Alcohol poisoning - treatment + effects

Perhaps you need different search terms.

Mayo Clinic: Alcohol poisoning

MedScape: Alcohol Toxicity Treatment & Management

Treatment for an alcohol overdose usually includes:

Airway support, such as breathing tubes or a ventilator.
IV fluids.
B-12 and thiamine to preclude against the complications of common alcoholic nutritional deficiencies.
Gastric lavage (or stomach pumping) to minimize absorption of already ingested alcohol or other drugs.
Activated charcoal administration to further minimize absorption of gastric contents.

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There's more on that site about the longer term outcome.

anaemic_mind said:

...That last link looks either wildly out of date or the US is very different to the UK in how it treats alcohol OD's. Charcoal and stomach pumping aren't used from the info I found last night....

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Charcoal doesn't absorb alcohol all that well so gastric lavage is used without the charcoal. It looks like you had reasonable success with your online search after all.

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Your OP suggests that the witness is going to be in the ambulance with the patient. In this neck of the woods, that would be unlikely, with a couple of exceptions: the patient is a small child or the patient is near death and the police need to take a statement if they can. There tends not to be extra space in ambulances for extra people.

If you meant that the witness was seeing this before the patient is loaded into the ambulance, then you're okay.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Patient would stay overnight, maybe two days at the absolute longest if it took that long to find a bed for him/her in a psych or drug treatment unit if that was deemed needed.

Prehospital care, the same thing you'd do with anyone in a drug induced coma, support respirations and circulation.

And what Siri Kirpal said.

If he's got a history of alcohol abuse he's also likely to get a referral to a specialist treatment service, but this is basically just a 'we really recommend you go get help' and he'd be free to ignore it but it might give you an extra point of tension to play with in later scenes if his friends are trying to get him to look after himself better.

If he's arriving in an ambulance and unconscious he's not going to have much of a wait in A & E, that's what triage is for, although as its just alcohol poisoning they'll just pump his stomach, hook him up with an IV and some additives and then if they can't find a proper bed, leave him on a gurney for a bit until one comes available in the morning, but if its not a super busy Friday/Saturday or bank holiday etc then it probably won't be much of an issue (waiting times and bed availability also varies dramatically around the country so think about where its based). Please don't repeat tabloid nonsense about bad hospitals without a good reason.

Source - best friends with an A & E nurse for 14 years and has heard every story imaginable

This is my memory of my alcohol poisoning while in Vietnam in 1968, from my memoir "Small War", which is still in progress:

In September 1968 I was preparing to celebrate my 365 days in Vietnam with my Dustoff buddies. I copped a ride down to Saigon, went to the PX and bought, along with my cartons of cigarettes, a bottle of vodka and a bottle of Four Roses. The reason for the helicopter flight was “to pick up some orders”, but the real reason was to pick up a half palate of beer. We returned from Saigon and offloaded the liquids. This time the beer was Carling Black Label. While 1st and 2nd Up were in the RTO room, officially, the Ready Room, with a red light bulb on after dark to protect the crew’s night vision, the rest of us had finished dinner mess and eventually wandered one-by-one over to the club. I was there early and started drinking whisky-coke, a half glass of coke, (though it may have been Nehi or Tab) with the Four Roses to top it off and eating fresh corn on the cob brought to us by our hospital cook who had traded some Navy rations for it from a hospital cook near Da Lat. It was a great time, but I don’t remember many details. Most of the way through the evening I finished the Four Roses and started on the vodka with Coke. My only memory of that part of the party was my speaking above the noise of the crowd saying “I’ve got three things I want to say” while looking at CWO Marler. I recall saying that three or four times. After that it’s all black.
When I woke up I was in my cot, in my tent. I felt awful. My mouth was dry like cotton, and my head swirled. I laid there for a while, then turned a bit in the cot. I felt like I was in a mudhole. I eventually got myself together and sat up in my cot. I was soaked. And I stank. I stood up and liquid poop started running down my fatigues onto my legs. I had shit and peed myself in my sleep. Damn. I coaxed myself to walk to our outdoor shower area and turned on the water, it was sorta warm. I stripped, saw the mess in my underwear and just stood under the falling water. I had a serious beard on my face. I got myself clean and my clothes clean enough to give to my mama san (a local woman who was our tent maid) to wash. I walked back to my tent naked, hiding myself with my soaked fatigues. I got dressed, then took my cot outside and spent an hour cleaning it. Then I cleaned the floor under my cot. I then shaved and considered myself presentable. Outside I met CWO Marler (CWO = Chief Warrant Officer). He looked at me, asked how I was and then told me I had been out for two whole nights. It was now the third day after my celebration. He laughed about how he helped me make it back from the clubhouse to my cot, “you were planting corn all along the way” he said. – from the corn on the cob we had had for dinner -- and that’s all I remember about my ‘party’.
I reflected later about my “absence” from reality as I slept off my hard drinking. I had finished one and half quarts of Four Roses and vodka, plus some beers. I was told I had been “blind drunk” and kept raving about having three things to say, but they never could get me to say what those three things were. And I have no memory of what they were either. Three people helped me back to my cot that night. I was out for 53 hours, more or less. There was nothing going on in my head during that time; I was out. Zero. No dreams, no thoughts, nada. Black midnight. I imagined that must be what it’s like when you’re dead. I concluded later that it was just like before I was born and settled on the idea that ‘When you die, you go back to where you were before you were born.’ That’s not so bad.
I never feared death after that, and I couldn’t get near strong alcohol for about ten years. Even now, my first thought when smelling strong alcohol, even my favorite cognac, is that morning when I woke up.

FWIW
DrDoc

By the way, the next day I was flying again as the medic on unarmed medevacs called "Dustoffs".

anaemic_mind said:

... As I said in my earlier post I just need him sobered up and sent on his way in this story. No psych treatment beyond a quick bedside assessment at this time.

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That would be the next day in the states and I don't see any reason it would be different in the NHS.

Besides the proper treatment in the hospital, alcohol poisoning is dangerous. I hope your character will survive. Besides the hospital part, you can put him in any good rehab if your guy continues drinking in your scenario. You can write that he became depressed after the hospital and started drinking even more. It can be a pretty good story about how your character deals with problems during his treatment in a rehab alcoholics center. Also, can you tell me more about his friend following the character? Maybe you can put them both in rehab or make him help the main character escape the rehab?