304: What if you were poisoned?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. There was a lot of crying. I cried about all the things that I was going to be able to do. I wouldn't fall in love, and I wouldn't go back to school, and I wouldn't drive, and I wouldn't travel, and I wouldn't have any of these experiences that I thought I was going to have. It just felt like I may as well be dead.

From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 304, What If You Were Poisoned?

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It works just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. My dad was born in Canada. He grew up biking and fishing and being out in the mountains and

And as he got older, he became a chef and he owned a bunch of restaurants. He married in his early 20s. And in that marriage, he had two daughters, which are my two older sisters. He separated from that woman a couple of years into their marriage.

By the time he got to his 40s, you know, he had spent many years in restaurants, running different restaurant style businesses, and he made a joke to one of his best friends that, you know, he was going to go to Vegas and win some money and then go to Mexico and find a wife.

On Valentine's Day in 1989, my dad was in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico, and he was out at a Valentina nightclub. And from across the bar, he saw a pretty little Mexican. My dad came over and tried to talk to her, but she wasn't really having any of it. Not to mention that my dad couldn't speak any Spanish and my mom couldn't speak any English either.

But through like their broken languages, they were able to get out the fact that my mom was just in the city for the week because she was a nurse. But during the weekend, she went home to help out her family. My dad had made a joke saying that he was going to come find her. And my mom kind of thought, you know, like crazy gringo, like it's not going to happen.

But sure enough, my mom went home for the weekend to a little town called Eskunapa, which is about an hour away from Mazatlan. And my dad rented a car, drove to Eskunapa by himself and up and down the streets until he found her dead.

She was outside the house sweeping and he pulled up, asked her to go on a date. And then they started their six month romance of sending love letters back and forth to each other that they would translate through little handheld dictionaries, writing back and forth about like their love and excitement for each other. They would have met on Valentine's Day of that year and they were married by September.

My mom, you know, her upbringing in Mexico, she is one of 10. I've always wondered if my dad was her opportunity out of Mexico or her way for more or a better life. You know, she had met somebody who I guess at the time would have been considered, you know, an attractive man with his big mustache.

My dad is 18 years older than my mom. Successful, ideally would have been someone who could take care of her and likely was promising her the world. I always think there was something more that she wanted that she couldn't get from Mexico or that there was a sense of adventure. But she's the only one who left Mexico for more.

I'm the only child between my parents, but my two older sisters, who are 18 years and 15 years older than me, for the most part of my life, they were kind of off living their adult lives, and I grew up an only child. Up until about grade five, I thought I lived in a really happy household with two parents that really loved each other.

But I remember in grade five, the first time my parents sat me down and told me that they were getting a divorce. And I remember going to school and crying to my teacher that my parents were getting divorced. My world was ending. And that would be a conversation that was had my entire life up until their eventual separation in my 20s.

So my dad was definitely the, in traditional terms, the protector, the provider. But the older I got, the more I became aware of my dad's temper. And the older I got, the more I was on the receiving side of my dad's temper. You know, he was pretty verbally abusive. And I would also say emotionally abusive.

In my preteen years, I was scared of him. Maybe early high school, I was scared of him. But near the end of high school, I wasn't scared of him anymore. I was likely to talk back to my dad. And, you know, if he yelled at my mom, I would step in. I've always been loud and outgoing and boisterous and hyper and a little drama queen. And from like as young as I can remember, like all I wanted to do and be was an actor.

I was like a weird little theater drama kid, you know, in elementary. And although I was like outgoing and loud, I think I still was quite shy and meek and fragile and really sensitive. I had auditioned to a special high school that was across the city for their theater program. And so I would be starting high school in a school where I knew nobody.

But I was so passionate about acting and theater that I was willing to take that leap. And once I went to that school, it was the first time I ever really took stock that I was Mexican. It was a very white, very privileged school. And everybody was wearing Abercrombie & Fitch outfits.

You know, it was the first time people started referring to me as like Mexican, sexy Mexie, fiender, like any kind of nicknames meant to be endearing, but like still derogatory.

I was awkward in that like drama kid weird kind of way. So I think I was a little bit of an easy target for girls who were a little meaner, a little more sure of themselves. And I wanted to be invited to parties. And so I definitely think fitting in and being accepted became something that I always wanted from folks and wanted to receive from my peers.

