A man who was served an incredulous 56 shots of alcohol – leading to alcohol poisoning and death – was allegedly never cut off by the bartender, who now faces murder charges in the patron’s death. The Frenchman in his 50s was at a bar in Paris and was taking part in a drinking competition.

Writes AFP News via Yahoo: “French police opened an investigation on Wednesday following the death of a man in his 50s after he downed 56 shots during a drinking competition. The man, who was not named, was attempting to beat the previous record of 55 shots in a bar in Clermont-Ferrand in central France on Friday.”

According to police, the man sucked down 30 shots of liquor in under 60 seconds. “He swallowed around 30 glasses in the space of a minute,” the police source said. The man was taken home, but his daughter, 21, said she had to call paramedics after he began convulsing. He died the next day after falling into a coma and suffering a heart attack.

“My father died by his own hand but it was the bar that served him the drinks,” the daughter said of the drinking game gone wrong, adding that the bar owner encouraged her dad to keep going and told him “only 12 to go” as he was nearing the record.

The bar owner told a different story, indicating he told the man he was drinking “much too fast” and stating he advised him to stop after the first few dozen shots.

“When you are the owner of a bar and an order has been placed, you cannot always verify who is drinking what,” commented the bar owner’s attorney Renaud Portejoie. “We cannot stand behind every customer.”

According to vice.com, a “fatal overdose,” amount may be hard to measure, since each person has a different tolerance as defined by their height and weight, along with the strength of the alcohol they are drinking, among other factors.

Still, to some, even low blood alcohol levels can be dangerous. “Zero-point-three percent to 0.4 percent, and you're in the danger zone. People have actually died at those blood levels,” said George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.”

Plugging in the numbers to a blood-alcohol calculator – 56 shots over approximately 15 minutes and a male weight of 200 pounds (using a default state of New York) – shows this man’s BAC may have been over 1.1 percent.

http://www.examiner.com/article/man-56-shots-of-alcohol-served-by-french-barkeep-charges-filed-man-s-death