“I just remember being in a white room where I thought I was dead. I remember being in a car, I remember seeing a paramedic, but I couldn’t comprehend what was going on. It’s really scary waking up in the hospital and not knowing how you got there.”
– GBHS senior boy

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Many teens probably associate alcohol with parties and fun, good times with friends.

In high school, alcohol is often seen as a social activity. Amidst the fun and games, it can be easy to forget the reality that what teenagers are drinking can become lethal. And it does.

Aaron White, one of the nation’s leading researchers of alcohol and its affect on the teenage brain, points out how misleading alcohol advertisements are.

“Alcohol is more dangerous than many street drugs, yet it is advertised like candy,” he said in an interview with EurekAlert! News, a Web-based news service.

A senior at Granite Bay High School who asked to remain anonymous had a near-death experience after he consumed more alcohol than his body could handle.

This is what is known as alcohol poisoning.

On the weekend of Nov. 28, the boy and his friend traveled to UC Berkeley to visit a friend who recently moved on campus.

They didn’t waste any time with their plans to party, and purchased more than three liters of alcohol.

"We brough two handles and wrote names on them,” the boy said. “We decided then and there that we wouldn’t share them with anybody.”

They weren’t the only ones who prepared. The senior’s friend who was living on campus bragged to everyone he met about the amount the boy could drink.

“I had a high reputation to live up to,” the senior boy said.

The party began and students started downing drinks. The senior joined them.

“I kept yelling at everybody to drink more with me, and the more everybody else drank, I drank,” he said.

In about 20 minutes, the handle – a large container of 1.75 liters of liquor – was empty.

“I was out-drinking everybody, which was really dumb of me, but the college atmosphere brings that on,” the boy said.

At this point, he said he felt fine. He was intoxicated, but could still control himself.

Yet as he and his two friends stumbled to another party across campus, the alcohol
started to catch up with him, the boy vaguely recalls.

“I was talking to people and couldn’t understand them. I became so incoherent, I couldn’t comprehend speech,” he said.

He and his friends played several games of beer pong, a popular game among young drinkers where ping-pong balls are thrown into cups of beer that the loser then drinks.

The game gives drinking a competitive twist that can become dangerous.

“My friend kept pressuring me, saying I needed to drink more and I wasn’t drunk enough, so I kept going,” the boy said. “I lost track of how much I drank at that point. That was when I kind of blacked out.”

The boy and his friends eventually started back for the dorm, but he doesn’t recall anything other than pausing often to throw up.

A passerby contacted the police, and soon an officer showed up to find all of them passed-out outside the dorm. The boy was still vomiting.

“I was throwing up black stuff,” he said. “I was throwing up blood because I had nothing else to throw up. My stomach was completely empty because I had thrown up all of my stomach acid.”

The police officer was trying to talk to the boy to ask how much he’d had to drink, but whenever he opened his mouth to respond, he puked.

In the police report the boy read later, the officer wrote that he had never seen someone so badly intoxicated.

When the paramedics arrived, they put him onto a stretcher and strapped him in so he couldn’t move.

“I remember them turning my head every few seconds so I could throw up,” the boy said.

When his blood-alcohol level was tested, it came to .35, more than four times the legal limit for adults.

He was rushed to the hospital.

“When I got there, they immediately admitted me to the emergency room, since I was going to die if they didn’t do anything,” the boy said.

The doctors suspected a brain aneurysm and gave him a CAT scan. They thought he might have permanent brain damage.

After a night in the hospital and a weekend of painful recovery, he returned to school on Monday, still feeling sick but no longer in critical condition.

“I was really upset at first when someone called the cops, but now I’m really grateful they did because I would have died if I didn’t go to the hospital,” he said. “Whoever did that saved my life.”

He was also grateful for the care he received at the hospital, from both doctors and police officers.

“Stereotypes you hear about doctors not caring are completely false. The cop was really nice too – he didn’t take down my name or anything, he just called an ambulance
for me,” he said.

The senior boy isn’t alone in his experience with drinking too much.

On New Year’s Eve, a junior girl, who also asked to remain anonymous, ended up suffering from alcohol poisoning.

Unlike the senior boy, who made the choice to purchase an abundance of alcohol, the junior girl never expected what was to come.

She hadn’t drank for three months, and didn’t plan on drinking that night. But that didn’t keep it from happening.

“Once I got (to the party), everyone was drinking in the bathroom and kind of egged me on,” she said.

Before she knew it, she had reached a point where she had no idea how much she’d had to drink.

She appeared to fall asleep early in the evening, but she had actually fallen unconscious
from all the alcohol.

The party had died down and only a group of seniors remained. A few people wanted to call 911, but the majority feared getting the police involved.

“I know a lot of my friends said it was stupid to call the cops, that it would ruin my life to get them involved,” she said. “At the time, if I would have known they were calling the cops, I would have begged them not to.”

Now, she has a different view.

Her friends couldn’t get her to respond, and finally someone called the owner of the house who called an ambulance to pick her up.

The girl awoke at her own house, lying in bed.

“I looked down and there were heart monitors and little contraptions sticking all over my body,” she said.

Now that she was home and the chaos was over, she had to deal with her parents and their disappointment.

“The worst part was waking up and wondering, what are my parents thinking right now?” she said. “The cops were never really bad.”

After the incident, she sees drinking in a different light.

“It’s something people do to get crazy and be outgoing,” she said. “I know people do it to have fun, but I don’t see it that way anymore. It’s not fun to me after that.”

The junior girl has decided to quit drinking altogether because of her bad experience. But many students will still partake in the activity.

Alcohol poisoning is a condition that can be prevented if awareness is spread. If it does happen, it’s important that teens know what to do.

According to White, there are specific steps to take if someone appears to have alcohol poisoning. And these steps can save a life.

“If you think there’s something to be worried about, there is,” White said. “Even if that thought just crosses your mind.”

White says that if you are at all concerned, step number one is to absolutely call 911.

“They’ll ask you questions, ask you to check breathing and heart rate. Once you call for help, just follow instructions,” he said.

While waiting for help to arrive, there isn’t much else that can be done. All you can do is keep the person awake and talking, White advises. Don’t let them fall asleep, and make sure they aren’t lying on their back. If breathing ever stops, administer CPR.

“Coffee doesn’t help. Cold showers don’t help. Nothing reverses the affect of alcohol,” White said.

Alcohol poisoning is much easier to prevent than it is to cure. If high school students are conscious of the risks of drinking, the number who suffer from it can be reduced dramatically.

White hopes students themselves can be recruited in this pursuit.

“It is time,” he said, “for us to finally start taking this drug seriously.”