Drunk friend - have I given the right advice to DD?

[parentalhelpline]

DD and friend both 18 are staying in a friend's holiday house for two nights. Friend has drunk too much and threw up constantly for an hour and a half and is now asleep in the recovery position. DD is rousing her every half hour and checking her breathing in between. Friend has been asleep for a couple of hours now and has woken ok each time. Neither friend or DD wants her parents involved and DD doesn't want me to go and check on them either - and I don't know the exact address anyway.

She is under strict instructions to call 999 if friend can't be woken, or if she has a seizure or her breathing gets too slow. I will have my phone on so she can contact me. Anything else she should be aware of?

Would the friend drink a little water? If she could that might be good.

Does your DD know how much the friend drank?

But it sounds like she is doing the right things.

Bump...

Unless she drank a really stupid amount I would probably make her have a drink of water And then let her sleep it off.

Sorry, just missed your reply. DD is going to keep offering her water although she said she felt too sick to drink. She reckons she had 100-200mls of rum but the friend is the size of a sparrow and they were probably a bit dehydrated anyway so I imagine it has had quite an effect.

That’s ok.

So not a ridiculous amount?

Even if she can have a little water it would probably help. Although I imagine she may feel quite rubbish in the morning anyway.

Your DD sounds like a lovely friend.

DD is a good friend to her, although chances are she won't be as delightful to us tomorrow when she gets home after a night with no sleep.

I don't think the amount was huge but the friend is absolutely tiny, and the amount of puking obviously scared DD, who has helped drunk friends before - but they obviously weren't this bad.

I'll suggest more water and hope they feel well enough to clean up properly tomorrow before they leave.

tell yr daughter not to keep company with such people in future.
hardly a good influence.
and why should she be always clearing up after foolish people.
maybe they are expecting her to look after them, that's why they behave like that. not fair to her, on any level.
try to encourage her to have more wholesome friends and activities.

I found an 11 yr old on an open day who had drunk about an inch of Gin from a flattish bottle....
Colleagues had put him in the staffroom ''to sleep it off'' , as they didn't want his parents to know {!!}
He too was vomiting.
I called an ambulance, and the child spent two days in hospital with alcohol poisoning.

Choking to death {as you realise } is the risk with being drunk..
I'd keep someone awake looking over her.. just in case.

Snoring is a dangerous sign, too...

It is frightening looking after intoxicated people.. But has to be done.

As a safety aside... anyone who may know Opiate/opioid users may be able to get ''Prenoxad'' antidote... {A real life saver}.

@alexdgr8
Being judgy is no help..
Young people do daft things, and sometimes die as a result.
Most teenagers do something monumentally daft once, intoxication wise, and never repeat the experience.

Guiding our own DC through later teen years without at least once hearing them vomit from overdoing it is unusual.

Often when they go away without parental control for the first time is when they ''go mad''

Just part of growing up.

i disagree. i think attitudes like that make it more likely to happen.
why do we have such low standards for our young people.
expecting so little of them affects their sense of self.
anyway my main point was that the OP's daughter should not be put in this position. it is really not fair to her, without adult support to deal with this.
if she is in any doubt, she should ring 111.

No one wants young people to do things like get rat @rsed or use drugs..but they may do these things, wether we like it or not.

The punitive parent is far more likely to have a child slink off to a risky place than one who is more upfront {probably like OP}

Her daughter knew she could phone her mum for advice..which shows the trust there.

No one wants a friend to die ''on their watch''.

Your daughter sounds v responsible and seems to trust you. Hope things turned out OK

Waiting to hear from her this morning but I'm guessing they are both fast asleep. I didn't hear anything more during the night.

I'm glad DD trusted me enough to ring. (I always leave me phone on when she is out of the house and tell her I will always come and get her, no matter what, if she needs me.)

I wish her friends did not drink so irresponsibly, and that she herself didn't drink much. I've had to pick her up from a sleepover having drunk too much before. I'm hoping she makes friends with much lighter drinkers or non-drinkers at university. But hopefully after last night she knows what to look out for and is more aware of the dangers.

50ml is a standard double measure. So 100-200ml is equivalent to 2-4 doubles. Not a huge amount for a seasoned drinker, but I can see how 4 doubles would make a teen new to alcohol feel grim! Hope she's OK today.

That's interesting about the measures. I'm afraid she is not new to alcohol, judging from what DD has said, but she is so tiny that I can't imagine her capacity is very great. And with the heat yesterday I imagine they didn't drink enough water which won't have helped either.

I'd love to hear they are both ok but I imagine they are still sleeping. I'd only had about 30 mins of sleep when DD called last night and woke me, and had a total of about 3.5 hours before the light woke me up this morning so I don't think either of us are going to be feeling great today.

So two to four doubles? Stop waking her up and let her sleep.

I'm honestly surprised that that's made her vomit. At 18 my mates used to down five jaegerbombs in a pint glass.

Not that that's good btw.

I'd be a bit concerned that two to four doubles made her vomit that much. It may have been dodgy rum.

She was puking for over an hour and half from that amount of alcohol? Sounds a bit weird. I'm sure you've taught DD to always keep an eye on her drink when she's at a party.

Choking to death {as you realise } is the risk with being drunk..
I'd keep someone awake looking over her.. just in case.

How often does this actually happen?!

Obviously, drinking to excess is bad. And I look back on my teenage/early 20s self with horror now. But] please, scaremongering is unnecessary. My biggest fear when the dc are out and drinking is stupidity brought on by alcohol - whether that's driving when drunk, agreeing to things that are harmful or just being stupid enough to step into the road/ jump into freezing water or whatever. Because these are all things that I have actually known to happen, sadly many times.

They’ve got to do this so they learn their limits. If they did it twice a week for the next 40 years then it would be a problem, but currently they are experimenting with what they can handle and hopefully learning from mistakes.

I imagine it wasn’t so much the acohol but dehydration and heat stoke that led to the vomiting.

Everyone has to drink until they throw up at least one. It’s part of being a teenager.

RunningFromInsanity I'm sure you're right.

TitsOutForHarambe I have pushed that point home to DD a lot about being careful of their drinks, but last night was just the two of them drinking at home, which is why DD wanted some advice from me.

We had a run of three young people in one year, who choked to death in their sleep from overindulging in alcohol. Two of them from the same school. One of them on a school trip. . .

@parentalhelpline
Do you think weed could have given her a ''mighty Whitey?''
It can trigger copious vomiting after alcohol..

I hope your Daughter is ok, and that her friend cleans up after any messes she made....

My brother had ''that friend'' who was always bladdered, but weed sent the friend into headpins that made him erupt like Vesuvius.

It was quite disgusting, as the puker left others to clear up the mess.

People do die of alcohol poisoning/choking...and one never knows what else they may have taken.

I too was ''that friend'' who had to do the 'looking after'..I never liked alcohol {still don't} so was the boring sober one...So it fell to me to do the 'babysitting'.

As an emetophobe, It was rather stressful.😱

@mbosnz

Exactly..It isn't 'scaremongering', but being aware.

Last year there was some festival on, and patently underage girls were in shocking states..their mates photographing them.

Peer pressure ''I can drink anyone under the table'' bravado..

The 11 yr old who got hold of the gin, it looked like he only drank an inch of it, but he was ill enough to be kept in a Children's hospital for 2 days.

The fact that other adults shut him in a room on his own with a bucket ''to sleep it off'' was alarming.