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preview the episode. WBWR Podcasts, Boston. This is On Point. I'm Deborah Becker,

in for Magna Chakrabardi. On a Thursday night in 2024,

Karen and Scott Evanson were at their church in Anoka, Minnesota, where Karen's a pastor.

After the service ended, Scott went looking for something to eat and found some pasta.

It was in the refrigerator at church. It was a leftover, and I just thought, I'm going to eat this. I'm hungry. Less than an hour after Scott ate the pasta, Karen says. He started acting drunk. It was incredible. Everybody else pretty much had left after church that night. He couldn't stand up straight, tried to sit him down, get him drinking some water. He fell, you know, he got up again to go through the water bottle away and fell,

and, you know, I had a few people who were left over and helped us get to the, get to the hospital.

At the ER, the doctors gave Scott a blood test. He was drunk. His blood alcohol content was

0.345. That's more than four times the legal driving limit. But Scott hadn't had anything to drink.

The MD there, the attending physician, said this makes no sense. He shouldn't even be talking, let alone even sort of walking or moving around. He should be in a coma.

Right. They couldn't believe that, and I certainly wasn't functioning well, but I was alert

and communicative. It seemed really, really bizarre. And this wasn't the first time that something

like this had happened to them. Scott was a social drinker, but for years off and on, Karen noticed

that sometimes, even when he hadn't had any alcohol, Scott would slur his words or seem

off balance. He could also get belligerent. Karen says when she told doctors, they often just

assume Scott was a closet drinker. When we would try to go in and get care, it was, he's just drinking, he's just this.

I mean, I can't even tell you that he went for a test.

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