Doctors sometimes order an alcoholic beverage for a patient, as an appetite stimulant or sleep aid. It doesn’t happen much, but I can assure you that every hospital pharmacy has some beer, wine, or even stronger stuff on hand, and many nursing homes do too. We logged it in the C-II file, along with morphine, cocaine, OxyContin, etc.
Incredibly, at one time it was even used intravenously to stop preterm labor. :eek: It worked, too. I’d read about it, and a pharmacist who had dispensed it for this reason said that the next day, the women obviously needed treatment for hangovers.