If You’re Gonna Get Injured, You Might Be Better Off Drunk

A long-standing piece of folk wisdom says that people who are intoxicated are less likely to sustain injuries from falls or impact accidents, even though they are more likely to have them. Now researchers have found another potential benefit from inebriation, mild or otherwise, for those in traumatic accidents: A study from the School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, finds that trauma patients who had alcohol in their system were significantly less likely to develop renal and cardiac complications, which are among the most serious and dangerous potential after-effects of trauma. Those who did develop them were less likely to die. The study appears to be sound: It analyzed outcomes of nearly 85,000 trauma patients over 10 years, at level I and level II trauma units in Illinois. The author of the article says the mechanism for the protection is not clear. He calls it an “interesting and potentially life-saving puzzle.”