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Comment by edgineer | Hacker News Reader

Doctors sometimes prescribe alcohol and in these cases pharmacies do fill these orders.

Yes, because if you're a hardcore liver-failure-in-three-years alcoholic, quitting cold turkey will kill you, and if you're in the hospital for some other issue, they will make sure you get some alcohol.

Doctors don't prescribe it to people who aren't already putting away 50 drinks a week.

I like your point that doctors prescribe things that are necessary to patients, alcohol is one of those things, and there are clear and well-understood examples of when it is medically necessary for a doctor to prescribe and administer alcohol to a patient.

Example.

Poisoning by methyl alcohol.

Ethyl alcohol is ok’ish (the regular stuff), while methyl alcohol can make you blind or dead even in small amounts.

I believe ethanol is not actually often given as an antidote for methanol poisoning in modern times. It does work as a competitive inhibitor of alcohol dehydrogenase (i.e. occupying the enzyme to convert ethanol to acetaldehyde, slowing the conversion of methanol to formaldehyde and on to formic acid, which is not eliminated quickly and causes metabolic acidosis) - allowing the methanol time to leave the body through excretion, and limiting formic acid levels. However, other drugs like fomepizole also inhibit alcohol dehydrogenase with lower toxicity than ethanol.

I can bet they quite more often prescribe marijuana, or if you like - CBD or even THC in some cases. And historically, I've been told, the amount of morphine prescribed quite outpaces the alcohol prescriptions, right?

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