Woman Claims Her Body Brews Its Own Alcohol. The Result? Her DUI Charge Was Dismissed

Imagine being charged with a DUI when it's been hours since you've had a drink, only to later discover that your body brews its own alcohol.

That's what happened to an upstate New York woman when she blew a blood alcohol level more than four times the legal limit. Just before Christmas in Hamburg, New York, a judge dismissed the charges after being presented with evidence the woman suffers from "auto-brewery syndrome."

"I had never heard of auto-brewery syndrome before this case"

But I knew something was amiss when the hospital police took the woman to wanted to release her immediately because she wasn't exhibiting any symptoms."

"That prompts me to get on the Internet and see if there is any sort of explanation for a weird reading," adds Marusak. "Up pops auto-brewery syndrome and away we go." attorney Joseph Marusak told CNN on the condition his client's identity remain anonymous.

"That prompts me to get on the Internet and see if there is any sort of explanation for a weird reading," adds Marusak. "Up pops auto-brewery syndrome and away we go."

Extremely rare condition

Also known as gut-fermentation syndrome, this rare medical condition can occur when abnormal amounts of gastrointestinal yeast convert common food carbohydrates into ethanol. The process is believed to take place in the small bowel, and is vastly different from the normal gut fermentation in the large bowel that gives our bodies energy.

First described in 1912 as "germ carbohydrate fermentation," it was studied in the 1930s and '40s as a contributing factor to vitamin deficiencies and irritable bowel syndrome. Cases involving the yeast Candida albicans and Candida krusei have popped up in Japan, and in 2013 Panola College Dean of Nursing Barbara Cordell documented the case of a 61-year-old man who had frequent bouts of unexplained drunkenness for years before being diagnosed with an overabundance of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or brewer's yeast, the same yeast used to make beer.