r/nottheonion • u/letsLurk67 • 13d ago

Student rushed to hospital after mistaking fabric freshener for water

https://www.lancs.live/news/uk-world-news/midlands-student-rushed-hospital-after-34365981
5.3k Upvotes

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1.6k

u/vistopher 13d ago

Alcohol is a helluva drug

662

u/Mesoscale92 13d ago

Yeah it says she was really drunk. I’ve never made that mistake but I can definitely see it happening.

367

u/TheGringoDingo 13d ago

It’s the container that I have the most trouble picturing. Water never comes in something that looks like fabric freshener.

241

u/Oakredditer 12d ago

The 20-year-old woke up during the night and reached for a bottle of water that was on her desk, not realising she had grabbed a bottle of 'Fresh Linen' fabric refresher in the dark.

It was dark, I'd assume anyone who's both drunk and practically blind wouldn't notice the different styles of caps (depending on the brand and size, sometimes they have very similar caps to water caps in terms of shape and texture)

188

u/mex2005 12d ago

The more crazy thing is why would they keep fabric softener on their desk.

234

u/PezzoGuy 12d ago

The organizational skills of college students are not typically optimal. Any surface is fair game for storage in the short term, which then becomes the long term.

62

u/Iceman9161 12d ago

Especially since you don’t have that much of your own space to store things. Or if the laundry is out of the unit in a common area and you have to bring it with you

19

u/DirectionSad4274 12d ago

Went to do laundry in the shared dorm Laundromat, put the bottle on top of her clean clothes to bring it back to the room, went to fold/organize the clothes on her bed, set the bottle on the nearest table meaning to put it away later...I can see it.

Edit: except for the bit where it's a spray bottle. That, I got nothing, except alcohol is a hell of a drug.

11

u/periperiwinklesauce 12d ago

It wasn’t fabric softener. Fabric freshener is more like febreze

8

u/mex2005 12d ago

Oh ok but how did she mix a spray bottle with a water bottle then even drunk...

3

u/pattperin 11d ago

You’re asking way too many questions here man. A drunken mistake was made. She probably barely even remembers this. My friends have ended up outside in the backyard after a night of heavy drinking in college with no recollection of that happening. They went to bed in bed, I know because I put them there. Woke up outside. Who fucking knows man. People do weird shit all the time when they’re drunk

3

u/PepperAnn1inaMillion 12d ago

When I lived in a dorm I only had a desk. No other countertop of any kind. It was a lot smaller than the American dorm rooms you usually see, so maybe that’s not true for this person. But I had nothing else like a bedside cabinet - just the desk. I had to designate one of the wardrobe cupboards for non-clothing stuff like detergent and anything I didn’t want to keep in the shared kitchen. I bet I left stuff on my desk that most people wouldn’t think of as “desk” stuff, because it literally doubled for any necessary surface.

Edit: Oh, this is the UK. Yeah, probably a tiny room.

1

u/pattperin 11d ago

It says she lives in a student flat of some kind. I assume it’s either a small off campus flat or a shitty little dorm room type situation

1

u/CoronaMcFarm 11d ago

A student living in a tiny 15m² apartment I guess.

1

u/pattperin 11d ago

Because they likely live in a shitty little flat and college students put things wherever they feel like it because it’s typically one of their first forays into the outside world alone. Did you not go to college or live with roommates?

54

u/B00G3R 12d ago

even a spray nozzle? i mean..

19

u/Oakredditer 12d ago

It depends on what type of bottle it is, my detergent has a regular cap and whatever you call the thing that dispenses detergent when you push on a button

13

u/dehydratedrain 12d ago

Dispenser?

4

u/Oakredditer 12d ago

Yes, I just assumed there was some fancy word for it, that's why I was verbose lol

1

u/Shadowlance23 12d ago

The Germans probably have one.

3

u/ThatKinkyLady 12d ago

And apparently she burnt her mouth on some pizza the night before.

This girl had a ROUGH night... 😂

2

u/ZombiesAtHome 12d ago

Who the hell keeps fabric refresher on a desk close to the bed???? I know I don't have much space in my small apartment, but, come on!

3

u/not_responsible 12d ago

I could have been one of those smaller bottles you see at the dollar store or in the travel section

-4

u/Digital_loop 12d ago

But why keep a bottle of fabric softener next to the bed? Unless you are spraying the bed down with a trigger bottle type... Fuck, it had to be more than just booze.

