Miekaela Krogh, from Berkeley Vale on the NSW central coast, told Australian current affairs show “A Current Affair” she and another friend fell sick after drinking a pair of cocktails at a bar while on holiday late last year, Ninemsn.com reported.
Miss Krogh was celebrating finishing high school and it was her first time overseas.
She said her mother warned her not to accept a drink from someone she did not know or buy a drink off the street or ever leave her drinks unattended.
But the 17-year-old did not expect the cocktail she ordered directly from a bar to be laced with bootleg methanol.
Within 15 minutes her friend was vomiting as a result of methanol poisoning and hours later Miss Krogh herself was taken to intensive care at a local hospital.
“It was such a shock to us that a drink could do so much damage,” Miss Krogh’s mother Jenny said.
Miss Krogh remembers waking up and realising she could not see.
“It’s just scary. I could just see black. I could hear my friends crying,” she was quoted as saying.
Her mother flew to Bali to be by her daughter’s bedside as she suffered convulsions and went in and out of consciousness.
After a week Miss Krogh’s vision returned and she returned home in time for Christmas.
But scarring in her left eye means the teenager has difficulty seeing colours and she sometimes suffers headaches and blurred vision.
Doctors say 85 per cent of her sight has been restored but cannot say if she will get any better.
Miss Krogh urges other young backpackers in Bali to only drink alcohol that comes from a bottle which they see opened themselves.