I remember becoming friends with this girl. Our boyfriends were both best friends. And so as a result, we started becoming friends. And by grade 12, we did everything together. Like if you invited her to a party, it was an invite for the both of us. By our grade 12 year, she basically was living with me. She had absolutely no rules. You know, like her mom would buy her booze. She could stay out all hours of the night.

But she was also the most beautiful girl that you'd ever see, like a blonde model. Like she did not look her age. She looked so much older. And I was just this little like stubby five foot two Mexican standing next to her. And I very much was like in her shadow. She was the alpha. I was the beta. But we were inseparable. My parents were never really pushing university on me.

And this best friend of mine, she didn't even graduate from high school. So she was thinking of going abroad after high school. And she's like, well, you should obviously come with me. Going abroad with your best friend sounded more fun than trying to pay your way through university. And even if my parents didn't push it on me, I still knew there was like a trajectory in life. Like you go to school, you go to university, you get a job, you get married, you have kids. Like there's this trajectory that you follow.

But at that point, I decided that I didn't want to be left out. If my friend went on this adventure overseas, like, you know, how jealous would I be? I've got a bit of a serious side or a bit of a worrier side that I definitely get from my mom. And so I definitely remember being apprehensive to book the day that we would go overseas. When it came to us deciding where we wanted to go, my friend was pretty set on going to Australia.

And when I told my mom, she was not impressed. But I think at that point, there wasn't really anything that she could say. When we got to Australia, we landed sometime in the morning. This was the first time I had ever been independent completely. We spent a couple weeks in Sydney. And then we went up the coast and we settled in a place called Byron Bay. It's this little

Backpacker, surfer town, really chill living. Nobody wears shoes. Eccentric folks, just like a completely different way of life that I'd never been exposed to. And there was a bar owned by two Canadians. And they'd gone to the same high school as my sister. And they gave us jobs to work at this really cool surf shack and learning to surf and meeting lots of boys. And I look back on those months and I'm

I feel like I had gained so much independence, so much confidence. And to be honest, I talk about all the growth that I feel like I achieved on this. But at the end of the day, this was like a fun backpacking trip. But the 18-year-old version of myself thought I was so cool. You know, I was turning a real page in my book. But looking back, you're just like being 18 and living with like no rules.

When I was there, I kind of realized that I was really moving away from acting and theater and like, what more do I want from life? You know, where else do I want to travel to? Four months goes by fast. And so when it kind of came to the point of when we were meant to come home, you know, my friend was the first one to say that she didn't think she was going to come home. And although I knew I had a university to come home to, I could always go the year after.

My friend was pretty happy to stay in Byron Bay, but I knew that so many of the folks that we had been meeting while we've been in Byron, they had seen so much more than we had seen. Tubing in Laos or full moon parties in Thailand or the year abroad that Brits take during their gap year. And maybe I could be a solo backpacker. I was much more capable. I was much more assured in myself.

Nothing really seemed out of the question. Bali was somewhere that, you know, folks had gone to that we'd met traveling. And so it really started to pique our interest. We decided that we would go and we'd go for a month. And then from there, we'd go to New Zealand for a month for the Rugby World Cup. And then we'd come back for the start of summer where it'd be really busy, make more money, and things would kind of be picking up anyways.

Prior to me going, I did have to call and tell my mom that I had decided to stay and I was going to go to Bali in New Zealand. And if my mom was unimpressed when I told her I was going to Australia, she was even more unimpressed when I told her I was going to stay and go to Bali. I don't even think she knew what Bali was.

We made it to Bali. I remember it was dark out and we took a taxi with our backpacks. I remember dragging them through the airport because we packed too much. It was looking like just dumb tourists. We got in this taxi and it was about a 20 minute taxi ride to Kuta, which is where we would be staying.

It was loud. It was bright from all the lights. There was sizzling food on the streets. There were people yelling, selling things. There were drunk backpackers. There were scooters whizzing back and forth. There were five or six people on a scooter. People selling like fake Gucci shoes on the streets. You know, you could smell the

The ocean, it was humid, it was so thick, and it was so hot. And I remember we got to this little hotel that we'd be staying at, where we had friends at. The second we got there, they were like, get dressed, we're going out. We changed, and I remember going out into the streets of Huda, and it was chaotic. So many people, so many sounds, so many cars, so many scooters, so many drunk people walking

I would say it was only about a week before my friend completely ran out of all of the money that she had brought. Within the first week, I had both of my credit cards pickpocketed from me. I remember being eaten alive by bedbugs in the hotel that we were staying at, but not really being able to change hotels because we didn't have any money between the two of us.

