There could be an undetectable poison lurking in your vacation cocktail.
A Canadian woman is warning social media users after she lost her eyesight from sipping a stealthily toxic cocktail overseas — and she says she’s one of the lucky ones.
In December, seven tourists were hospitalized in Fiji after drinking tainted booze at a luxury resort bar. Just a month earlier, six young travelers, including one American, died in Laos under similar circumstances.
Each year, thousands are killed or sickened after unknowingly consuming alcoholic beverages laced with methanol.
“It smells no different and it tastes no different from the alcohol that we typically drink,” explained Ashley King, who lost her vision after drinking tainted booze while backpacking through Bali.
Methanol is a clear, flammable liquid that smells almost identical to ethanol — its drinkable cousin — but don’t be fooled: it’s highly toxic to humans.
“Just as little as 30 milliliters of it — a shot — can kill you, and 15 milliliters of it can make you go blind, have organ failure, liver damage and even brain damage,” King warned.
The chemical is commonly used in household and industrial products, such as gasoline, antifreeze, paint thinner and windshield wiper fluids.
But on the black market, especially in developing countries, it’s often dumped into bootleg alcohol to stretch supply and fatten profits.
That toxic mix is then sold to bars, hotels and other establishments, where it’s served to unsuspecting patrons.
‘No different from any other night’
That’s what happened to King, who was visiting southern Bali in 2011 on a gap year before starting college. She and her friend were at a high-end bar, where she got drunk on vodka cocktails.
“It was no different from any other night that I’d had when I was there,” she said.
Though she felt hungover the next day, she first suspected something was wrong about two days later when they arrived in Australia.
“I remember talking to the customs people and it was like I was drunk,” she told The Guardian. “I could not form sentences in a way that sounded confident.”
After landing in New Zealand, she went to sleep when they got to their hotel. When she woke up at noon the next day, she was confused to find her hotel room seemingly totally dark. But it wasn’t dark — there was something wrong with her vision. She also couldn’t breathe.
At the hospital, a blood rest revealed methanol in her blood. It was bad enough that doctors were surprised she’d even woken up.
“Losing my eyesight is the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through, and I deal with it every single day,” King said on TikTok.
The hidden danger lurking in your drink
When methanol enters the body, it turns into formaldehyde and formic acid — both highly toxic — which causes the blood to become dangerously acidic, according to the Methanol Institute.
Early symptoms can mimic an ordinary night out drinking: dizziness, nausea, vomiting, poor judgment and drowsiness.
But things can go from bad to deadly within 12 to 24 hours of drinking — and in some cases, more severe symptoms take up to 72 hours to surface, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While a normal hangover fades, methanol poisoning only gets worse. Victims may suffer severe abdominal pain, vomiting, vertigo, trouble breathing, confusion, headaches and blurry vision.
In more severe cases, blindness, seizures and coma can follow.
The Institute says methanol poisoning can often be treated if doctors intervene within 10 to 30 hours.
One surprising thing that can help? Drinking alcohol. While she was in the hospital, King says she was given several vodkas with orange juice to flush the methanol from her system.
“It was the most absurd drinking game I’ve ever played,” she said. “The drunker I got the more I could breathe, the more I was able to see.”
They also give her hemodialysis to filter waste from the blood, plus steroids to try to fix her eyes — but she was left with only about 2% vision, which she describes as “like snowfall or a TV screen.”
“I’ve never felt so alone in my life,” she said. “Three days ago, I had had my entire life ahead of me. And now you’re telling me that I’m blind?”
How to avoid the poison pour
While the problem is global, statistics show that Asia has the highest prevalence of methanol poisoning worldwide, with outbreaks commonly occurring in Indonesia, India, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines, according to Doctors Without Borders.
Since 2019, the group has tracked more than 1,000 incidents that have poisoned over 40,000 people and killed roughly 14,200. The fatality rate in an outbreak is often reported to be 20% to 40%.
Last month, the US Embassy in Jordan issued a warning after a rash of methanol-related deaths linked to locally made booze — and offered some tips for travelers looking to avoid similar fates.
Start by sticking to alcohol sold in licensed liquor stores, bars, hotels and established markets. Skip street vendors and informal setups.
If the drink is dirt cheap, there’s probably a reason — counterfeit alcohol is often sold for a fraction of the real thing. And don’t accept free drinks from strangers.
At the bar, watch your drink being made. If it smells off or tastes strange, ditch it. You should also avoid homemade liquor or local spirits.
When in doubt, especially in unfamiliar places, skip the hard stuff altogether. Prepackaged options like beer, cider, wine or duty-free liquor are generally safer and harder to tamper with.
Before cracking open any bottle, inspect it for signs of tampering — poor label quality, broken seals or obvious spelling errors are all red flags.
And of course, never let your drink out of sight.
While abroad, the office said it’s smart to sign up for travel alerts from your government’s foreign-affairs department or local embassy.
Keeping tabs on local news and knowing how to reach emergency services can also make all the difference, just in case that nightcap turns into a nightmare.
“This doesn’t need to happen. But it does, and not enough people know about it. Because of this, I’m sharing my story,” King said.
She’s also launched a Change.org petition to spread awareness and encourage education on the dangers in both schools and airports.
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