Driskill Mountain
Louisiana
June 2012
It is hot, very hot, the kind of hot that relentlessly sucks the water out of your body. It is 102° hot. If you are a hiker, you know that you hike whatever the weather. It’s what you’ve got. Especially when you are from Pittsburgh and you don’t get to Louisiana very often. Especially when you are a Highpointer from Pittsburgh and this might be your only chance to bag the high point of Louisiana. It’s 102° here in Louisiana, and you’ve got a hill to climb.
As we sweat our way up the trail to the summit, I casually mention to Lisa that in an emergency, if you are ready to begin dying of thirst, you can drink your own urine, and that will keep you alive. In spite of the high yuck factor, it’s better than death. Right?
Here’s a scenario. You’ve been out in the woods for four days and today is your last day. It hasn’t rained the whole time you are out here and today is no different than the previous three days: hot. You have run out of water. You thought trailhead, and therefore your car and access to fresh water, was closer than it is. You are feeling parched and there is a chance that you are lost. You wonder mightily where you are going to find water as the streams in this part of the forest are dust dry.
There are three places where you know for sure that there is liquid. One is on your body in the form of sweat and another is in your body in the form of urine. The third place is the location you most want. Water might be running underground, somewhere.
If this becomes an emergency, when your thirst becomes unbearable and you begin to dehydrate, now what? Your sweat is useless in terms of rehydrating you. Underground streams are iffy and often difficult to find, especially in sufficient quantity, and it can take a lot of dehydrating digging to get to the water. What’s left? Maybe you can drink your own pee.
Wait. What?
Actually this is a provocative question that sometimes comes up around the campfire, maybe not as often as the topic of Michael Jackson or Seinfeld, but it makes for some entertaining speculation, this topic of urophagia, the oral consumption of urine.
Can you drink your own pee? Answers to this question are varied, amusing, rarely definitive but often spoken with the voice of authority, even though most of us can’t imagine doing such a thing.
You will hear, “You will die if you drink your pee.” You will hear, “What are you gonna do? Pee into your own mouth? You are disgusting.” You will hear, “Are you kidding? I would choose death first.”
About urine: It is important to stay hydrated while on the trail. (It is important to stay hydrated all the time.) Trail wisdom tells us that it is easy to know whether you are sufficiently hydrated; we have a built-in gauge. When you do as do the bears, which is to say, when you pee in the woods, look at your urine. What color is it? Clear or light yellow is good. Dark yellow or getting near brown, you need to be drinking more.
My hiking buddy Martin and I were doing three tough days on the Mid-State Trail in Pennsylvania, packs on our backs. On day two, it happened that we both had to, y’know, pee. I went into the woods this way and Martin went into the woods that way, close enough that we could have conversation, but not so close we could monitor the color of each other’s pee. That’s a trail intimacy that doesn’t interest me.
Standing there, y’know, peeing, I idly mention to Martin, “I think I need to hydrate more. My pee isn’t entirely clear.” Martin says, “I think I need to hydrate more too. My pee isn’t entirely liquid.”
Some years ago, my hiking buddy Kelly was climbing a mountain in the western US of A. This was about the time that water bladders, or hydration packs, were first being marketed. The hydration system is an arrangement where you fill a plastic water “bladder” and secure it inside your pack. A flexible hollow plastic tube snakes out from your pack, traverses your shoulder, back to front, and clips on to a shoulder strap where you can conveniently reach down with your lips, bite on the valve in the mouthpiece and suck water.
Kelly was trudging up around 11 000 feet on one of the beautiful, high altitude Arizona mountains, occasionally stopping for a breather and a suck of water from the tube of her water bladder. Lesser informed hikers on that mountain watched Kelly admiringly and asked her, “What is that? Oxygen?”
But still, we wonder, can you drink your own pee? I ask some people who are familiar with the physiological workings of the body: doctors and nurses. Can you drink your own pee? Here is what they say…
Doctor Marty…z
My go-to medical guy when dealing with matters of my own health.
Doctor Marty says, “Uric acid makes up about 3% of urine. While uric acid is highly toxic — that’s why your body gets rid of it — a 3% solution has been sufficiently watered down so as not to poison you if you drink it. Yes, once you get past the wretched taste, it will keep you alive.”
Doctor Dave…
Dave and I have hiked together numerous times. Dave hunts deer in the Upper Peninsula with bow and arrow.
Doctor Dave says, “The intake of many non-poisonous liquids will serve to hydrate you, but in the case of urine, you don’t want to recycle it too often. In other words, don’t drink it more than two times or you will begin to suffer ill effect, possibly worse than dehydration. Try to get to fresh water asap.”
