A man was charged with drunk driving after crashing his truck and spilling 11,000 salmon onto a highway in Oregon. Another one is secret recording by his wife, who believed he was an alcoholic. And in Belgium, a brewery worker was recently stopped and given a breath test, which showed his blood alcohol level was more than four times the legal limit for drivers.
Problem? None of the men had been drinking.
Instead, they were all diagnosed with a rare condition called auto-brewery syndrome, in which a person's intestines ferment carbohydrates into ethanol, effectively producing alcohol inside the body. can.
This week, a man in Belgium was acquitted of drunk driving charges – the court said he was not an alcoholic; his body is essentially brewing its own beer.
It's the latest twist in the spotlight for the strange disorder, which periodically appears in a series of headlines after a particularly odd or serious case. Most of the cases involved allegations of drunk driving, where people with the disorder, known as ABS, got behind the wheel of a car believing they were sober. Reactions to such defenses often range from admiration to dismissal, but medical doctors and scientists have long asserted that this strange condition exists.
This condition has been studied to some extent for more than a century. When a person with the syndrome eats carbohydrates, fungi in their digestive tract convert it into ethanol. This process causes all the usual effects of intoxication – lack of coordination, memory loss, aggressive behavior – when alcohol is not consumed.
Perhaps most worryingly, this disorder can cause blood alcohol levels in humans that could be fatal if achieved in the usual way. A woman was stopped in New York and suffocated after having a flat tire, measured 0.40, a level considered potentially fatal. While many people with the condition exhibit the more traditional effects of drinking, others are known to behave mostly sober, even when tests clearly show they are not.
In Belgium, brewery workers – according to his lawyer, a 40-year-old man who wished to remain anonymous was arrested by police in April 2022 and registered a blood alcohol level more than four times the legal limit. A month later, he was pulled over again and signed up for three times the limit.
This is the third time this man has been fined – he was pulled over and fined for drunk driving in 2019. He was unaware that he had ABS until his recent charge most recently – tests carried out by three doctors confirmed that he had the disease and confirmed his claim in court.
“I think somehow he felt relieved because he finally knew what was going on,” the man's lawyer, Anse Ghesquiere, said. Her client is now following a strict diet and receiving medical treatment to avoid flare-ups and control the condition.
Although only a few dozen people around the world have been officially diagnosed with the disease, recent research suggests that this condition may be overlooked in others.
