Everyone knows alcohol will affect your driving skills, and most people also know drugs like marijuana, and prescription drugs like opiates will affect your ability to drive too, but did you ever think that something like Viagra could cause you to be the focus of an arrest for DUI?
If you live in Washington State, the answer is yes, you definitely can be on the receiving end of an arrest for DUI if you’re driving under the influence of Viagra. That’s what happened to one man who told officers he had taken five times the recommended dosage of the medication when the bottle told him to only take one pill.
The man crashed his vehicle into the side of a parking garage downtown Seattle, and when police approached the car he told them he had taken some prescription medications but they weren’t labeled as dangerous for driving. Witnesses said he was acting “off” and he had struck the garage wall three or four times before he tried to stumble his way out of the garage.
At this point neither the police or witnesses knew what type of medication he’d taken, so they took him to the hospital for evaluation. That’s where he told doctors that he’d taken five times the recommended dosage of generic Viagra.
Viagra is a drug commonly used only for only for erectile dysfunction and it’s normally only taken right before you’d “need” it, so there’s no real explanation for why this man was in a parking garage crashing into walls when he should have, most likely, been engaged elsewhere.
He’s pleaded not guilty to his DUI charge, and he’s ordered to be on home monitoring where he can only leave for work or school. If he’s convicted of DUI in Washington for driving under the influence of Viagra, he’ll be monitored in a different way: with an ignition interlock on his car.
It’s hard to believe that someone could take too much Viagra and receive an arrest for DUI, but it’s just one more crazy DUI story to add to the long list of crazy situations people get themselves into thanks to alcohol and driving.