If you've recently been arrested and charged with driving under the influence (DUI), you're likely worried about your future. While most DUI sentences don't carry stiff jail sentences (unless property damage or personal injury occurred), having this criminal conviction on your record could impede your job prospects or render you all but uninsurable. These penalties are designed to discourage dangerous or reckless behavior like drinking and driving. However, if you're certain you didn't drink to excess before getting behind the wheel, it's possible an unusual medical condition could be the culprit behind an elevated blood alcohol content (BAC). Read on to learn more about auto-brewery syndrome and how this defense could be raised in your DUI case.
Do you have auto-brewery syndrome?
If you frequently feel dizzy, nauseated, or fatigued, or if you suffer from headaches, dry mouth, or unpleasant digestive symptoms -- particularly after eating high-carbohydrate food items -- you may have toyed with the idea that you suffer from a gluten sensitivity or even celiac disease. However, these symptoms can often point to auto-brewery syndrome. This occurs when your body's small intestine ferments the yeast and carbohydrates you eat (rather than digesting them), producing a type of alcohol that is quickly absorbed into your body. As a result, you may become intoxicated after eating high-carb meals (and can feel the hangover effects the next day). Because this condition closely mimics some others, it can be tough to diagnose.
What should you do if you want to raise this condition as a defense to your DUI charges?
Fortunately, despite the rarity of this syndrome, there is at least one case in which a woman charged with DUI was deemed not guilty by way of her auto-brewery syndrome. Although this woman's BAC indicated she had consumed alcohol before driving her vehicle, this was not the case -- the alcohol in her body at the time of the DUI arrest was produced solely by the food she ate.
To raise this defense in your own case, you will need the testimony of a physician who can confirm your auto-brewery syndrome diagnosis and explain how this condition resulted in a high BAC reading at the scene of your arrest before you'd ever had a drop to drink. While this physician can testify at trial, you'll want to secure a written statement or summary of testimony well before trial and provide this information to the prosecutor. In some cases, this may be enough to have the criminal charges against you dismissed before trial, saving time, money, and aggravation.
It's also likely you'll need to show that your purported level of intoxication was due solely to the effects of your syndrome rather than alcohol consumption. For example, if you ate a high-carb dinner just before your arrest but also drank several beers, your resulting level of intoxication would be from a combination of these two factors, which could be insufficient to dismiss the charges against you. Proving this point can mean gathering witnesses who were with you just before your DUI arrest and who will corroborate that you weren't drinking before getting behind the wheel. If you ate alone but aren't a drinker, you may be able to introduce character witnesses who can confirm that you don't consume alcohol.
If your charges are dismissed, you'll want to take great care in the future to avoid inadvertently driving while intoxicated. Sticking to a low-carb diet or taking certain prescription medications (or even over-the-counter probiotics) designed to change the balance of yeast in your small intestine should help reduce the frequency of your symptoms and help improve your overall physical health.
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