The active ingredient in alcoholic drinks is ethanol, and it goes without saying that it’s a poison. When we drink it, it floods our cells and gets us drunk, and then our bodies have to work hard to clear the toxin out.
In large quantities it can make you violently unwell in the short term, and its addictive quality means the damage can be drawn out over the long term too.
Ethanol doesn’t do us many favours, but it’s nowhere near as dangerous as its sibling: methanol.
While similar to ethanol, it’s considerably more toxic and can cause severe health issues and death, even in small amounts.
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Methanol is generally cheaper than ethanol, and so there are some mega creeps out there who use it to make alcoholic drinks.
They’re sold on to unwitting customers, and the health consequences are then theirs to bear. It’s a scary phenomenon that’s mercifully rare.
Unfortunately for some tourists in Laos, that’s exactly what they encountered.
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Having been served free shots at the Nana Backpacker Hostel in Vang Vieng, six tourists died from methanol poisoning. A survivor, Calum Macdonald, has suffered permanent vision loss from the incident.
"I remember having this sort of kaleidoscopic, blinding light in my eyes and to the point at which I couldn't see anything,” Macdonald told the BBC.
"[We agreed] it was strange but we thought it was food poisoning and the light I was seeing was some kind of sensitivity.”
By the time he and his friends had arrived at their Vietnamese destination, the gravity of the situation had started to become clear.
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"We were sitting in the hotel room, my friends and I, and I said to them: 'Why are we sitting in the dark? Someone should turn a light on.'" To his alarm, his friends told him the lights were already on.
The 23-year-old had been blinded by methanol in the free drinks at the hostel, with that mass methanol poisoning of November 2024 claiming six lives. Macdonald had met to of the other victims, themselves Danish tourists, and he is now working with families of three British tourists who were killed by the incident.
Along with those families, Macdonald is calling on the Foreign Office to raise awareness of the potential for methanol poisoning in countries where there’s a likelihood of encountering the knock-off booze.
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Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to tell if your drink has got methanol in it rather than ethanol. Outside of a lab environment, it’s nigh-impossible for a layperson to know the difference before its too late.
Before travelling somewhere, take a look at the risk level for methanol poisonings and exercise caution. Purchasing sealed drinks rather than accepting samples and shots can help to protect you from the risks.
Rachael Davis