Toxic cocktail left woman vacationing on Indonesian isle burnt “from inside out”

An Australian woman vacationing on the tropical Indonesian isle of Lombok was burned "from the inside out" by a cocktail called "Jungle Juice."  

The same drink — which uses a local brew called arak, a popular rice wine — has killed at least four foreigners, the Herald Sun reports.

Jamie Johnston, 25, a nurse from Newcastle, has spent the past three weeks in intensive care units in Bali and Darwin hospitals after collapsing at Denpasar Airport suffering renal failure. 

She had ordered a jug of Jungle Juice, or arak mixed with fruit juice, to share with her mother at Lombok's Happy Cafe restaurant.

The drink was laced with chemical methanol — a toxic chemical compound often used as an anti-freeze or in paint sometimes used in Arak.

According to the SMH, a batch of Jungle Juice contaminated with methanol and sold in Bali in 2009 killed 25 people, including a British national, an Irish woman, a Dutch man and an American woman.

Travel advice issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs for Indonesia contains a warning that foreigners have died after ''consuming brand name alcohol or local spirits adulterated with harmful substances''.

“It burnt her from the inside out,” Lyn Tisdell, the mother of Johnston's boyfriend Dennis, told the Herald Sun.

Johnston's mother was not sickened because the methanol was at the top of the jug of Jungle Juice, and Johnson had the first glass.

She was reportedly struggling to speak and barely walk, and her legs were severely burnt, and according to the Herald Sun, she slipped into a coma and sustained brain scarring because of lack of oxygen.

Johnston was flown from Bali, the island nearest to Lombok, to Royal Darwin Hospital in Australia two weeks ago at a cost of $50,000, as she didn't take out travel insurance.