In Mexico City, being too drunk to keep on consuming is no longer an excuse. Don Roberto AKA Mr. Chispacito sparks the life back into you, bringing sobriety through shock treatment. <br /><br />For years the remedy for hangovers has been unsuccessfully searched for. An old wives tale applied by big drinkers is to use "the hair of the dog that bit you", a like for like treatment, that essentially says that drinking is the cure to drink induced maladies. In Mexico, this idea has been twisted and zinged. A synthesis of an old Mexican tradition of electroshocks fused with bar culture presents a solution to having one too many drinks. Men known in Spanish only as "El de los toques" (the one giving discharges), roam the streets where people gather in bars and offer for an average fee of 10 Mexican Pesos (€0.60) their cure. The treatment, which lacks scientific verification, apparently allows people to keep on drinking through electroshock therapy. <br /><br />Originally a past-time in and of itself, electroshocking has now become a mainstay of the bar scene in Mexico. The electroshocking can be done on an individual or group basis. Customers grab two metal conductors, which are the positive and the negative polarities, the operator of the electroshock device turns the knob gradually increasing the power, until the customer(s) cannot resist any longer and beg the operator to stop. When a current is sent through a persons body, the muscles contract in direct proportion to the amount of current being sent, making it almost impossible for the customer to let go of the metal pieces. <br /><br />The crude science merely requires six batteries and two cables. While it may be up for debate whether electroshocking actually cures inebriation, in Mexico, it achieves its goal: the way to drink till the last drop.
