To drink drive my neighbour to hospital?

[hanette]

So, had 2x 25 CL glasses of wine in pub w DH. He goes on to meet friend, I go to put D teenagers to bed.

Knock at door 11.10pm, neighbour asking me to take to A and E in car due to plummeting blood pressure and severe pains in left arm

I did - adrenaline kicked in - I tried to persuade them to call an ambulance or wait for my DH but they were so distressed I just took them in my car


Am shocked - am a rubbish driver anyway and have never driven after more than one glass of wine

So - was I over the limit? I had a plate of salmon and veg for din. And also WWTD?

Am shocked at myself and how I deffo felt different (less safe) behind the wheel.

[PopiusTartius]

ps OP I hope your neighbour is ok.

[shellbot]

I'd heard something about an hour for each unit but didn't realise it was an hour after stopping.

HicDraconis I'm confused with your analogy. If you stop drinking at 12pm then wouldn't it be 7pm when you're back to zero? Or am I missing something?

[nocheeseinhouse]

While I don't wish to put people's backs up, I'm with Deepsage that 6 units is a lot, if you're drinking that regularly. 2-3 units/night is considered safe for a woman. I think 6 units in a night counts as a "drinking binge". I think we have a really screwed up idea about what drinking dangerously is in the UK.

I understand why you did what you did, but please never do it again. I'm sorry for the poster who's daughter was injured, that sounds horrific.

[OTheHugeManatee]

It depends. If you're tall, and sturdily built, and had a decent meal, and a fair tolerance for alcohol, then 500cl of average wine over a few hours would not be such a massive deal and IMO YANBU to have just driven her. Especially as chest and arm pain can mean cardiac issues. You might have saved her life.

Equally though if you're short, not a regular drinker, haven't eaten much recently and live in a busy area then it might have been a dodgy decision. I think this is one of those judgement calls where the absolute rules say one thing but on balance the risks balance out.

How would any of the nay-sayers have felt if they had refused to drive the neighbour to hospital and the delay waiting for an ambulance had meant irreversible damage due to a heart attack? How would the OP have forgiven herself if she'd killed her neighbour in an accident, trying to save her? Either way, the OP made a judgement call and nobody died. Piling in to castigate her just seems a bit excessive somehow.

[captainmummy]

Shellbot - I think Hic means 12pm as in 12midnight. So you would be clear 6 hours per unit after that - 7am.

[captainmummy]

Nocheese - the government recommend women drink no more than 14 units a week (which is a totally made up, out-of-the-air figure that varies from country to country!) so 6 units twice a week is still well within recommended guidelines. Most people probably drink that over the course of a weekend.

[elfycat]

Actually alcohol metabolisation takes priority in the liver because the body can't store it (as it can with carbs fats and proteins) so unless Hic wants to find a peer reviewed biochemistry paper to prove the point it is an medical urban myth.

But as a matter of course I always count it the way Hic describes as then you err on the safe side. Always best to be on the safe side as the unsafe side with drink driving has major consequences (also medical field and I've seen the results of accidents).

[PopiusTartius]

Justforlaughs I obviously don't know what medical emergency your children had had at the time. But someone in cardiac arrest would be bumped right up the queue to near the top, if not the top, for exactly the reason that was given near the start of the thread; the "golden hour" to get treatment underway. So if your children weren't having that sort of emergency (I hope they weren't) but several other people were... I can see why that advice was given to you. I hope they were both ok by the way.

[nocheeseinhouse]

6 units twice a week counts as 2 binges.

The fact that many people drink too much is neither here nor there.