It seems like a pretty tall-tale defense – claiming that your body automatically brews its own alcohol when you get arrested for drunk driving. However, one woman in New York had the DUI charge against her dropped for exactly that.
It turned out that the woman, has an extremely rare condition called “auto-brewery” and it has been well-documented since 1912 when it was known as “germ carbohydrate fermentation.”
People with auto-brewery have abnormal levels of various kinds of yeast in their small bowel, such as Candida albicans and Candida krusei. There are already documented cases of this abnormal gut behavior in Japan.
In 2013, a 61-year-old man was even documented to have Saccharomyces cerevisiae in his gut after years of unexplained drunkenness. This yeast is also known as brewer's yeast and is used in making beer.
According to Joseph Marusak, the attorney for the woman who wishes to remain anonymous, his client was driving with a flat tire and another driver called it in as an emergency. The police pulled over the woman and was sent to the hospital after the breathalyzer got a 0.33 percent reading of her blood alcohol level. The legal limit in New York is 0.08 percent.
Marusak immediately knew something is not normal when his client was released immediately from the hospital because she was not showing any symptoms of being drunk despite the high reading of blood alcohol level.
But instead of taking her home from the hospital, her husband demanded more tests to be run to figure out what was going on. According to her statement, between noon and 6 p.m., she only had three drinks that day and the last one was at least an hour and a half before she was asked to take a breathalyzer test.
"Less than one drink an hour. We hired a local pharmacologist who said that a woman of her size and weight having four drinks in that period of time should be between 0.01 and 0.05 blood alcohol levels," said Marusak.
At the hospital, they were surprised that even many hours after her last drink, her blood alcohol level still registers at 0.30 percent.
In general, blood alcohol levels in women only rise by 0.025 to 0.045 percent with each drink.
Marusak had his client undertake numerous controlled breathalyzer tests by two physician assistants and another person trained in breathalyzers every 12 hours and had them analyzed by the same lab used by the prosecution.
The tests proved that even without drinking, his client would register as double the state's legal limit at 9 a.m. and triple the limit at 6 p.m. At around 8 p.m., which is around the same time she was pulled over by police, her breathalyzer test registers four times over the legal limit.
The woman is now undergoing treatment that includes a special diet of absolutely no sugar, minimal carbohydrates, and zero alcohol.
Although she has been cleared of the charges for now, Marusak says the prosecution isn't quite convinced that she has the rare auto-brewery condition. Adding that he'll know by the end of January if the DA's office will file an appeal.
