One for the bizarre but true file. 48-year-old Vietnamese man Nguyen Van Nhat, 48, was taken to Quang Tri General Hospital on Christmas after allegedly downing alcohol containing methanol – a highly toxic form of alcohol – so doctors gave him an unusual prescription: three cans of beer.
Sounds strange – but while ethanol, the main ingredient in alcoholic drinks, won’t poison you unless you drink too much (we all know that feeling), methanol is sometimes found in homemade spirits and can cause temporary blindness and even death.
Because our livers break down ethanol – which is in beer – before methanol – throwing down a few tinnies can give doctors time to perform dialysis and flush the alcohol out of the person’s system before the methanol takes effect.
The ultimate ‘hair of the dog’?
Mr Nhat was reportedly given one can of beer every hour while recovering in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) – after 15 cans, he’d made such a miraculous recovery, doctors were able to discharge him and send him home to recover (with what we expect would be a mighty big hangover).
But could it be ‘fake news’? Emergency medicine registrar Matilda-Jane Oke told VICE it’s “absolutely plausible.”
“While ethanol is now the second line antidote for methanol poisoning, it’s still used in lots of emergency departments for this problem (although we typically wouldn’t use beer as the concentration of ethanol is pretty low in it). I think my ED still has a bottle of vodka lying around for when this happens.”
Beer (or vodka) as a lifesaver? I’ll drink to that.
