DOWNING shot after shot of vodka just hours after landing in New Zealand, backpacker Ashley King could feel herself becoming tipsy.

But the then 19-year-old wasn’t aiming to get drunk, these shots were a matter of life or death.

Ashley wasn’t in a bar but rather a hospital with medics administering the spirit to counteract the deadly methanol that was slowly killing the student.

Just 24 hours earlier on the tourist strip of Kuta – on the southern tip of Bali – Ashley had ordered a fruit-flavoured vodka-based cocktail.

Little did she know it would change her entire life.

“I drank a cocktail laced with deadly methanol,” says Ashley, 32 who now lives in Calgary, Canada.

“It made me go blind and from there my life changed forever.

“It was just like any other drink I’d been served during my trip and it tasted totally normal.”

Waking up the next morning Ashley admits she was tired and felt a little nauseous but had swerved the worst hangover symptoms as she headed to catch her flight to Christchurch, New Zealand.

But while Ashley was hangover-free, she didn’t realise the devastating consequences that night in August 2011 would have on her entire life.

She says: “When I got on the plane to leave Bali, I had no idea it would be the last time I would ever be able to admire the view from a plane window.”

When Ashley landed in New Zealand she found herself “feeling odd” as she made her way through customs.

She recalls: “I struggled talking to customs officials.

“I wasn’t making any sense and I felt like I was going to throw up.

“I tried to convince myself it was the effects of a long flight but I knew deep down something was wrong.”

She was feeling worse as every minute passed.

“I felt uncoordinated and ran to the toilet feeling sick,” says Ashley.

“I thought it might be a bug, I had no idea what was to come.”

Desperately trying to get herself together in the toilets, an airport staff member spotted Ashley and came to her aid. 

“I must have looked like a proper fright, the woman was so kind and offered to drive me to my hotel,” Ashley recalls.

She got to her hotel room around 5pm, less than 24 hours since she had left Bali, where she tried to sleep off her symptoms. 

When she woke up Ashley assumed it was the early hours of the morning as everything was dim.

“I thought my iPod had died because I couldn’t see the screen,” she says.

“I was annoyed because I thought the lamp I’d left on must have fused in the night as it was off.”

Ashley opened her door to use a communal bathroom and was greeted by what she thought was a darkened hallway.

“The hallway looked like all the lights were off,” she says.

“I could barely make out the floor, all I could see was a little light under the cracks of the doorways.”

After stumbling to the loo, Ashley realised she had locked her key in her room and visited to reception for a new one.

“I felt like I’d run a marathon getting back to my room from reception,” she admits.

“I’m an asthmatic and I couldn’t catch my breath. I thought I was suffocating.

Begged for help

She struggled back to reception where she begged for help.

It was then Ashley was hit by another shock when the receptionist explained that it was midday.

“I couldn’t believe it, all I could see was shapes and barely colour,” Ashley recalls.

“I was terrified.” 

With her vision getting worse by the second, the receptionist drove Ashley to the nearest hospital.

“I kept running my hands over my face trying to make myself see or just make sense of where I was,” she says.

“I was alone in a new country, and I was relying on someone I didn’t know to get me to the emergency room.

“I felt like I was suffocating, literally from my asthma attack as well as from the sheer terror of losing my sight.”

I was told that I could be blind forever or worse, I might not make it through the night

Ashley King

At the Christchurch Hospital the teen was questioned by doctors who asked her whether she had taken any drugs.

It wasn’t until Ashley’s blood tests came back that the awful truth of what had happened came out.

“I was told I had methanol poisoning and this was desperately serious,” Ashley recalls.

“I was told that I could be blind forever and I might not even make it through the night.”

Methanol is an industrial chemical found in antifreeze and windscreen washer fluid.

It’s not meant to be drunk by people and a mouthful of pure methanol, which is odourless and tasteless, is fatal.

In some Asian countries and other popular tourist destinations, methanol can be found in bootleg liquor – homemade alcohol with methanol added and sold at very low cost to unscrupulous bar owners.

It’s cheaper than ethanol, so black market alcohol sellers add it to spirits to save costs, before the counterfeit alcohol is rebottled and sold in shops and bars.

Between 2009 and 2014 British Government figures reveal three Brits died from methanol poisoning in Bali while most recently in November last year, British lawyer Simone White tragically died from suspected methanol poisoning at a bar in Vang Vieng, Laos, as a result of consuming contaminated alcohol. 

Simone’s best friend, another Brit Bethany Clarke, 28 was among the eight people, who recovered.

For Ashley, her poisoning meant she was now only experiencing blindness, but her breathing had become so bad she was begging to be intubated.

“The consultant refused and rang my mother,” she says.

“She’s a nurse and told them to do whatever it took to help me.”

‘Whatever it took’’ was Ashley having to drink more than five shots of vodka as rapidly as possible.

“It sounds crazy but one of the only ways to quickly limit the impact of methanol on the body is to make a victim drink alcohol,” she explains.

I burst into tears and cried hysterically

Ashley King

Ashley was told ethanol, which is in alcohol and found in higher  concentrations like vodka, acts as a competitive inhibitor to the methanol.

The vodka’s ethanol more effectively bound and saturated the alcohol enzyme in Ashley’s liver blocking the way the methanol attacked her body.

“It temporarily paralysed the toxic impact of the methanol in my system,” she says.

“I was handed plastic cups with orange juice and vodka and told to down them as quickly as I could.”

