It sounds almost like a headline from The Onion or another source of satirical news: But it’s a true, a woman in New York got out of a DWI because her body produces its own alcohol, due to something called “auto-brewery syndrome.”

Making your own alcohol isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds, however. In here case, the syndrome is likely due to “a severe yeast infection in her intestines.” According to Tech Insider:

The extremely rare condition is caused by the unlikely presence of a high concentration of yeast in someone’s stomach. That yeast consumes sugar and converts it into alcohol inside the gut itself. That alcohol can than be absorbed by the intestines and make its way into the bloodstream, where it can intoxicate the patient in question.

It can be triggered by eating carbohydrate-heavy foods, including french fries. It’s a very rare disorder; estimates of how many people there may be that suffer from it in the United States number in the hundreds. However, multiple cases have also been reported in Japan.

The woman (whose name has remained anonymous) is a 35-year-old teacher from western New York. In October of 2014, she was pulled over and blew a .33 BAC, well over four times the legal limit, after a 911 tipster reported that she was weaving on the road.

However, despite her high BAC levels, she claimed she had only consumed three drinks, and had stopped drinking well before getting on the road. According to her lawyer, after she was charged, she spent over $7000 working with a medical specialist to prove that she suffers from the disorder. However, the disorder is still poorly understood, and a hard explanation to swallow for why a driver may have had a BAC at over four times the legal rate.

There have been a few other confirmed cases, including a 61-year-old man in Texas in 2013 who started “getting drunk out of the blue.” The doctor who treated the DWI defendant from New York has stated that he’s treated about 10 people with the disorder over the last few years. But given that the disorder seems pretty rare, it’s doubtful that we’ll be seeing too many others successfully use auto-brewery disorder as a defense to get out of DWI charges–the woman in New York may be a rather isolated incident.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Woman Gets Out of DWI Because of “Auto-Brewery Syndrome” appeared first on Law Street.

It’s been another week, and yet again, people have done incredibly stupid, funny, and bizarre things and gotten in trouble for them. Check out the weird arrests of the week in the slideshow below:

Not Just Salad Dressing

Image courtesy of Mark Hardie via Flickr

Andres Josue Leal Valle was arrested in New York after he was stopped at JFK airport. He was found with 11 pounds of cocaine, but they were in a rather interesting place–packed in bottles of oil and vinegar. That would make for a truly bad salad dressing, so I guess we should be thankful it was discovered.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Weird Arrests of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

It’s the weekend, so time to check out Law Street’s weird arrests of the week. Give a look at the slideshow below:

Don’t Drink and Fly

Image courtesy of Bernal Saborio via Flickr

Jeff Rubin, 27, from Oregon, was arrested after he urinated on other passengers during a flight. He was, unsurprisingly, intoxicated and arrested upon arrival.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Weird Arrests of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

ICYMI, check out the Best of the Week from Law Street, including banned beach drinking in Florida, vaginal probes at colleges, and a look at America’s public health spending.

#1 Beach Drinking Banned at This Popular Spring Break Destination

Spring break is a college rite of passage synonymous with beaches, bikini-clad babes, and binge drinking. However, it’s no secret that excessive alcohol consumption can lend itself to a dangerous environment for these vacationers, including reckless behavior, violence, and sexual assault. No one knows these kinds of dangers better than the residents of the spring break capital of the world, Panama City Beach, which is why their city council members have voted to make a change next year by banning beach drinking during spring break. Read full article here.

#2 Lawsuit Claims Valencia College Exams Included Vaginal Probes

Two female students from Valencia College studying medical diagnostics have recently filed a lawsuit claiming that their classwork at the school crossed a very serious line. The suit alleges that they were forced to endure invasive vaginal exams in front of all of their classmates. Read full article here.

#3 Are We Spending Enough on Public Health?

Treating people when they’re already sick is like beating back invaders who have already breached your defenses. In either scenario, prevention through good defense saves money, time, and lives. But when it comes to boosting our nation’s wellness defenses through public health spending, America falls short. Read full article here.

Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post ICYMI: Best of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

Sports stadiums are great places for brawls to break out. Or fist fights, alcohol induced screaming matches, or a whole litany of other inappropriate behavior. So, in some cities with NFL teams, police are coming up with new ways to try to stem the violence. In Seattle, for example, members of the police force are going to go undercover as opposing teams’ fans. At last night’s game against Green Bay, Seattle officers planned to wander around in Packers’ garb.

Apparently this is not a new thing — officers have shown up to games a few times before dressed as opposing teams’ fans. In a post-season 49ers-Giants game last year, for example, there were undercover cops in Giants wear.

The move is an interesting and pragmatic one in a sport that has a history of fighting almost as old as the NFL itself. It’s not hard to find examples of two teams’ fans getting into it — take the nasty fight between fans of the San Diego Chargers and Dallas Cowboys last October, for example. Two groups, each wearing their teams’ jerseys, brawled in the stadium parking lot after one woman slapped a man for reasons still unknown but probably related to the game that had just let out. The fight escalated until people were hit over the head with beer bottles in a confrontation that lasted for a total of 25 minutes. In a follow up with the police after the fight, local news station NBC 7 learned that there are arrests after pretty much every Chargers home game.

The fights don’t even always happen during games that really matter. A few years ago, after a preseason game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders, two men were shot in an apparent sports-induced altercation.

It’s pretty easy to understand how football games, and other sports for that matter, can end in blows. In addition to freely flowing alcohol, there’s something about sports that can get people so completely riled up. Christian End, a professor of sports fan behavior at Xavier University, explains the phenomenon, pointing out that it’s easy to get swept up in a crowd. As End explains it, “the anonymity of large crowds can afford some fans the opportunity to act in a way that they typically wouldn’t because there’s less accountability and less fear of repercussion.”

There’s few solutions to the problem of fan violence at football games, and the ones that do exist seem entirely unlikely to be implemented. For example, given that alcohol is often fuel for these fights, it would make sense to ban alcohol at sporting events, or at the very least install some sort of drink limit. But given the huge profits made from selling alcohol at football games, I highly doubt any NFL team would ever comply.

So, here we are, with undercover cops dressed up as fans from incoming teams. Well, sort of. They’re undercover in the sense that they are not easily distinguishable as cops, but in Seattle the police are being very forthright about their plans. The operation is an attempt to deter violence in the first place — a message to Seahawks fans not to attack that jerk in the Packers shirt, because he may be able to turn around and arrest you. If it goes well, and the officers are able to respond accordingly to any violence that does break out, it’s a model that would be pretty easily implemented throughout the country at games that are high risk for confrontations. Fights will probably still happen, but hopefully some would-be brawlers will think twice.

—

Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Jame and Jesse via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Undercover Cops Coming to an NFL Game Near You appeared first on Law Street.

College students are kind of stupid. As this groundbreaking and Pulitzer worthy (LOL, just kidding) Fox News piece showed us recently, they like to get drunk and high and occasionally both.

Because, you know, Spring Break is a new thing. No one has ever done this exact piece before. Never.

And apparently we are constantly finding new ways to get messed up. Every couple years there are new, crazy trends to get all screwed up. Now these trends that media outlets inevitably have a mental breakdown over are rarely legitimate or widespread. Instead, they tend to be the product of one or two weird and unfortunate hospitalizations or arrests.

One recent particularly disturbing/amusing/curious trend is “butt chugging.” For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s exactly what it sounds like. This is much too civilized of a forum for me to go into too much depth, but if you’d like more information, you can read an account of some brave soul attempting butt chugging here. A kid at University of Tennessee was hospitalized with a BAC of .4 after supposedly butt chugging at a Pi Kappa Alpha party. The frat was eventually suspended from campus. If you need a quick laugh, please watch the press conference their lawyer held. It’s hilarious. This poor man with a law degree had to say the word butt chug about 398792 times.