Yeah, we know that last part.
Nurse Inger…
We once had a lot of fun dating.
Nurse Inger says, “Get away from me.”
Doctor Rod…
Half the time we’ve spent with each other has been in the woods. Rod has explored the concept of ultralight backpacking and devotes a lot of energy to strategies of staying young.
Doctor Rod says, “Your urine doesn’t necessarily need to be clear to indicate that you are sufficiently hydrated. Moderately yellow is actually okay. If you drink so much water that your pee is clear, you could just put it back in your water bottle. If it looks and pours like motor oil, then you are in trouble.
“On the other hand, dehydration isn’t such a bad way to go. Your organs shut down, but not painfully. You just kind of drift off and you’re done. Much better than starving to death.”
Yeah, but…
Doctor Len…
Len is another hiking buddy and a retired surgeon. He therefore should have at least a passing knowledge about the inside workings of the body.
Len says, “You might be desperate enough to drink your pee, but let’s try a different approach. The ultimate goal is to hydrate yourself enough to stay alive and alert. Putting urine into your gut will allow your body to process the liquid and will serve to hydrate you. But even a small quantity might make you sick, not to mention the disturbing kaleidoscope of feelings you will have when you taste it.
“The upside is that you don’t have to drink your pee to get it back inside. The best way to hydrate would be with intravenous injection or drip but that’s impractical in the field. But despair not,” he proclaims. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” I hate that phrase. So does my cat.
This one will set your imagination to twinkling. Doctor Len says that we can get the fluid into our bodies by introducing it anally. What?
“Pee into your water bottle. It’s okay, your bottle is already empty and your life may be at stake. That’s why you are doing this. Take your hydration hose and connect one end to your upside-down bottle and the other end… Well, as they say, shove it up your ass. Really. Raise the water bottle above the level of your body and slowly allow the urine to flow through the tube and into your gut, like an enema. This way you avoid the skanky taste and you lessen the likelihood that you will get sick. Your intestines will absorb the liquid and keep you alive.”
Hey, this is fun! What else can I do with my pee? What’s the gold standard here, so to speak?
We make urine. We don’t even think about it, our bodies just do it. The bonus is that urine has so many potential purposes. To wit…
. Worse come to worse, and this is pretty bad, we can use fresh urine to clean open wounds.
. In cases of heatstroke, the U S Army Field Manual recommends dousing the victim with urine. Which is to say, pee on the person. Or pee on some kind of cloth and put that on the victim’s body. Or rather, pee on some kind of cloth and put that on the patient’s body. At this moment I should point out that in first aid and rescue circles we use the term “patient” rather than “victim.” More hopeful.
Further, the Manual is clear: Urine is on the DO NOT drink list. So is seawater and blood. I’m pleased they added the part about the blood.
. After the German chlorine gas attacks during the first World War, allied troops were supplied with masks of cotton pads that had been soaked in urine. The theory was that the ammonia from the urine in the pad would neutralize the chlorine. What are you guys, crazy!? This was a very bad strategy.
Ammonia and chlorine? Breathe the vapors from this mixture and your eyes will water, your throat and nose will burn, you’ll cough and probably have difficulty breathing. You may experience chest pain, fluid will fill your lungs and you will commence to vomiting. Heck, you might just die. Reminds me of a first date I once had.
. During World War I, the Vickers machine gun favored by the British Army heated up so much it would require dousing to reduce dangerous temperatures. If water wasn’t available — you guessed it — urine was used to, as they say, cool their guns.
. You can find streaming video on line where you can watch idiots drink their urine. “Streaming video.” Is that the best description at the moment?
. Back in the days when we identified the year with negative numbers, there were fads of urophagia. It was considered to be healthy; claims were that drinking urine could whiten teeth and improve your own flowing life force. Uh-huh. You could say that if you drink from your own cistern, urine would refresh your chi, or life force. I would never say that.
. The French word for urine is urine. Yes it is. Oui oui. Get it?
. Flushing every time you use the toilet is for the city, where water is invisibly routed into your home in unlimited quantity and ready at any moment to lay waste to waste, with a flick of a handle. You can pee into that vessel and with a simple tug on a handle it all goes away, along with a fair amount of otherwise clean water. Not so out in the non-linear world. Water is often too precious to just flush it away. So here is a poem to help us remember when to flush when visiting, say, a campground…
If it’s yellow,
Let it mellow.
If it’s brown,
Flush it down.