I had read Eat, Pray, Love before I went there. So in my mind, I had this love version of Bali and that beautiful side of Bali. It exists there, but I didn't get to see that much of it because I spent a majority of my time in Kuta, which is like the Cancun or Vegas of Bali. And over time, I just had this overwhelming feeling that Bali wasn't safe. There was something about

that like I just could not wait to leave Bali. I was counting down the days to just get to New Zealand. You know, my friend had ran out of money so she would go back to Byron and she would go back to her job and make money for a couple of weeks and then she'd fly over and meet me for maybe the last two weeks in New Zealand. So I kind of started preparing myself that I would be traveling on my own for the first time. I was gonna meet people on my own and have my own memories and make my own adventure.

So our very last night in Bali, it was really no different from any other night that we had. However, we decided to go to a bar that we hadn't normally gone to. It was one of the bars that was bombed during the Bali bombings. This was a bigger bar. It was a more expensive bar. So we really couldn't really afford to go there. But people we were with wanted to go and they offered to buy the drinks for us.

We got these drinks that were like, they look like big water bottles that you might buy at like Costco. They were filled with a fruity cocktail, some sort of sugary juice, but they're in water bottles so you could dance and not spill your drink. And so I remember dancing and drinking from these fruity cocktail water bottles and really just having like a good last night with one another and this group that we met.

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The next day, I woke up and we had a bunch of running around to do that day before our flight later that night. I remember being really cold on the flight and the girl sitting next to me who was a complete stranger gave me her jacket. She must have saw me shivering. And I slept most of that flight.

And when we landed, we had landed late. And so I was going to miss my flight to Christchurch, New Zealand. So I had a quick as goodbye with my friend. I was like, I'll see you in a couple of weeks. Gave her a little note that I wrote her. And then I was running to catch my next flight. And when I landed, I was standing in customs, met a couple other younger backpackers. And they also didn't know where they were going to stay. And so we agreed, you know, when we go through customs, we'll find accommodation together.

And I just remember when I got to the desk for customs, having a difficult time getting my words out, almost like I was hiding something, but just having a hard time formulating my thoughts. The customs officer asked me if I had my flight out of New Zealand, which I hadn't booked yet because I knew I was going to be seeing some Rugby World Cup games and I didn't know what day I might be leaving because of that. And they were not happy not having my flight booked out of New Zealand. And they took me into a back room and

said that they wanted me to book a new flight within 30 days to leave the country and they wanted me to have accommodation that night. But I didn't have my credit cards, so I had to call my mom back home in Canada. She was going to book me accommodation. She booked me a flight. I really hated that because at that point, I didn't need my mom. Every time she offered money, I said I didn't want it because I was doing this on my own. I didn't need her help. That was the first time she really had to bail me out of something, which I hated.

So they let me through customs and at that point any friend I had made on the plane or in the customs line was long gone. So I knew I was on my own. I had some Balinese dollars left. So I went up to the money exchange and I got $15 New Zealand dollars back for what I had left. And I realized until I get to Western Union this is all I have. And then I got to baggage claim and I realized I lost my bag.

I had $15. I had no luggage. This is all not going the way it's supposed to be going. I was kind of just fucked. I remember I went into the bathroom and I saw like an automatic toothbrush dispenser. And I was thinking, do I spend one of my $15 on this automatic toothbrush dispenser? And then this lady came into the bathroom and I was wearing flip flops, like a singlet and jean shorts. She's like,

You're not going to get very far in those jandals. I was like, what? It's winter. And I clued in. Right. I look like I should be at the beach right now. And it's New Zealand's winter right now. And all the winter stuff that I have is in my backpack. So I told her the things going on with Western Union and my credit card and what had happened to my luggage. And this beautiful woman worked at the airport for some car kiosk.

So she, you know, brought me over to her kiosk and she let me use her computer. And then she told a security guard about my luggage. And so he went to lost and found and brought me all these warm clothes to wear. And then, you know, there happened to be a Western Union in the airport, but she brought me to, and I was able to get, you know, cash advancement and have my credit card sent to the right place. And, and so at this point I knew I'm like, okay, my luggage is lost. I'm going to be in Christchurch for a couple of days.

