Calum Macdonald, 23, saw a ‘kaleidoscopic, blinding light’ in his eyes before losing his sight after a methanol poisoning in Laos last November that killed six – including Brit Simone White
A young British man who was blinded after drinking bootleg whisky and vodka in Laos last year has shared the heartbreaking moment he realised he had lost his sight.
Calum Macdonald, 23, was among the group of tourists suspected to have fallen victim to methanol poisoning at a hostel in Vang Vieng last November. Six people tragically died, including 28-year-old lawyer Simone White from Orpington, Kent. The tourists had been staying at the Nana Backpackers hostel and are believed to have consumed free alcoholic drinks laced with methanol. Simone’s best friend, Bethany Clarke, spoke to the Mirror about the tragedy last month.
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Calum, who is now permanently blind, told BBC Breakfast that he had mixed the spirits with soft drinks and noticed something was wrong with his vision the next day. While on a bus with his friends crossing into Vietnam, he said he could not read any of the signs and saw a “kaleidoscopic, blinding light” in his eyes. “We thought it was food poisoning and the light I was seeing was some kind of sensitivity,” he said.
Things took a turn for the worse at the hotel, where Calum’s vision had gone black. “We arrived in Hanoi, and at that point, the kind of white light in my eyes had diminished,” he said. “It wasn’t until we got to our hotel room and my friends and I were sitting in the room, and I said to my friends, why are we sitting in the dark here? Let’s turn on a light. And they informed me that the light was, in fact, already on.”
Calum described how he struggled to breathe and speak as he was rushed to hospital. Initial tests did not reveal the cause, he told BBC Breakfast, but when he returned to England, results confirmed it was linked to something he had been drinking.
Methanol is a toxic type of alcohol often found in cleaning products. Drinking methanol-laced alcohol can at first cause hangover-like symptoms, including dizziness, headaches and nausea. But within 12 to 48 hours, symptoms can progress to seizures, blurred vision and even blindness. As little as 30ml of methanol can be deadly, according to Médecins Sans Frontières – though treatment with dialysis within 10 to 30 hours can save lives.
Calum wants young people, especially students planning gap years, to be aware of the dangers of methanol poisoning. He has also urged the Foreign Office to be clearer about the countries where the risk is greatest.
He said: “I think I definitely feel a sense of responsibility as someone who’s been lucky enough to survive this, to try and get the message out.
“Because I know certainly, if I’d known about it, I wouldn’t be in this situation. And I know I have a lot of friends that have also done similar sort of gap years in travelling around even that particular area.
“If I was to put out a recommendation to people, although I’m certainly not an expert or a medical professional, I would probably say that if you did want to drink alcohol in some of the affected countries, probably just to avoid spirits entirely.
“I think it would be nice, even if we could get some more information directly into universities, because I think that’s the age of people that are really considering doing these kinds of trips, I think that would be a great thing.”
Two of the tourists who died – Danish friends Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman, 20, and Freja Sorensen, 21 – had met Calum on a night out. The other victims were American James Huston, 57, Australian women Holly Morton-Bowles and Bianca Jones, both 19, and Simone White, 28.
The Mirror has contacted the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for comment.