MetaChat - One of my coworkers has just told me a very strange story.

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14 April 2010

One of my coworkers has just told me a very strange story. Kind of gross and possibly NSFW details inside. →[More:]He told me that one of the things you had to do in his high school biology class was drink your own urine. He was vague about the reason, but classed it right up there with having to dissect a frog, just something everybody had to do.

I have never heard of such a thing, but then I never took biology in either high school or college. How about you guys? Is this normal? It sounds extremely weird to me, like something I would read about on obscurestore.com. Coworker didn't seem to think it was the slightest bit unusual until he saw my shocked reaction. He's in his late 30s so this would have been about 20 years ago.

I fear googling the matter . . . .

post by: JanetLand at: 12:36 | 16 comments

I think he's bullshitting you.

Either that, or his biology teacher was a sicko.

posted by joedan 14 April | 12:44

I would be shocked if this were true. Kids, you know, they talk and someone's parent would have been outraged, so I doubt it would have happened more than once.

I remember being told in biology that urine was largely sterile, but picks up trash passing through the urethra, and that is has many nongross uses, but I've actually never heard that it's potable, except when distilled, like in Dune.

posted by crush-onastick 14 April | 12:53

Yeah, that sounds like complete bullshit. (But I remember hearing the whole sterile thing before.)

posted by sperose 14 April | 12:59

If somebody I didn't know well told me this story, I would definitely call bullshit, but I've known this guy for 10 years and he's really not the type to tell that kind of fake story, so I'm inclined to believe him. In fact I think I upset him a little and he's now starting to wonder what the heck might have been going on with his biology teacher.

posted by JanetLand 14 April | 12:59

I have heard about the tasting of urine by medical students. Apparently you can diagnose diabetes because it tastes sweeter.
It goes something like this: doctor tastes urine sample with his finger. Gives beaker to a student, tells to taste it. Student does. Then doctor reveals the finger he dipped in sample is not the same as he put in his mouth. Hilarity among other students ensues.

posted by charles kaapjes 14 April | 13:10

In my 10th grade biology class we had a lab where we did some experiments with our own urine. I don't remember exactly what we did (detect protein or sugar maybe), but it did not involve drinking it.

posted by DarkForest 14 April | 13:23

I once met some guys, many years ago, who were on a very "pure" diet, fruits and nuts, with some brown rice the only cooked item. They claimed to periodically drink their own urine for mineral recovery. I never saw them do it, though.

They're probably dead now, or on Wall St.

posted by danf 14 April | 13:24

We did tests on alleged urine samples. One of the tests was smell, and we thought that was gross enough. The next lesson they told us it was fake.

I can imagine a keen exaggerator spinning such a lesson as having been made to drink your own.

posted by cillit bang 14 April | 13:31

No. And I doubt any curriculum in the US would include that.

However, until the age of 17 or so, I was convinced that I once caught my dad eating cat food when I was 5 or 6. When I finally brought up this story, my parents were like, "Duh, it was chocolate chips. We told you it was cat food so you wouldn't throw a fit about not getting any. Gosh, I can't believe you remember that!"

I'm betting it was a bad prank and he missed the debriefing where it was revealed that they were just drinking brine, or something.

posted by muddgirl 14 April | 14:00

Or what cillit bang said.

posted by muddgirl 14 April | 14:01

Due to budget cuts in our district, we had to blend our social studies and biology classes together.

I remember not having to drink my own urine, but someone else's.

posted by Lipstick Thespian 14 April | 14:29

Heck no.

I never took biology in either high school or college.

Really? It's not a requirement to graduate high school?

posted by amro 14 April | 14:33

Really? It's not a requirement to graduate high school?

Not in Chesterfield County, Virginia in the late 70s/early 80s. Pushy guidance counselors tried to tell me it was, but it wasn't -- you just needed one science class after 9th grade, so I took chemistry instead. I didn't want to dissect things.

posted by JanetLand 14 April | 14:38

Also, dissection is no longer mandatory in schools, at least in California. An alternate project has to be offered, usually a research project on anatomy that would be completed during those class periods.

posted by muddgirl 14 April | 15:00

This is a stretch, but I remember going to some sort of week-long summer camp around the age of 12-14 where they had a big block of soil in a plexi-glass box in the cafeteria. We were told that some other group had poured urine in the top of the box and the soil filtered out all the stuff in it so that all was left was purified water. Then they drank it, I guess.

Maybe something like that?

posted by mullacc 14 April | 15:56

I remember hearing about this.

posted by aniola 14 April | 17:12

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