What kind of behavior is this?!

What kind of behavior is this?

Without going into all the details... Elderly male, late 60s, keeps a squirt bottle of green alcohol next to the toilet. Every time he pees, he squirts his wee-wee with the alcohol.

It's a little bizarre, but his family thinks as long as its not harmful, no one is going to try to stop him. BTW - It must be green alcohol. He gets upset if someone buys clear alcohol by mistake.

1 week ago
Momof2 - His family found out when he threw a fit about running our of green alcohol. The person who does the shopping assured him that some would be purchsed on the next trip. He then yelled that he couldn't wait a week to pee. This led to a discussion about WTH he was talking about. That's how others found out.

It's could be OCD, but due to his age, I'm thinking it's most likely a therapy for enlarged prostate, swollen or inflamed urethra. It could also be caused by an obsession over cleanliness, if he's using the alcohol to "disinfect" himself after performing what society considers to be a "germy" act. But since you didn't mention whether he obsessively cleans anything else, I can't say.

For a chance of a more accurate diagnosis, you really need to provide more information. His insistence for that specific kind of alcohol is a good clue, so you'd need to learn what exactly is special to him about that kind of alcohol. You mentioned it's green, which makes me think it's the common type of isopropyl alcohol with added methyl salicylate (artificial wintergreen aroma) and green color added. You can find this stuff in any grocery store and pharmacy. That the man won't use another kind means that alcohol is significant for some reason. Without further information, my guess would be that he likes the astringent, cooling feel of the wintergreen on the skin. Lots of men his age suffer from a lot of possible conditions with their plumbing (think Viagra), and there exist thousands of folk remedies to address those problems. If he has an enlarged prostate, and has difficulty urinating, it's possible that particular alcohol functions similarly to Icy-Hot type products to make it easier for him to do his business. Regular isopropyl alcohol probably wouldn't do that. So, could be that, could be OCD, or maybe he just prefers his unit smell like wintergreen.

Note: If he's actually spraying the alcohol *inside* his urethra, that's a different story, and most likely incredibly painful. Something like that would need to be addressed, as it could cause inflammation and other problems for the guy. -Kel