Imagine you’re a police officer. You spot a car that’s swerving all over the road. You pull the driver over and they’re clearly intoxicated. With slurred speech, they swear that they haven’t had a drop of alcohol all day. Would you believe them?
In 2024, a Belgian man was acquitted after he was cited three times for DUI within four years. Though his job at a brewery likely raised suspicions, he insisted that he hadn’t been drinking. Three doctors confirmed that he suffered from a condition called auto-brewery syndrome and was unaware. People with this syndrome carry microbes in their intestines that produce abnormally high levels of alcohol when breaking down sugars and carbohydrates.
Though it’s a rare condition, a woman was acquitted of her DUI charge in 2016 after doctors diagnosed her with the same syndrome. She had a blood alcohol level four times the legal limit.