But this woman was so kind and so sweet. She said she'd take me to my accommodation. She took me first to her house and gave me some tea, gave me some shoes to wear, told me all about her life and her upbringing and what her dad, who was a pilot, how she was a recovering drug addict, but she turned her life around. And everyone I'd met had just been so kind and helpful and thoughtful. I did really feel like things were starting to turn around. I'd been feeling really out of it all day long.

I've had such a horrible day of travel. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. So when I felt a little nauseous and I felt nervous and I felt a little apprehensive throughout the day and confused, I just chalked it up to my circumstances. I finally got to my hostel. It was about 6 p.m. I kind of realized, you know, I don't have food to cook. I'm not really up for it to like hang out in the lounge. I'll just go to bed.

I remember getting up onto my top bunk and just feeling so tired. My light was on and I fell asleep. I woke up a couple times in the middle of the night with some really bad dreams. I felt like I couldn't breathe, but I couldn't tell if that was happening in real life or that was happening in my dreams. But I slept throughout the night. When I woke up the next morning, I went to look at my iPod to tell the time and I couldn't see the brightness well enough.

And so I kind of thought, my iPod must be dying. And I got on my bunk bed to go to the bathroom and there was nobody in the hostel room. And I went across to where the bathrooms were. And when I got into the bathrooms, I noticed that it was really dim lighting. So I kind of chucked it up to kind of like, oh, it's a cheap hostel, like crappy lighting the bathroom, not a big deal. And when I came out, I realized I'd locked myself out of my hostel dorm room.

I saw someone in the hallway and I asked them what time it was. And they said it was 12 o'clock in the afternoon. So I was pretty shocked that I was able to sleep from 6 p.m. to 12 p.m. I went down the staircase to reception, asked for them to let me back into my room and went back up the staircase. And when the door closed behind, it was like someone hit me in the stomach with a baseball bat. I completely had like the air knocked out of me and I could not breathe.

I was gasping for air. Like, I don't know, I just sprinted a marathon. I tried to sit down on the bed to calm myself down. And I was like, I could not breathe at all. I got myself back down to reception. And I had just seen this woman like three minutes earlier. And she saw that I couldn't breathe. And she got me a brown paper bag and got me to breathe into this brown paper bag. And it wasn't working. Nothing was allowing me to breathe.

She kind of said, like, hospital. And I nodded my head, like, I think so. And she's like, where's your passport? Where's your wallet? She went upstairs and she grabbed it for me and she came downstairs and she gave me my wallet and my passport. And at the time, I had this little wallet that I had gotten in Bali that was this little pouch that was really colorful with a bunch of little stripes on it. When I looked down at the pouch, I couldn't see the color anymore. And that's when I realized something was wrong with my eyes. She drives me to the hospital and...

pulls up to emergency and gets me in a wheelchair and by the time she's wheeling me in I can't see anything. I'm in the dark blind. All the doctors and nurses are asking me my name and where am I from and what was I doing last night and I've been traveling for the last 24 hours. I just went to bed last night in my hostel and they don't know what's wrong with me. Like they are now you know taking my blood and I'm telling them like I can't breathe. I'm thinking like give me

an oxygen mask like put a tube down my throat like i don't know what you need to do but i can't breathe they kept on harping like what were you doing last night like if you can tell us what you were doing last night we can help you you're not going to be in trouble we need to know so we can save you i didn't do anything last night like i went to bed at 6 p.m i don't know what's going on and it's clear they don't know what's going on with me they're starting to take pictures of my pupils and they're waiting for my blood results to come back and this feels like an eternity

They come back to me and they say, Ashley, do you know why there's a large amount of methanol in your system? And I say, I was just in Bali and maybe it's something to do with their drinks. They've called my family back home and, you know, they tell my mom that like I'm in the hospital.

I'm still speaking, but they've just found out that there's a large amount of methanol in my system. And she's asking, you know, is she intubated? Is she breathing on her own? And they're trying to have me breathe on my own. They don't want to intubate me. Like, what's the last thing they want to do? Because I'm more likely to survive if I can keep on breathing on my own. And then that's when they ask her, when's the earliest flight you can get on to be here? Because there's a very good chance that she's not going to make it.

