Thank you for your beautiful and warm welcome - I am still making my way through the threads... but it is taking time - I am quite emotional, alternating between fearing what could be ahead for my relative and thinking that I am over reacting.
My son is 20 years old, when he first started drinking, he had three occasions where he drank more than he was capable of dealing with and his friends called us... we talked about the fact that he seemed to have a lower alcohol threshold than his friends and that he needed to be careful. He went to university, joined a sports club, drank lots... I now know that he has blacked out at least three times, but he doesn't seem too concerned because each time 'he got home'. They all appear to have involved spirits - but out drinking, so would have had to buy or be given these rather than drinking from a bottle.
10 days ago, he was in our house, the night before going back to university, he had three beers with his Dad, and we went to bed. He decided he wanted to have something else to drink, tried some champagne cognac which he thought was champagne and some pink gin - it is not clear how much of these he had, because I have no idea how much was in the bottle. He has no recollection after this. At 2am, my husband woke up and realised the lights were still on so went downstairs to find him injured (he had hit his head, broken a drawer and knocked over loads of things), sitting on the kitchen table, as if he was asleep. My husband thought he was sleep walking, we tried to wake him and get him back to bed and quickly realised this was not normal and called an ambulance, realising that he looked very drunk, I thought he might have had a stroke, we found no evidence of drinking, no bottles out, no glasses etc.. much later we found an empty gin bottle, but again, have no idea how much was in the bottle as we have had it for a while....
The ambulance crew arrived and took him to hospital, I went with him, on arrival they said he was in a coma and not making respiratory effort, they put him in a medically induced coma and intubated him before transferring him to another hospital which had intensive care - the first one did not. We got to the second hospital and were asked to wait - I thought he was dead. He was awake and they let us see him after trying to figure out what happened. He had a blood alcohol level of 0.48 which I have calculated would mean that he would have consumed almost a litre of spirits - which makes absolutely no sense what so ever, but I do not disbelieve the hospital blood tests or the severity of the state that he was in.
He was awake, 8 hours after we first found him, tired, embarrassed, not really knowing what had happened and just wanting to go home.
We have talked, and talked... but he is back at university now, and I know he can put on a mask and make things look OK. He is reaching out for support, he is not drinking, but I think he still thinks he will be fine if he avoids spirits..
Meanwhile, here I am, wondering if this is the start of a really difficult journey where the reality is, families can not help. Is it a chemical reaction in his body that means he has can not activate a stop button, is it something that will draw him in and drag him down, will I wake up one day to a message from someone I don't know, telling me he is dead?
If my husband had slept through until 6am, if my husband was not here (because I did not wake up), if we had managed to get him back to bed to sleep it off, if the ambulance had taken longer to get there.... he would most likely be dead.
What if he goes to an event, someone else buys him drinks and he ends up in the same situation, what if he finds a bottle of spirits when he is drunk after a few beers and it kills him.
I cry a lot and wonder if I am blowing this out of proportion.... of if the grim reaper really did come for him and he is coming back...