Then one of the participants drank some contraband Scotch and became
unusually, violently ill. He confessed his transgression to the
researchers, and follow-up studies confirmed his account: WIN 18,446
didn’t mix well with booze.
WIN’s side effects sounded familiar to Amory. In his clinical practice,
he’d occasionally prescribed Antabuse (disulfiram) to patients who
struggled with alcohol addiction. The drug blocks a form of the enzyme
acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH), which helps the body metabolize
alcohol;
Can't be that bad. Though, that still means that there could be other interactions not described?
Yes, but it might be so much smaller a market than a male contraceptive without that problem that the company decided it wouldn't be able to recoup its development costs.
> 30% of american adults don't drink at all
> the top 10% of drinkers consume 74 drinks per week (over 10 drinks per day)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...
Wow, that's horrifying.
I think it depends on the severity of the response, and the context of use. For severity, it's not clear in the article but it seems like the adverse response was quick and quite severe. Another problem with reactions to alcohol: let's face it, many sexual encounters are surrounded by alcohol. For many people, for better or for worse, alcohol and sex go together. You want people to take your contraception, but if you get immediately ill whenever you drink are you going to be taking that pill like clockwork? Sex is important, and, frankly, people take a lot of risk for the sake of having sex. Often that means choosing to drink alcohol, not always, but often.
It's complicated, and I know I sound like someone trying to rationalize doing the least amount of work, but the truth is you want male contraception to be easy because men could potentially be using it their entire lives. Female oral contraception works, but it likely would not pass medical trials today precisely because of many of the side effects that occur when one takes it.