Meanwhile, like when you're in the hospital, no one tells you if you're dying. Like they do a very good job at making you feel like everything is going to be okay. And I don't think I thought I was dying or was worried about that until it became clear how frantic everyone became when they realized it was methadone poisoning. I remember asking, am I going to die? And they were like, no, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. Like everything's going to be okay. And

I remember them telling me that my mom was going to be coming over. And I remember thinking like, I'm going to be fine. Like you just said I'm going to be fine. Like why is my mom coming over? Because I can't see what's going on. There were just different hands and different voices and different people showing up and, you know, being wheeled to different areas. And it all kind of happened so fast once they realized what was wrong with me. When you ingest methanol,

When your body metabolizes it, it turns your blood into an acid. And so basically your blood is burning everything in your body and your body is working incredibly hard to keep you alive and to fight off this bad blood that's going through your system. When you have pure alcohol in your system, so ethanol, your body will metabolize that first before it begins to metabolize the methanol.

So they basically came up to me and said, you know, we have this pitcher of vodka and orange juice and we need you to drink it incredibly fast. We can't give it to you in an IV. It's going to taste really bad, but you have to drink it as quickly as you can. I had this little rocks glass that I would finish it and then they'd fill it back up and they'd tell me to drink faster. And I'd drink it and they'd fill it back up. It was like the most bizarre drinking game ever.

The drunker I got, the more intoxicated I became, the more my breathing started to slow. The more light started to come into my eyes. The more I was able to see. But at that point, I was wasted. And if I really didn't think something was seriously wrong prior, I really didn't think something was wrong now. Because now I'm like, someone get me another drink. Like being fun drunk Ashley in the hospital.

And they're telling me my mom's going to come over. And I'm like, why? Like, I'm going to go backpacking tomorrow. She's just going to crap my vibe. Like, she doesn't need to come over. Like, I'm having a great time being wheeled into ICU. They just start putting tubes all over inside of me because they're going to do a hemodialysis. And they're going to take out all the blood that is toxic within me and give me all new blood. At that point, like, I pass out immediately.

And I wake up the next day and I can't really see. I'm in ICU and someone comes over and kind of explains to me again, you know, what happened. We found out you had methanol poisoning and something you likely drank in Bali. And we were able to give you all new blood and everything's going to be fine. And, you know, your mom's on her way to New Zealand right now.

And I ask about my eyesight and they're like, oh, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. Your doctor will be here on Monday and there'll be a surgery and your eyesight will be fine. I'm not really worried at that point. There's all these, you know, tubes in me, but they've kind of assured me that everything's going to be fine. But of course, meanwhile, they're worried about my friend who I was traveling with and if she's been poisoned as well. And Canadian embassy is trying to track her down and the Sydney police are trying to track her down and

They find her in a couple days and she just was hanging out with some guy. It was fine. The woman who had dropped me off at the hostel, she came into the hospital to visit me. And then I started having all these nurses come and visit me in my ward because everyone was just so shocked that I lived. So like, oh my God, even just like thinking about that, like it makes me a little emotional of like how kind everybody was to me when I was in a moment that was really scary.

You know the weekend passes and I by the Monday am wheeled into a ward. It's like 9 a.m and all the doctors are saying hello to me and introducing themselves and they put a curtain around me and then they do that thing that doctors do when they're going to give you bad news. They say you're really lucky to be alive right now and you know what happened to you was very severe and most people have brain damage, kidney failure, liver failure.

The fact that I'm not dead is a miracle. And so I'm very lucky to be alive. And then, you know, they're building up to what they're about to tell me. My eyesight, the way that it is, is very likely that it won't get any better. So I'm sitting in this hospital room. I'm 19 now. I had about 2% of my eyesight. You know, the most I could make out was like a meter in front of me. But even then, things are just like shapes. Later that day, my mom got there.

That's not how I expected our reunion would take place. She flew Calgary to Vancouver, Vancouver to Sydney, Sydney to Christchurch. And on that flight, she didn't know if I was alive or dead. And so, yeah, when we saw each other that day in the hospital, it was really emotional. And the doctors told her what they told me. And she cried and I cried. And it was a lot of crying. I cried about all the things that I was going to be able to do.

I wouldn't fall in love and I wouldn't go back to school and I wouldn't drive and I wouldn't travel and I wouldn't have any of these experiences that I thought I was going to have. This whole life that I thought that was ahead of me that wasn't anymore because I was blind. It just felt like I may as well be dead. I was really in denial that this is how my backpacking trip was coming to an end.

As it became a bit more clear that this is what my eyesight was, my parents tried to get my friends back home to convince me that I had to go home and see more doctors and maybe the health care system in Canada would be different and that I had to go home.

