Woman Given 24 Hours To Live After Drinking Three Litres Of Vodka Every Day

Credit: MEN Media

A mother of two who was diagnosed with multiple organ failure and given 24 hours to live has spoken up about her struggles with alcohol addiction.

Charlotte Durcan, a resident of Colne, Lancashire, claims that her addiction just developed three years ago. Prior to that, she considered herself to be a non-drinker because she occasionally drank.

The self-described "extremist," however, found herself drinking three liters of vodka every day and began to experience seizures and blackouts.

Credit: MEN Media

She told LancsLive: "I drank to the extreme and that's my personality, I don't do things by halves.”

"It's always everything is the furthest I can take it, in a sense. I was drinking really heavily and basically, it grabbed me."

When Durcan realized she would start "shaking and sweating" if she went without a drink, she realized she had a severe problem.

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She said: "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 realize it was a problem when I could have a full bottle of wine and it wouldn't affect me."

She went to the hospital for the first time after blacking out once more, where she was held for a few days before being sent home.

But after four days off, she went "straight back to the drink" when she got home, and after three or four more hospital stays, the pattern started again.

"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 liters 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."

When Durcan's family learned that she only had 24 hours left to live, they rushed to her bedside at 2 am.

She miraculously "managed to pull through" and entered rehab after celebrating 11 months of sobriety.

Durcan currently works as a volunteer for Inspire Lancashire, which is running a new alcohol awareness campaign called Hidden in Plain Sight. This campaign is focused on people who have addictions but may not seem to be suffering on the outside but are actually struggling with inner demons.

"My story is a lot different to other people's," Durcan said.

"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 realizing 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."

She claimed that quitting abruptly would have likely killed her, but Inspire Lancashire assisted her in entering rehab so that she could cut back on drinking gradually.

Before considering a full-time job, Durcan is now aiming to complete a year of sobriety.