A mum who was drinking three litres of vodka a day after becoming addicted to alcohol was warned she had just one day left to live. Charlotte Durcan, 30, claimed she was sober before her addiction reached its peak three years after she drank alcohol for the first time again. Charlotte was warned that she risked losing her life due to the amount of alcohol she was consuming.
During her addiction, she was suffering from blackouts and seizures, and without alcohol in her body she experienced shaking and sweating.
After realising she couldn’t go a day without reaching for the alcohol, Charlotte realised she had a serious problem that needed help.
The mum-of-two, from Lancashire, told LancsLive: “In the mornings, I would have to have a drink, just to level me out.
“It would be vodka and that would be a pint of vodka neat. That would be literally to stop me from shaking and stop me from being too sick and sweating – that’d work.
“From there, it would just carry on throughout the day, but obviously, when money went tight and things, I would try and get family to get me drink. I was using all my money up on drink, so they’d sometimes only be able to get me bottles of wine and things.
“Then I started to realise it was a problem, when I could have a full bottle of wine and it wouldn’t affect me.”
Charlotte says only when drinking vodka would she feel the affects but after one black out, she visited the hospital for the first time.
She was kept in for a few days and eventually returned home, but despite going four days without drinking she “went straight back to the drink” upon her return and ended up back in hospital again.,
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This circle of events repeated itself around three or four times before the situation became grave.
“The last time, I ended up in intensive care with multiple organ failure,” Charlotte continued. “I had heart failure, liver failure, kidney failure and they had to take two litres of fluid from my lungs and I was in for three weeks, but I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t talk.
“So I was in intensive care, I was on oxygen and they got all of my family in to say bye to me. I was literally on end of life care.”
Charlotte’s family visited her in hospital at 2am, after they were told by doctors that such was her condition that she had only one day left to live.
However, she says that somehow she “managed to pull through” and decided to enter rehab after recovering.
The mum is now celebrating 11 months of sobriety and is paying back the help she received by volunteering for the charity who helped her into rehab, Inspire Lancashire.
The group are currently undertaking an alcohol awareness campaign, Hidden in Plain Sight. It focuses on those addiction issues who may not appear to be suffering on the outside, but are battling inner demons.
Charlotte believes addiction is often associated with people who have been struggling for years, but in her case, she was grappled by alcoholism quickly. “My story is a lot different to other people’s,” Charlotte explained.
“I think people think that you have to be an alcoholic for so many years or start off as a drinker, then a binge drinker and then you’re an alcoholic. Whereas, I’m trying to raise awareness that it can literally happen to you so quickly, without you even realising and then it can be too late for some people.
“I was close to dying, all of my family thought I was going to die, but I didn’t have a clue because I was so out of it. That was my outcome after two years of drinking heavily.”
Charlotte says Inspire Lancashire supported her to stop drinking gradually, as stopping cold turkey could have killed her.