When I came back to Canada, they did this thing in eye exams where they like hold this tiny little microscope between two fingers and they like look at the back of your optic nerve. And when the methanol metabolized and, you know, turned my blood into an acid, the blood going into my brain and through my optic nerves basically just burned my optic nerves.

It's kind of like a TV set. And if you think about the cord that's plugged into the wall being damaged, say, from water, the TV itself is fine, but it's that cord that doesn't quite work. And so the signal that you see on the TV or what your eyes see isn't being sent to your brain.

I had another doctor tell me that she had only ever heard about this happening in a small rural town in Canada where everyone had drank a bad batch of moonshine. A bunch of people had died and gone blind.

The only other patient that they knew of in Calgary was somebody who had drank windshield wiper fluid to commit suicide. So although she had gone blind, she also had brain damage and kidney damage and liver failure. And so her eyesight was the least of their worries. So I really felt like there was nobody else like me. I couldn't read. I couldn't write. I couldn't drive. I wasn't going back to Australia. I certainly wasn't going back to school. I wasn't going back to my job.

All my friends back in Calgary had their jobs, were going to university, and were living their own lives. I think it's hard to ask people to be there for you when you don't even know how to be there for yourself. The following year or two was some of the hardest days that I've had. I kept on thinking that I was going to live the life that I lived before. I was going to go on trips with my friends. I thought maybe guys that I had seen before I left would still like me, but

I think people felt bad for me. I would be so bitter about other people and all the things that they were doing and taking for granted. They weren't taking it for granted. They just were living their life, but they didn't realize how lucky they were. I was angry at myself because I would replay that night in my head. What would I have done differently? Could I have done something different? Was I irresponsible? I tried not to drink that much that night because I knew we were flying the next day. I wasn't wasted.

But then, you know, the doctors told me that maybe had I been wasted, I would have been okay. That's why they think my friend wasn't poisoned. They think she's taller than me. She's bigger. She probably drank more real alcohol and her body never got the chance to metabolize the methanol.

But there was no one I could talk about this with. I remember writing this little blog post on Lonely Planet, just asking the world if anyone knew about methadone poisoning, if they knew I'd get my eyesight back, if they knew what might happen to me, because no one had answers for me. I just felt so alone because it is such a bizarre thing to try and explain to somebody. There wasn't, I think, the appropriate rehabilitation process.

I wasn't set up with like an occupational therapist that was teaching me how to be blind. I wasn't seeing people right away that were going to set me up with maybe the technology that I needed. I was in such denial of my eyesight that I didn't want to tell anybody. You know, I told all my friends that, yeah, I lost my eyesight, but I'm going to get it back in a couple of months. I didn't want to admit anything.

that I had lost my eyesight. I certainly wasn't going to be using the word blind. I wasn't going to be using the word disabled because I refused to use a cane. If I ran into somebody when I was out in public who maybe didn't hear what had happened to me, I would run through the questions that I would ask them. Where are you working again? What were you studying again? Are you still with? And then I'd figure out who the person was. I would do little things like this because I was so, so adamant that I was never going to admit to my vision loss.

I also didn't want anyone's help. Like, I didn't want to be blind, and I didn't want to be treated like it, and I didn't want help. I just wanted my old life back. So I'd say I was a pretty awful person to be around. I was really mad and really sad that my whole life had been ripped away from me. I didn't know how to direct this anger, because you can't just be mad at somebody else because they can see and I can't. It's not their fault this happened to me. But then, am I really mad at myself because...

Would I have changed anything about that night if nothing bad happened to me? Probably not. I don't think I was being irresponsible or unwise. And then it always comes back to the, well, why me? Is this karma for something? Am I deserving of this? I'm not going to go on to achieve anything because of this now. Look at all my friends and look at other people and

Everyone was just finding themselves and coming into themselves. Like all my friends and all these other people still have so much ahead of them to look forward to. And I just had nothing. There was no ability to dream about anything. I really grappled with whether like it was worth living. I really could not tell you what I imagined for my future because I really did not see a future.

I could not imagine how I would date or go to school or have a job or contribute to society or just enjoy life. Like how would I ever enjoy life again?

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Let's face it, we were all that kid. So first call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee for your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional terms apply. It would be a couple years later that I would try to commit suicide. At that time, I was trying to live a normal life. I was going to university. I had a boyfriend. I had friends. But I still just wasn't happy.

