Why I Don’t Miss Grapefruit Juice

Posted on September 20, 2004 in College Medications Psychotropics

Two of my medications forbid me to drink the juice of or eat of the grapefruit. Not that I miss it. When my pharmacist mentioned that it was proscribed while taking my chloresterol reducing medication, he added that it was personally no loss to him. It seemed to him that most men didn’t like grapefruit juice, that it appealed mostly to women. I am not going to endorse or reject his study because of the anecdotal nature of the data. Women are also supposed to favor broccolli more than men: it happens to be one of my favorite vegetables.

My adversity comes from two experiential factors: the presence of a grapefruit tree in our backyard while I was growing up and my participation in an alcoholism experiment.

The tree turned me off to grapefruit juice because it was my duty to go underneath it (it was a dwarf) and pick up the rotting fruit. I have a bad back and I am 6’3 1/2″ tall. Crawling does not come pleasantly to me.

Mere groveling in the leaves searching for rotting fruit did not alone turn me against the fruit. I took part in the alcohol study during my senior year in college. It sought to check the effects of imbibing on the memory. The ad in the newspaper asked for non-alcoholics which fit me just fine. I drank less than a cup of alcohol each week. When I went in, the graduate student showed me a series of slides. Then he poured me a tall and broad glass of grapefruit juice and an unknown quantity of nearly pure alcohol.

“We’ve found that the grapefruit juice masks the flavor of the alchohol well,” he explained as he handed me the huge tumbler. “You may be getting no alcohol and you may be getting the maximum possible for your weight.”

I had five minutes in which to quaff it. It went down with some difficulty. When you must empty 20 ounces of caustic fluid, your throat acts the role of guard and attempts to protect you. I did finish it. He then showed me more slides, which I remember finding extremely funny, though I can’t tell you the content.

Halfway into the program, I threw up. The student drove me home and I spent the rest of the afternoon throwing up some more. He never came back to see how I was doing. Perhaps he looked for my name in the obituary notices. I felt badly off and was not able to eat dinner that night.

My friends suspected that it was the grapefruit juice working its bitter sickly sweetness on me. It turned me off to alcohol other than the occasional binge at parties and completely off to the grapefruit.

To this day I will not eat the fruit or drink the juice, though the occasional candy can be slipped by. I love all other citrus fruits, but I have not forgiven the grapefruit, shining though it does with the good humor of the sun.

Fore more information on grapefruit/drug interactions, click here.