• LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    So the treatment for methanol poisoning is ethanol I believe. As a dumb kid I always just figured this meant if you take a shot of moonshine, make sure you follow it with a known regulated alcohol and hopefully all would work out. Is that true? I have no idea… but I’m glad I never had to find out.

    • lietuva@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      same metabolitic pathway for methanol and ethanol. Methanol breaks down to formaldehyde and then to formic acid, which is super deadly. Those enzymes - alcohol and aldehyde dehydrogenases metabolize alcohols (methanol or ethanol). If you drink ethanol it will make your enzymes busy and (hopefully) methanol would not be metabolized into deadly formic acid before your body secretes them out. Similar thing happens if you drink antifreeze (ethylene glycol also alcohol.

      Theres actually super high affinity drug binding to those enzymes, so probably you wouldn’t get free shots in the hospital, but unfortunately you need a spoonful of methanol to become blind

    • frongt@lemmy.zip
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      4 hours ago

      At some level yes. But that “known regulated” alcohol might be fraudulent and also contain methanol.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        It could be, but American exceptionalism tells me it is highly unlikely to find a bottle of alcohol that hasn’t been strictly regulated by our very responsible and reliable government regulations.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 hour ago

          Yeah, it’s picking weird if you go to the store and buy a known brand of alchohol, and then it’s poisonous, too. Like, even in Africa, most alcohol is fine, which is why this is news.