I decided to take a bunch of pills, but I told somebody. And, you know, they called my mom and they called an ambulance and I got admitted to the hospital. And that was the first time that I would be in psych. And people had realized that Ashley was actually a lot sadder than maybe I had been letting on. I don't think I really wanted to die then, but I just didn't know any other way to just make this all stop. As those years started to trickle by,

particular things happened that wouldn't necessarily make it better, but just added to the layer of like, there's got to be more here. Some woman had found that blog posting that I had written on Lonely Planet and reached out to me. And she was a woman from Sweden and she wanted to know about my experience.

She wanted to know because her and her fiancé had been on vacation in Bali. And on a night out, they each had two separate drinks. And within 24 hours, he was dead. She was there and watched him die. And all she wanted to know from me was if it was painful. If the methanol put me in pain. Because she didn't want her fiancé to be in pain when he died.

Here I am sitting and complaining about how horrible my life is and how awful this is when this woman went from planning a wedding to planning a funeral. Then I had another friend write a little thing on Reddit, just asking the Reddit community where she could take her friend who recently lost her eyesight.

where she could take her out to have a good time. And some journalists found this and, you know, read about what had happened to me and reached out and, you know, wanted to write a story about me. I did not want to share my story because I didn't want to tell a random bus driver that I was blind. Like there was no way I wanted to tell the rest of the world that I had gone blind. And I didn't want to bring any attention to this disability that I had.

This was nothing that people had heard about. Like when you would Google this back in 2011, you did not find anything on Google about this. This was unknown to people. And it wasn't until I was in the news and I like shared what had happened to me. And I had so many different people reach out to me to thank me for sharing or, you know, just to send support.

I realized the importance in sharing someone's story and maybe by sharing my story I saved somebody's life. Like maybe somebody who was going to Bali decided not to have a drink. And so it got easier for me to tell my story. I've met people who it's happened to all around the world. And because sure enough after I was poisoned many more people started dying. It was happening in the news a lot more.

It happens all around the world, but particularly in Bali, in Southeast Asia,

Indonesia has one of the highest Muslim populations in the world. And as a result, the government has put pretty high taxes on the importation of alcohol. And although Bali is a huge tourist holiday destination and are out eating and drinking, that's not necessarily what the government wants to promote. So they have incredibly high taxes on the importation of alcohol. And

And to help offset that, bar owners, restaurant owners, hotel owners will buy alcohol off the black market and they will refill bottles that are familiar to Westerners. Bottles that you'd see behind the bar, Smirnoff, Grey Goose, they'd be refilled with homemade alcohol and then they serve it.

Methanol is a harmful chemical that comes out in the distillation process of alcohol. It's meant to be removed during the distillation process. But higher volume of liquid means more liquid that you can sell as booze. So it's not removed in the distillation process when it's being made in these backyard distilleries.

When I talk about this, people often think I was poisoned in some tiny little shack or some crappy little bar. But I was poisoned in a bar that's recommended in Lonely Planet. It happens in hotels, nice hotels. It happens in restaurants. It happens in establishments that you would not think to look for this.

When you're out at a bar, you think about being drugged. You think about being taken advantage when you're drunk. You don't think about the alcohol that's coming out of a newly opened bottle that says Smirnoff on it that it's going to kill you or make you go blind.

By being able to tell people what happened to me, to share my experience, to explain that this happens to people and that you don't have to be some like irresponsible backpacker or something. This could literally happen to anybody. Now, if you look on the Canadian website for travel, there is a warning about methanol poisoning. I don't think it should scare people away, but I do think people should be aware that this is happening so that people can make informed decisions.

Four years after this happened to me, I decided to backpack through Central America. And I was terrified that I would just die. I've already been so unlucky. Why wouldn't that happen to me? But at the same time, if I didn't do this, then maybe I'd be too scared to ever travel again or do the things that one time made me so happy.

On this particular trip, I made sure that anything that my friends did, anything the average backpacker did, like I was going to do. We were just going to find a way around it. I was going to climb a volcano. I was going to swim with sharks. I was going to climb temples and do everything that I would have done had I been able to see. That was a list that I had made for myself, but all the things I still wanted to do. And then I just kind of started checking off more of those boxes.

I knew I wanted to study abroad, so I decided to move to England and study abroad for six months. Then I met somebody who fell in love with me that didn't know me prior to me losing my eyesight, just a new blind Ashley. And they liked that Ashley. They were okay with that. They didn't care about my eyes. Then I got a job towards the end of my degree working for like a really trendy, like fun magazine here in Calgary.

