She didn't have to drink to get drunk

Woman diagnosed with rare intoxicating illness in which food in gut is fermented into alcohol

- KEVIN JIANG

After two years of feeling intoxicated for days at a time, a Toronto woman is the first person in Canada to be diagnosed with auto-brewery syndrome.

It began with bouts of drowsiness. She would suddenly fall asleep while cooking or preparing for work. Then her balance became affected, leading to several nasty falls.

But when the now-50-year-old Toronto woman showed up to multiple emergency rooms with slurred speech, the smell of booze on her breath and alcohol in her blood system, doctors would dismiss her concerns — and even accused her of lying about her drinking habits, according to a physician who helped finally diagnose her disorder.

“The patient went to seven different emergency rooms and she was seen by three different psychiatrists” who agreed she did not meet the criteria for alcohol use disorder, said Dr. Rahel Zewude, a physician who treated the patient and an infectious disease and medical microbiology fellow at University of Toronto.

“So you can imagine how really distressing and somewhat traumatizing it can be to have so many physicians tell you you’re not being upfront about your drinking when you’re adamant that you aren’t drinking.”