Fact Check: Can drinking a mixture of honey and rock salt prevent alcohol addiction?

A social media post suggesting a home remedy to get rid of alcohol addiction is being widely circulated on social media.

The voiceover in the video suggests adding rock salt, and honey and then warming the water, apparently, by drinking the mixture you can get rid of alcohol or any kind of drug addiction.

Is this legit? Let’s find out.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found the claim to be false.

What is Alcoholism?

Alcoholism is the physical and mental addiction to alcohol. Prolonged use of alcohol will affect both physical and mental conditions, and there are also various social implications from associated behaviours. Physically it affects the digestive system, pancreas, nerves, and heart.

Through our search, we found a study titled, ‘Honey reduces blood alcohol concentration but does not affect the level of serum MDA and GSH-Px (malondialdehyde and glutathione peroxidase) activity in intoxicated male mice models. The study focuses on Honey’s hangover-reducing property. The purported study performed on mice states honey indeed could reduce blood alcohol concentration, which could mainly result from the effect of the fructose contained in the honey. In addition, the results of MDA level and GSH-Px activity suggested honey could not be a promising food supplement against alcoholic liver injury in mice.

It should be noted that the study does not talk about eliminating alcohol addiction but reducing hangovers or relieving after-effects.

Moreover, we could not find any scientific evidence to prove the home remedy useful.

We further reached out to Dr. S. Vijay Mohan, M.D, Sr. Consultant Physician, Care Hospitals & Professor & HoD, Dept. of Internal Medicine, to debunk the claim.

He said, ‘This is an unconfirmed and unscientific piece of information. These are all anecdotal pseudo-science. Such claims are merely beliefs that are unproven to date. If you want to follow this remedy, you must know the drawbacks first. For obvious reasons, you will have to try out this drink every day for months to work. This will for sure lead you close to Diabetes as honey may increase the sugar levels in your body if taken regularly. Similarly, black salt has more minerals therefore it may cause gastritis in some people. There is a risk of developing high blood pressure as well. Once in a while, it’s okay but daily consumption may cause ill effects on health in some people. ‘

‘You may consult your health practitioner if you are an alcoholic and want to get rid of it.’ He added.