CELEBRATING her pal’s birthday with an evening of cocktails at a popular bar, Radharani Domingos Telles had no idea she was drinking poison – until she woke up blind.
After taking a sip of her third caipirinha, the interior designer, 43, blacked out before waking up disorientated and being rushed to intensive care – where she stayed for nine agonising days. Doctors suspected a stroke as she slipped into a coma – but the truth was much more sinister.
Radharani had been poisoned by methanol – a toxic industrial alcohol illegally mixed into the vodka used for her tropical fruit drinks.
She told The Sun: “I had three caipirinhas. I remember ordering the third one — and after that, I don’t remember anything else. Boom – blackout.”
The next day, Radharani, from São Paulo, Brazil, woke up in a daze – unable to see and slept through a family lunch.
Within hours, she was in the ICU, slipping toward a coma.
Doctors first suspected a panic attack or a stroke.
“My blood acidity was incompatible with human life,” she says, as she recalls the ICU chief telling her later. “That doctor saved my life.”
She spent nine days in intensive care – five of them incubated and fighting to stay alive.
When she finally woke up, the world had gone dark.
“I told my husband, ‘Did you turn off the light?’ But it wasn’t the light. It was my eyes,” she said.
“It felt like being inside a black hole.”
Tests later confirmed what nearly killed her: 415 milligrams of methanol in her blood – nearly three times the lethal dose.
“Surviving was a miracle,” she said.
Killer in a glass
Radharani’s case is one of dozens linked to Brazil’s worst methanol poisoning outbreak in recent memory.
The dangerous wave began in late August and has since spread beyond São Paulo.
According to the Ministry of Health, at least 68 people have been poisoned across Brazil, with 15 dead and more than 100 others under investigation.
São Paulo remains the epicentre, with nearly 50 confirmed cases and most victims young adults who simply went out for drinks and to enjoy themselves.
Authorities say counterfeit or adulterated vodkas, gins, and whiskeys were mixed with methanol – often taken from industrial or fuel supplies – to stretch profit margins.
I’ve stopped going out. I might never drink again
Radharani domingos,
In some batches, contamination exceeded a whopping 40 per cent.
Symptoms can appear hours later, including blurred vision, vomiting, confusion, and eventually blindness or death.
Radharani remembers nothing after her third drink.
Her husband got the call that night: she was in intensive care, her kidneys failing, and her body shutting down.
Doctors had to guess, and fast.
One doctor, noticing her extreme metabolic acidosis, ordered emergency dialysis and treatment for methanol poisoning even before lab results came back.
And that decision saved her life.
I told my husband, ‘Help me, I’m dying’
“Once dialysis began, my condition stabilised,” Radharani said.
“But when they extubated me, everything was dark. I could only see silhouettes.”
She left the hospital after more than two weeks, partially blind, with her optic nerves severely damaged.
Specialists had told her she might never recover sight.
But Radharani revealed: “I was sure I’d see again. My husband told me, ‘You could’ve lost five senses, but you only lost one.’ That comforted me.”
Since then, her vision has slowly improved and it’s at about 30 per cent now, she estimates.
She’s learning to live again, returning to work part-time and pushing through exhaustion and tremors.
“It’s like looking through fog,” she explained.
“But I can move around my house again. That’s already a victory.”
A wider crisis
Her personal nightmare mirrors a nationwide scandal.
Police have shut down bars and seized more than 3,000 bottles in São Paulo alone.
Dozens of illegal distilleries have been raided, and at least 20 people have been arrested.
Still, many contaminated bottles remain untested.
“It’s been 50 days and the bottles from the bar where I drank still haven’t all been analyzed,” Radharani said.
“Justice here is slow. Investigations drag on.”
Officials insist progress is being made, from new reporting channels to expanded lab testing.
But the crisis has exposed deep cracks in Brazil’s food and beverage oversight.
The federal government is now treating falsification of alcoholic drinks as a heinous crime.
Behind the scenes, investigators are still probing whether organized crime networks tied to fuel smuggling might have supplied the methanol that ended up in counterfeit bottles.
‘I might never drink again’
For Radharani, the damage runs deeper than her vision.
“I’m furious that establishments don’t ensure the safety of what they serve,” she said.
“Since then, I’ve stopped going out. I only eat at home now. I might never drink alcohol again.”
She’s turned her survival into a warning – recording a video from her hospital bed that went viral and pushed authorities to act.
“I went out for a friend’s birthday on a Friday,” she said.
“By Monday, I was in a coma.”
Now she wants justice, and to make sure no one else lives her nightmare.
“Methanol just shouldn’t exist in the human body, period,” she said.
Hols hotspot ‘warning list’
It comes as killer booze is sweeping through Brit holiday hotspots – with the UK adding 11 more countries to its “warning list” as global fatalities surge.
The alert comes amid a chilling rise in deaths and blindness linked to counterfeit or contaminated alcohol across Asia, Africa, South America and Europe.
Britain’s Foreign Office has expanded its methanol-poisoning warning for the second month in a row – naming Bangladesh, IndiaIran, Jordan, Libya, Malawi, Malaysia, Morocco, Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Rwanda as new high-risk destinations.
They now join countries like Ecuador, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Russia and Uganda, following what officials describe as a “global increase in the number of reported cases”.
The UK has launched a “Know the Signs of Methanol Poisoning” campaign, urging Brits to buy only sealed drinks from licensed venues and avoid buckets, jugs, pre-mixed cocktails and any homemade spirits.
The crisis has been expanding at speed, with devastating consequences.
In Laos, British traveller Simone White, 28, was one of the several tourists killed after drinking free vodka shots at a hostel in Vang Vieng last year.
Australian friends Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles, both 19, also died in the tragedy.
And Danish pals Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman, 20, and Freja Vennervald, 21, died after they were left vomiting blood for 13 hours.
Another British backpacker, Calum Macdonald, 23, who drank there a day before, was left permanently blind.
He recalled waking to “this sort of kaleidoscopic, blinding light… to the point at which I couldn’t see anything”.
Later, when his friends sat with him in their lit hotel room, he asked: “Why are we sitting in the dark? Someone should turn a light on.”
From Southeast Asia to South America, the surge in methanol-laced booze is now a global threat that kills quickly, blinds survivors and is almost impossible to spot before it’s too late.
Dangers of methanol in the body
METHANOL (methyl alcohol) is highly toxic to humans, unlike ethanol, which is the alcohol found in regular beverages.
Even amounts as little as 10-30ml can be fatal.
Main effects of methanol on the body include:
• Severe metabolic acidosis (dangerous drop in blood pH).
• Damages to the optic nerve, which can lead to sudden or permanent blindness.
• Impact to the central nervous system: intense headache, dizziness, confusion, seizures, and coma.
• Potential respiratory failure, multiple organ failure, and death within hours or days.
Early symptoms (may resemble drunkenness):
• Nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain
• Blurred vision or “snow vision” (like looking through a snowstorm)
• Difficulty breathing
There is no home remedy or antidote. Any suspicion of consuming adulterated drinks containing methanol requires immediate medical attention or urgent hospital treatment.