Now I Know More by Dan Lewis

alone, for twenty-four hours. He was given food like any other patient as medical professionals kept monitoring his blood-alcohol level. While people who had stopped drinking and eaten some food would sober up, the man actually got drunker. His blood-alcohol level went up 12 percent.
    The cause was a microbe known as Saccharomyces cerevisiae , more commonly known as “baker’s yeast” or “brewer’s yeast.” As the Environmental Protection Agency notes, not only is the microorganism typically harmless, but it’s also particularly useful. It has been used for centuries as a leavening agent for bread and a fermenting agent for alcohol. Saccharomyces cerevisiae infections are unheard of, as the microbe almost always passes through the human body without issue.
    In this case, though, something was amiss. As NPR reported, a significant amount of Saccharomyces cerevisiae had taken residence in the patient’s gut. The reasons why were unclear, but the result—termed “auto-brewery syndrome”—was striking. Whenever the man ate anything starchy—“a bagel, pasta, or even soda” are the examples NPR gave—the man was also feeding the Saccharomyces cerevisiae . The microbe churned through the carbohydrates and released ethanol as a byproduct. The man was brewing beer in his own stomach and getting drunk from it.
    The two doctors who discovered this curiosity published a paper on the topic in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine , but as others have pointed out, the doctors didn’t perform a controlled study nor did they have more than one person—and therefore more than one data point—to work from. Why the Saccharomyces cerevisiae took root in the man’s stomach remains unknown, but it’s treatable—an antifungal medicine called fluconazole will kill off the intrusive microbes. (Sorry—despite this, fluconazole probably won’t help you sober up after a night out.)
    BONUS FACT
    Craft brewing is apparently of particular importance to the people of the state of Oregon. How do we know this? Because in May 2013, the Oregon legislature passed a law making Saccharomyces cerevisiae the state’s official microbe, in light of the microbe’s work in creating beer. (Every state needs an official microbe, right?)

LIQUOR, SICKER
THE NEFARIOUS PLOT TO ENFORCE PROHIBITION
    The Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution went into effect in 1919, and early the next year Prohibition began when the Volstead Act became law. The sale, manufacture, or transportation of alcohol became unlawful and would remain illegal until 1933, when the Twenty-First Amendment repealed the Eighteenth. During the interim, however, alcohol-related illnesses and deaths were common. These maladies were the byproduct of speakeasies and moonshine, both of which were cloaked from the law, and therefore the injured were out of the reach of legal remedy.
    There was another cause of alcohol-related death during Prohibition: poisoning by the U.S. government.
    With alcohol illegal, Prohibition created a huge opportunity for organized crime to enter the market. The lucrative business of bootlegging (the transport of illegal alcohol) created an economic foundation for Al Capone and his gang in Chicago as well as other notorious criminals. Because the sale of all alcohol was illegal, it made good business sense for criminals to focus on hard liquor, which could be made from (legal) industrial ethyl alcohol and therefore had a large profit margin. The problem: industrial alcohol was basically grain alcohol mixed with a solvent or two, making it undrinkable.
    The bootleggers hired chemists to fix that, and the chemists succeeded. Before long, illegal but barely palatable booze, derived from industrial alcohol, was flowing throughout speakeasies and the like all across the United States.
    The Department of the Treasury, which was charged with enforcement of the