I thought my drink was spiked when I couldn’t walk — it was a nasty spider bite

A UK man just trying to enjoy a beer on a Sunday afternoon ended up in excruciating pain and covered in painful blisters after dismissing the symptoms of a spider bite as a bad hangover.

Nathan Green, 50, recalls feeling a “tickle” on the back of his leg while he was having a drink at a pub with some friends in June but initially thought nothing of it.

Little did he know that tickle was actually a spider sinking its fangs into the back of his calf — despite the fact that he was wearing jeans and Chelsea boots.

“I felt something go up and tickle my leg a bit, so I brushed my leg, like you do,” Green explained to Kennedy News and Media. “I was drinking away quite merrily and when I got home, I started shaking and felt cold. I felt really rough and remember thinking, ‘This ain’t right.’”

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES BELOW

The man recalled feeling unwell hours later still and knew something was wrong when he continued to fall sick the next day — initially thinking his drink had been spiked.

“I felt like I’d been run over. I couldn’t go to work,” he said. “I felt that bad. I thought that somebody had spiked me. I felt really, really ill.”

But 24 hours later, the area from his ankle to his knee was rock solid and had “completely swollen” to about “three times the size it should be,” causing Green’s wife to insist he go to the emergency room.

“Then I noticed this blister on the back of my leg, and within an hour it had doubled in size,” he added. Green rushed to the emergency room, where a nurse took one look at his leg and deduced he’d been bitten by a false widow spider.

Doctors at the hospital said he was going into anaphylactic shock and immediately hooked him up to an antibiotic IV drip. More yellow blisters erupted on the back of Green’s leg before doctors were forced to pierce and drain them, which left him with a foot-long patch of raw, painful skin.

“You wouldn’t think a little spider could do so much damage — it’s unbelievable,” he said, admitting that the experience may make him more cautious around arachnids.

“Before [this happened], if my family saw a spider, I would pick it up with my hand, open the window and throw them outside — they never worried me at all,” he admitted.

Green said the bite was the “worst pain” he’d ever felt, and he was still struggling to move three weeks later.

The dad said he’s thankful his wife made him go to the emergency room — otherwise, the consequences may have been much more severe.

“The hospital said If I’d left it later it would have caused more damage to my leg,” he said. “My advice to anyone who gets bitten is to go and get it checked out.”