, nonetheless.

I’m not going to say that ethanol (perfumer’s alcohol and drinking alcohol) is completely safe, but recent research shows that it could be a valuable stressor. i.e., the relatively low damage it does, could actually be spurring your body on to

One very interesting study published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology shows that low doses of ethanol actually increased hippocampal cell proliferation and neurogenesis in mouse brains.

So, i.e., mildly “bad things” can be good for the body, because of the beneficial way the body reacts. It’s like exercise. Exercise is a _mild stressor,_ and we react to it wonderfully.

On the other hand, isopropyl alcohol is simply too toxic to put into this category. There’s no good that comes from the bad it does.

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