Well, my oldest niece is lucky to be alive

[thewayne]

She's 17 and will be a senior in the Fall. She's an A student, extremely smart, weighs about 100 lbs and has, according to her and as far as my sister knows, never drank. She went to a party to watch the last Sun's game and didn't call back when my sister sent her a text message and left a voice message (sister had been having a bad feeling about alcohol poisoning for three weeks). At 15 minutes to midnight or so, they got a call from another girl on my niece's cell that the niece is in the ER. No further information is provided, and subsequent calls to the cell are unanswered.

They get to the ER and find out she has alcohol poisoning. Her BAC was slightly over 0.24.

She went to a party and remembers having one drink, then she remembers nothing until she woke up in the ER. She didn't know where she was, but she figured it out quickly enough as she'd been cut out of her clothes and had a catheter inserted. I'm fairly confident that the drink was drugged. Without going into a ridiculous amount of story, police broke into the house that the party was at and subdued the kid who wouldn't let them in, and found my niece unconscious, on the floor, in a pool of her own vomit.

At the hospital, the doctor told my sister that there was nothing further that they could do, and either she would recover or she would die. My sister was not happy at the doctor's casual demeanor. They'd strung up some IV lines and given her some potassium, I'm guessing that her electrolytes were probably seriously out of whack. The doctor said that her BAC would only go down about 0.03 per hour, so they were in for a long night.


Well, she survived. This was on a Friday night, she went home from the hospital Saturday and basically was a vegetable for the weekend. She had finals on Monday and did OK, pulled B's where she is normally an A student. My sister and her hubby locked down the rules somewhat tighter and forbade parties for her, especially with the kids who were directly involved in this particular party.

Here's the kicker: the kid who was hosting the party? (his parents were out of town) My niece has known him since the 4th grade.

The boys involved actually had the guys to go to my sister's house and apologize. I would probably have been polishing my shotgun.


She's fully recovered, but I'll bet it'll be a long time before she drinks alcohol again.

Comments

[kylejcrb.livejournal.com]

I'm not a drinker, and that's a very good reason to not drink alcohol. Glad to hear she's doing okay.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I've never been a serious drinker; in fact, I've only really been drunk maybe twice. I am very careful to control my drinking: one drink an hour, no more than 2-3 drinks total, minimum 1-2 hours before I drive. The two times that I've really been impaired, I think 'drunk' is probably too strong a word for my condition, I wasn't driving. Once was on vacation in San Diego when I had a monster-sized strawberry daiquiri, the other whilst house-sitting for a friend, I got a large pizza (deep dish from a place called My Mother's on 19th Ave & Indian School -- major yumm!) and had a bottle of an Italian sparkling wine with it.

But that was 10 years ago, and in places where I was in control. It's different now, especially with these date rape drugs. I'd be very paranoid if I were a parent.

[deborak]

Glad she's ok. I will say that the "lock down" attitude of the parents seems rather out of step with the reality of the situation. Your niece was essentially assaulted - she didn't drink herself into oblivion. And isn't the mom the 'wild' sister of yours? Karma, maybe?

[thedragonweaver.livejournal.com]

I never had that worry at parties, but that was because I only went to parties with people I could trust.

The funny part is that I would occasionally hear whispers about "those weird theater parties"— people thought that all manner of strange and scary things happened at them. Maybe they did, but they were utterly consensual if so, and if you got drunk they would make sure that you either had a couch to crash on or someone sober to take you home.

It's important to only drink in safe circumstances. And if you're only 100 pounds, it's important to obtain a big strong friend to be a visible threat in those kinds of situations.

[anyeone.livejournal.com]

I am so glad she recovered. I also hope she has learned her lesson about being careful at parties. However, if the drink was drugged then someone needs to be hunted down and prosecuted. Drugging people without their will is orders of magnitude more serious than just letting a minor drink. I hope they throw the book at whoever spiked the drinks.

[vaudy.livejournal.com]

Glad she's doing okay. Hopefully she's the type that only needs one good scare to not do something again. Drinking in itself isn't bad, but like you said in your other comment, you need to be in a place where you're in control, or with people you know you can trust.

The really scary thing is that even if she hadn't had any alcohol, something like this could have potentially happened. When I was in undergrad and had to go through one of those obligatory "how to keep yourself safe at parties" lectures, they told us that even if you're only drinking water, not to let it leave your hands or your sight because someone could drug it.

That said, you also can never tell when something like this can happen. Someone else on my f-list was in an upscale bar in a nice neighborhood, and had some guy in a business suit drug her drink. Luckily she was with a friend who kept her own wits about her somehow and made sure nothing bad happened. I rarely drink and tend not to like bars, anyway, but I'm not sure I'll ever let someone buy me a drink anywhere after reading that story.

[silveradept]

Good that your niece survived the scare. If there was anything more than drinking involved in this occasion, though, there needs to be some head-cracking. (If all there was was a lot of drinking involved, then we just need to smash some heads together to impart useful knowledge in this particular case.) I agree that I think your niece won't be drinking for a while, but I'd also want to find out just what happened there, in case it needs to be drilled into some people's heads that they don't do that kind of thing.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

It's really a shame to be friends with someone for over eight years and presumably trust them, then have them either participate or instigate such an incident. It will definitely serve as a wakeup call for her, that is certain.

Like you, I only went to parties with people whom I could trust.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Well, the lock down isn't that severe: has to be home by midnight instead of 1am, can't spend the night out any more. And yes, that's my one and only sister. She has recognized the karmic aspect of the situation. Kind of funny, in a way, except for the emotional toll on everyone.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I had the same thought -- don't take a drink that you didn't make or watch through the mixing process -- I really ought to call back and tell her about that. That, and bring a 12-pack of your fav canned soda to the next party.


I wonder about something. When I grew up in the 70's (my late grade school/HS years), we had dangers. Nothing like today. We had drugs, but it was long before crack, meth, rave drugs, etc. So I'm wondering if people are more sick to do such things, or if the availability of technology of things like date rape drugs "enable" people to do things that would otherwise just sit in the subconscious and not acted upon. Or do people just not give a shit about other people these days?

Sometimes makes you want to find a nice cabin on a mountain in Montana with a high-powered rifle and a good scope.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Oh, I absolutely agree. And I'm fairly certain that absolutely nothing will happen. Nothing that my sister said to me last night indicated that the incident was being investigated. And it would be so simple to take samples of the "punch" and inventory the open bottles of liquor in the house. But she didn't mention anything about a police investigation, which really ticks me off. Has underage drinking and potential rape become so common place that it's now "kids do things like that" or "boys will be boys"?

Unacceptable behavior regardless. I would love to know what happened when the party host's parents came home.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I don't think anything will be discovered further. From what my sister said, unless she had less than complete information (which wouldn't surprise me), the police weren't investigating this as a criminal assault.

[thedragonweaver.livejournal.com]

Personally, I go with the "enabled" explanation. Any serious study of history will tell you that there have been plenty of sick puppies, and a search of, say, CrimeLibrary.com will show you that while you may have perceived your childhood to be safer, when you account for the increased ease of transportation these days (and the increased ease of distributing news) it's not as far off as you think.