14 DAY TRIAL // Nick Hess, a man currently living in the UK, spent years being inebriated pretty much most of the time, but not because he was terribly fond of wine or any other alcoholic beverage.
As doctors eventually figured out, the man would get drunk on the very food he ate. Things were so bad that, at one point, his wife and his friends started thinking that he was an alcoholic.
How does one get drunk on food?
Specialists say that Nick Hess suffers from a rare and fairly odd condition commonly referred to as the auto-brewery syndrome. What this means is that his body turns food into alcohol.
Specifically, the carbohydrates in dishes and treats like mashed potatoes or chips are converted into considerable amounts of alcohol that, once in the bloodstream, makes the man drunk.
“Every day for a year I would wake up and vomit. Sometimes it would come on over the course of a few days, sometimes it was just like 'Bam! I’m drunk'” the man told the press in an interview, as cited by The Drink Business.
According to the doctors handling his case, the man's guts hold about four times more yeast than the intestines of regular guys and gals do. It is because of this excess yeast that his body converts carbohydrates into alcohol.
For a long time, the man and even medical experts failed to figure out why he was getting drunk after almost every meal. It was Nick Hess' wife who put the pieces together and helped doctors solve the case.
Now that he knows that he suffers from the rare auto-brewery syndrome, the man makes sure to avoid carbohydrates and takes anti-fungal drugs. He feels much better and only gets drunk a couple of times a month.
Man in the US suffers from the same condition
Some time ago, in September 2013, a team of medical experts in the US published a report detailing the case of a man suffering from the same condition.
Like Nick Hess, this other auto-brewery syndrome sufferer has one too many yeast bacteria populating his guts. Because of these bacteria, he gets drunk when eating sugars and other things that turn into alcohol when they ferment.