In a similar vein, apparently vodka tampons are a thing. I will not describe the process of this trend, because again, I would assume it’s self-explanatory. Again, also probably not a widespread trend, but it’s still something for our concerned news outlets to get their panties in a proverbial bunch about.

And most recently, teens are apparently smoking coffee, although why anyone would demean my beautiful and vivacious friend coffee that way is unknown. Here’s a first hand account of someone trying it. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t go well because smoking coffee is incredibly stupid.

OK, so some Americans, particularly some young Americans, are incredibly stupid. They make reckless decisions and experiment with dangerous ways to do drugs and drink alcohol. OK. But my question is, does this happen in other countries? Because here’s my logic — you would think this happens in the countries that are similar to us. Canada, right? The UK? Australia? France? Spain? Anywhere?? Does anyone else butt chug?

From what I can tell the answer is no. Now don’t get me wrong, European kids party. They party hard, probably harder in some cases. But they don’t appear to butt chug, or use vodka tampons, or smoke coffee grounds — maybe because they have more respect for the glorious caffeinated mecca that is coffee.

Brb, Starbucks run.

So why are we so stupid? Well, there are a few possible reasons. Let’s start with the least probable.

Possibility #1: We’re dumber than kids in other countries. 

I highly doubt that this could be true. The United States has only been around a couple of centuries, and we’re a melting pot. I don’t think there’s any sort of gene, or lack thereof, that makes American kids look at a beer and say, hey, maybe I’ll shove that up my ass in an attempt to get drunk more quickly.

And if that is the case, Americans are going extinct anyway, so this article is for naught.

Possibility #2: The American culture of consumption. 

As Americans, we consume things. A lot. We are 5 percent of the world’s population, but use 24 percent of its energy. On average, Americans have larger house sizes than Europeans by quite a bit — we average about 2,300 sq. ft.; the French are at about 1,216 sq. ft.; and British houses average 818 sq. ft. We also consume a lot more food than our European friends. In general, we have a culture of consumption in the United States, that isn’t absent from other countries, but is certainly not quite as pervasive.

And that culture of consumption kind of tells that moderation is bad. Think back to that Fox News “expose” on Spring Break goers. Those kids were unabashedly telling the camera that they wanted to get as messed up as physically possible. They were drinking cheap alcohol, obviously not for the taste, but for the pure and unadulterated purpose of getting hammered. They were consuming to excess, because that’s the culture of those Spring Break trips.

But that still doesn’t answer my question. Why does this happen here, but not evidently, other places? I mean obviously Europe has Ibiza, and giant music festivals, but in searching, I can’t find a single example of butt chugging, or vodka tampons, or anything else that ridiculous. I also can’t seem to find any concerned media exposes on young drinking culture.

And that brings to me to my most likely theory:

Possibility #3: It’s a product of the US drinking age. 

Anyone who’s been to Europe can see that drinking is, for the most part, a facet of the culture. Depending on where you are, having a beer or glass of wine with dinner is not uncommon, even if you’re a teen. Teens are eased into it, and allowed to test their limits. Unlike in the US, there’s no awkward period of time between 18-21 when you’re a full adult in every way, except for the ability to order a glass of wine with dinner. Drinking isn’t treated like some secret exclusive club.

I think that’s why ridiculously stupid things like butt chugging happen. Drinking underage in the US emphasizes getting drunk as cheaply and quickly as possible, because there are limited resources. If an underage kid is going to a bar and wants to drink, they know that they will have no access to alcohol there, so they take as many shots as physically possible before going to make sure that they’ll be on the same level as others. There’s no emphasis on learning what you actually enjoy, or learning limits.

Now there is danger in lowering the drinking age, of course. But I think the issue we have is one that resides in the murky intersection between law and culture. Our culture teaches us to consume as much as possible, but our law restricts said consumption until a seemingly arbitrary birthday. I think there’s value in the European approach.

So next time you meet a European, please ask, “Have you ever butt chugged?” I bet you 5 bucks they’ll just look at you like a crazy person, and probably file a restraining order.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Dear American Underage Drinkers, Why is Butt Chugging a Thing? appeared first on Law Street.