A 21-year-old Nevada woman is sharing her story after a night of drinking changed her life forever.
In July of 2015, Hanna Lottritz ended up in an alcohol-induced coma after what was supposed to be a fun day with friends at a music festival.
Lottritz wrote in a blog post that she only had a couple beers at the festival, but shortly after tried to out drink a group of friends who were drinking liquor at a campsite.
“Around 11:30 p.m., one of my guy friends and I were seeing who could take the longest chug from a bottle of Black Velvet Whiskey,” she wrote.
Lottrirz said she doesn’t remember anything that happened from midnight on.
Her friends told her that after drinking whiskey from the bottle, she also chugged a solo cup full of the same liquor.
“Immediately after this I told my friends I felt fine, and about five minutes later I collapsed. I wasn’t breathing,” she explained.
Lottritz was taken to the hospital in critical condition with a blood alcohol content of .41, five times over the legal limit.
“The doctors thought I was brain dead because I was completely unresponsive. My pupils were sluggishly reactive, I had no corneal reflex, and I wasn’t responding to verbal or painful stimuli,” wrote Lorittz.
She shared a photo of herself taken just hours after being admitted to the hospital.
She woke up from a coma 24 hours later with breathing tube down her throat.
The doctors didn’t think that she was going to make it through the night and told her that she was lucky to be alive.
“They asked me if I was trying to kill myself by drinking so much. This question hit me the hardest. From my hospital bed in the Intensive Care Unit, my eyes were opened to the seriousness of being irresponsible with alcohol. The next day when I was discharged from the hospital, I realized that the way I looked at alcohol would be changed forever,” she wrote.
Lorritz is sharing her story to stress the importance of being responsible with alcohol.
She also says that the help she got from her friends saved her life.
“Don’t take a chance if you see a friend passed out from drinking too much. Get them help as soon as possible. I’m very lucky to have made a full recovery, but I know there are others who won’t be as lucky.”