A 61-year-old Texan man who came stumbling into a hospital emergency room completely wasted assured everyone he hadn’t had a drop of alcohol — and it turns out he was telling the truth.
When nurses ran a breathalyser test, the patient had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.37% – almost five times the legal limit for driving in Texas — and he was accused of being a closet drunk. Eventually they agreed to keep him in hospital and monitor him for 24 hours. During the isolation, the man ate carbohydrate-rich foods only and ended up with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.12%; his body was in fact producing the booze due to a build-up of Saccharomyces cerevisiae — a common yeast — in his gut. When he ate or drank starch-heavy foods, the yeast in his belly fermented the sugars into ethanol and he’d get completely smashed.
☛ Another Rare Condition: Man Climaxes Whenever He Hears 007 Theme
Hard to decide whether this is a really awesome or really terrible problem to have. On one hand you can’t have a meal without ending up shit-faced, and that would probably harm your work life/family/friends. On the other hand you can’t have a meal without ending up shit-faced, and that sounds completely amazing — you can be drunk all the time and no one can even blame you for it. Not your fault you’re smashed off your nut at 1pm — you’ve just had Subway for lunch. You’re not drunk, just full.
