Joe Yates
A woman has issued a severe warning to travelers after a terrifying experience in Bali left her temporarily blind and fighting for her life.
Ashley King was just 18-years-old when she flew to the tropical haven in Southeast Asia with her friends before starting college in August 2011.
However, despite flying halfway around the world to a paradise island, the Canadian explained how she couldn't shake the ominous feeling she had.
During the trip, she experienced theft, sickness, and discomfort - but it was a drink on her final night in Bali that would change her life forever - a single cocktail laced with methanol.
Advert
King said the cocktail, served in a plastic water bottle marketed as 'spill-proof for dancing', gave her no indication that something was wrong.
“Nothing felt different. I didn't feel any kind of differentness in like my feelings of like drunkness or the way my body was
feeling,” she told Inside Edition.
The next day, after flying to New Zealand, her symptoms began - exhaustion, no appetite, and eventually, terrifying disorientation. King continued: "When I woke up the next morning, the light was off and I thought that was a little funny. Like, why would someone turn my light off? And I went to the bathroom and I noticed the lighting in the bathroom was also really dim."
At first, she thought it was the lighting, but soon realized it was something much worse when she was struggling to breathe, that's when she was rushed to the emergency room.
Doctors initially suspected drug use but were shocked to discover high levels of methanol in her system - a toxic alcohol sometimes illegally added to drinks in parts of Southeast Asia to cut costs.
Methanol becomes deadly as the body metabolizes it, turning the blood acidic and damaging internal organs. However, ethanol, which is the alcohol normally consumed in drinks, can slow or stop that process.
Doctors saved her life with a bizarre treatment plan - heavy drinking.
"So what the doctors had to do was give me pure alcohol and get me drunk so that my body would stop metabolizing methanol," she explained.
"But they had alcohol and orange juice and they told me that I had to drink it incredibly quickly, that they couldn't give it to me through an IV, but that I had to consume it.
"So, I would finish a drink and then they'd pour me another one, and then I'd finish a drink and they'd pour me another one. And they were encouraging me to drink it faster - it was like the most absurd drinking game I'd ever played."
She continued: "But the drunker I got, the more I could breathe and the more I could see. I went from being in the dark, blind to being able to take in light again, to be able to see my doctors. My breathing went back to normal.
"But meanwhile they had called my family back in Canada and told them to get on the first flight to New Zealand because it was methanol poisoning and there was a very good chance that I wasn't going to make it."