While I was working there, I was asked to write about a theatre company in Calgary that had been making theatre accessible to those with disabilities. And they invited me to come see a show. I hadn't been to a play since I'd lost my eyesight. And so it really didn't cross my mind that theatre was really a possibility for me. But within a couple of years, I went back to school for acting.

I work for a theater company and my job is to make theater accessible for people.

or deaf or have autism or blind or whatever it might be. Like I make theater work for whatever your needs are. And I anticipate your needs before you come to a show. And I consult on audio description and more than anything, I audition for things. And I, you know, this past year I was in two different plays that I was paid as professional actor. And I've spent the last three years writing a play about

about losing my eyesight and it's a dark comedy you know about this crazy fun party girl whose life is turned upside down and it's going to be produced next year and I'm going to be starring in it with another actor and by being an actor I also get to be the representation that I didn't have when I first lost my eyesight I kind of believe everything happens for a reason

Because although I did lose my eyesight, I've somehow managed to get to where I've wanted to be. And in doing so, I think I've become a better person.

going through this in your 20s is a really weird place in your life. You know, if I lived maybe even just like half of my 20s sighted, then maybe I would have aggrieved a different type of Ashley. But because I was really only an adult for like a year and 12 days, I was like a legal adult for a year and 12 days. And so I had a taste of independence and what it looked like. And I am still always trying to get back my independence more and more every day.

That first year after my accident, I grieved the life that I thought I would never have. And every day that comes after another, I've just slowly got back on track to getting to where I wanted to be.

There's still so much more learning I have to do about disability and ableism and intersectionality and racism and how that all plays in my identity. And I'm still learning new things literally today in therapy about why I'm the way that I am or what kind of PTSD I still have or how I used to just deal with racism and being racialized when I was younger. But now I deal with ableism. And what does that mean being disabled?

a Latin woman who's also disabled, how to continue to accept this and how things from my childhood, you know, my relationship with my dad, how that might affect the person that I am today. And I'm like, am I angry because of my eyesight or am I angry because my relationship with my dad? Or do I have that temper because I'm just like bitter and blind? Or do I have that temper because this is something completely else unrelated?

And I think it's always been really easy for me to be like, I'm this way because of my eyesight. I'm this person because of my eyesight. But I think I'm so much more than just my eyesight. I'm a lot of different things. I've had to work through my internal ableism throughout and I'm still working through that. But over the years, I've been able to

use the word disability when I define myself without being uncomfortable with the word. I can ask for my needs now. I can advocate for myself. I can advocate for others. For so long after losing my eyesight, I wanted people to remember Sighted Ashley and what Sighted Ashley was capable of doing because I didn't want someone to judge me on my now disabled self.

I understand now that disabled Ashley can open up a lot of other people's eyes and I can introduce people to a different life that I've lived these last 12 years. I'm so much more than just my eyesight. I'm a lot of different things and they tie into my eyesight, but it's not the only thing that's shaped me. You know, I had someone recently ask me, if it wasn't for your eyesight, is there anything that you'd be doing that you haven't done?

And I thought about it for a while. And I was like, no. I just took a really roundabout way to get to it. Today's episode featured Ashley King. If you'd like to reach out to her, you can email at ashleyjenniferk at gmail.com. Or you can find her on Instagram at ashkng.

I also wanted to offer a few additional notes about poisonings abroad. First, any episode like this can be frightening for people who are already wary of travel. But it's important not to characterize any place by one person's story. And having visited Bali myself, it's an absolutely beautiful experience, and I encourage anyone with interest to go. That being said, travel always comes with precautions, and methanol poisoning is a genuine concern.

Over the last couple decades, thousands of people have either died or gone blind from methanol poisoning in Indonesia alone, where Bali is located. And many other countries, including Brazil, Costa Rica, India, and Turkey, have similar issues with black market homemade spirits.

Several articles go as far as to say when traveling in these destinations, if you want a drink, stick to beer instead of mixed drinks or shots, as methanol poisoning is a specific risk in hard alcohol. But always, as a general rule, check out specific warnings on government websites when you travel, and heed any dangers reported by other tourists. From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening.

If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on the Wondery app to listen ad-free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host, Witt Misseldein. Today's episode was co-produced by me, Jason Blaylock, and Andrew Waits, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westbrook.

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