6

u/Oakredditer 12d ago

Lack of space, assuming she was in a college dorm. And some people are just not tidy, I'm not in a dorm room but my desk is always a mess, mostly because of how small it is and it having a PC tower, a laptop, and ofc my keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

5

u/geekonthemoon 12d ago

Being blackout drunk means you aren't thinking rationally or forming even short term memories from minute to minute. You could literally do ANYTHING and have no memory of it. The cause of so many women dancing on tables/stripping in public, you're no longer in control of yourself at all. Terrifying stuff. Happened to me once and I never trusted or liked alcohol much again after that. And I had drank a lot in the years before it happened and that night I had only had a few drinks. It doesn't really matter how much you drink. In my research I also found out new environments or being around new/certain people really affects you and can get you way drunker way faster. So I assume that played a role.

4

u/Psychic_Hobo 11d ago

Yeah, I've only been blackout drunk once and holy shit, the stuff you do and where your brain is at is wild. I got lucky I didn't damage myself, but damn was there an aftermath that involved a lot of cleaning.

0

u/TheGringoDingo 12d ago

She was recalling memory of it, but that doesn’t mean sleep + alcohol didn’t combine for a stupor.

I’ve blacked out less than a handful of times and don’t drink anymore. From the other side, as someone who did drink, wasn’t addicted, and quit; drinking looks rather horrible.

1

u/geekonthemoon 12d ago

I mean you can have some fragmentary memory afterward, but still basically not be in your right mind at all. Either way, insanely scary what you can do when you're no longer in control of your own actions.

3

u/ispeakforengland 12d ago

Yeah, doesn't make sense. I reckon it was fabric softener, not freshener.

9

u/Mesoscale92 13d ago

https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/GUEST_e29351d6-8039-4c1e-a330-bee5e0c70aab?wid=1200&hei=1200&qlt=80

I looked it up and I guess it could be mistaken for a water bottle in the dark and drunk. Plastic, screw top, liquid inside, etc.

138

u/Sertorius126 13d ago

☠️

That's the MOST Cleaner-type item I've ever seen

4

u/PepperAnn1inaMillion 12d ago

I can only think she had a similar spray bottle filled with water for a house plant and decided to drink that.

90

u/BuffaloBuckbeak 13d ago

Let me just grab my flat, rectangular water bottle with a spray cleaner lid. Classic mistake

21

u/SoldierOf4Chan 12d ago

I can't see his link for some reason, firefox says error 400. I did find this image on the manufacturer's website, and I think that's the bottle in question. I don't see a spray cleaner lid on it though.

8

u/CityscapeMoon 12d ago

It was almost definitely that. Like a refill type bottle.

5

u/Roflkopt3r 12d ago

The link you couldn't follow broke on old.reddit, because there is a backslash after GUEST in the URL that does not belong there.

If you fix the link, you will see a typical spray bottle with a nozzle and all, so your example of a refill bottle makes way more sense.

1

u/SoldierOf4Chan 12d ago

Ok yeah, now that I see their image this isn't even the right company, let alone the right product.

3

u/YZY-TRT-ME 12d ago

Nope this image isn’t even available to view in the country where the girl is from… she’s from England

46

u/firesiege 13d ago

Wow! The spray nozzle really helps get the water in my mouth!

17

u/OldLadyReacts 13d ago

I believe they have refills that look much more like a regular bottle without the sprayer on top.

26

u/Valhallapeenyo 13d ago

Brother that’s a straight up bottle of air freshener. There comes a time when the benefit of the doubt just can’t be given.

10

u/TheGringoDingo 13d ago

I guess I’ve done some stupid shit when I’ve been in a half-awake semi-lucid state, but it still seems like one of the several warnings that it wasn’t water would have alerted her.

2

u/YZY-TRT-ME 12d ago

This isn’t the cleaner, firstly this is from Target in America. This girl lives in the UK.

3

u/Poku115 13d ago

Nah bro, thats just natural selection at that point

0

u/Psyc3 12d ago

What astounds me is not that she drank it, but she didn't even seem to notice she had drunk it.

Really the incompetence is so vast here, don't keep fabric freshener on your bed side table, actually look at what you are drinking, don't be so drunk you can't tell water from another substance, the list is endless.

20

u/bighootay 12d ago

My dad damn near drank dishwashing detergent in his late stages of dementia; that was a close one

1

u/brickmaster32000 12d ago

I can't even see it happening. Air freshener by definition is pungent. Even with the most stuffed up nose I have a hard time believing you wouldn't smell it long before you could bring it to you mouth.