The results of what Ashley described as ‘the most bizarre drinking game ever’ was her breathing returned to normal, and she started to see shapes and colours again.

“I was totally wasted, extremely drunk and happy – I was giggling and laughing, and able to breathe properly and see again,” she says.

Ashley was immediately taken to the intensive care unit for the next phase of methanol poisoning treatment.

The teen was put on haemodialysis, which is a way to filter her blood removing the waste, salt, and water because her kidneys couldn’t cope with methanol removal.

The ICU team knew making her drink vodka was only a temporary fix to slow down the poisoning. 

They had no idea whether she’d be alive long enough to see her mum who was flying in from Canada.

“When I woke up in the ICU I was confused,” Ashley says.

“I didn’t properly understand the seriousness of the situation. I thought given the quick doctor-prescribed alcohol-fix I’d be off backpacking the next day.

“But as the hours wore on my doctor-induced a hangover began and fear crept in.

“I don’t remember much because the hemodialysis was actually cleaning my blood of toxins.

“I couldn’t see that well but I felt I was on the road to recovery.”

Three days after her farewell Bali cocktail and before her mum arrived Ashley was sober enough to be told by her ICU team leader that, despite earlier hope of improvement, she was blind and there was almost no chance her sight would ever improve from its current state.

Tim Stewart

In November last year, British lawyer Simone White tragically died from suspected methanol poisoning at a bar in Laos[/caption]

“I burst into tears and cried hysterically,” she says.

Finally with her mum by her side in hospital, Ashley underwent an intensive course of intravenous steroids to try and slow the swelling on her optic nerve which was causing the blindness as it had been ravaged by the methanol and its toxins.

She gained enough sight to identify colours and shade as well as shapes and a day later she could read for a short period of time.

“Initially I could see shapes, then things came back into focus but my sight didn’t last,” she says.

A few days later the words she was reading started blurring and the terrifying darkness and blindness returned.

There was nothing more hospital staff could do but send her back to the hotel with steroid tablets and directions to stay in darkness and see if there was an improvement.

I lay there and every day the nightmare got worse. I wasn’t just learning to cope with a ‘new normal’ of blindness but the loss of my future

Ashley King

For almost four weeks all Ashley could do was lie on the bed listening to the songs on her iPod, being helped outside by her mum and taken to the hospital for regular checkups.

“I’d sleep and dream in vivid colour and wake up to darkness,” Ashley says.

“I lay there and every day the nightmare got worse.

“I wasn’t just learning to cope with a ‘new normal’ of blindness but the loss of my future.

“The career I planned was dead, I thought I’d never go to university, never get married or have kids and I’d be bed bound and blind. 

“I thought my life was over.”

When Ashley and her mum finally returned to Calgary Ashley moved into her parents’ basement as her room was being rented out.

“My parents were amazing but by now my grief had reached the anger phase,” she says. 

“I hated the world, I was angry with everyone, and I was just awful to anyone in the house.

“I was alone in my loss of sight, the loss of the ability to put on my own make-up, shop for new clothes, cook my own food or even cross the street.

“It’s overwhelming.”

Slowly though Ashley admits her anger phase gave way to determination and denial.

“I had salt and pepper or snow blizzard vision. Doctors describe it as 2% sight,” she says.

I am your living walking reality check – please listen to what happened to me so it doesn’t become your nightmare

Ashley King

“It’s like your world is static on television, that’s all you see except for the occasional shape.

“I tried to carry on as normal and meet friends but when I tried to cross a road and got hit by a car,

“I luckily didn’t suffer any injuries but it served as a wake up call for me. I realised some parts of my life had to change.

“I came to the realisation that if I were to regain part of my old life I needed help to learn to live with my disability.”

Ashley received support from local blind awareness charities and learned to use a magnifying kit to try and enable her to read some words.

“I refused to have a guide dog, use a white cane, or wear dark glasses,” she says.

“I didn’t want special treatment. I wanted to be normal and treated normally.”

And with patience, Ashley was able to find her new normal.

Holiday warning

In 2013, two years after the methanol poisoning Ashley was backpacking again not just in Canada but across the globe.

She explains: “I’ve visited seven countries in South America, Europe, and India. I spent nine months in Southampton doing an exchange in January 2016.

“I achieved my goal of going to university and graduated with a degree in journalism.”

Ashley is now working as an actor and playwright having completed a Master Class Actor training program.

Ashley wrote a play STATIC: A Party Girls Memoir about her experience and it is now available as a four-part podcast on Spotify.

She also went on to find love with long-term boyfriend, Trent, 35, a goldmine project manager who she met online in May 2020.

“I have become a new me with a new normal and I am shining,” she says.

“What happened to me taught me to be braver. 

“While it should never have happened, I cannot give into the anger and depression which wracked me in the days and months after the poisoning occurred.”

Ashley is urging all Brits travelling to Bali and parts of Asia known for outbreaks of methanol poisoning to adopt a ‘DRINK BEER AND STEER CLEAR’ policy.

“Before I was blind, I loved my cocktails and spirit mixes,” she says.

“Now when I travel its beer or canned cocktails or canned wines – to ensure there has been no tampering.

“Now it’s my job to warn the millions of Brits  planning summer holidays this could also happen to you.

“I was not a silly teenager being wild on an overseas holiday. I was a careful and aware traveller.

“I am your living walking reality check – please listen to what happened to me so it doesn’t become your nightmare.”