24-Year-Old Gets Carbon Monoxide Poisoning After Smoking Hookah: 'I Thought I Was Going to Die' (Exclusive)

A "girls day" of smoking hookah for 5 hours ended with a scary visit to the hospital for Rachel Micheaux and her friends

Last Sunday, Rachel Micheaux sat in her apartment in Detroit with her three friends for a "girls day" to help her get over a breakup. They passed around a bottle of tequila and smoked hookah, a water pipe.

Over the course of 5 hours the group smoked three "orange heads" — orange-flavored tobacco —using the hookah. For the first 2 hours, Micheaux says, the apartment windows and balcony door were open. She also had an air purifier running. Then, the content creator says, she closed the windows and doors.

"Four and a half hours into smoking, one of my friends started complaining that they had a really, really bad headache," Micheaux, 24, tells PEOPLE exclusively. "Obviously we're smoking and drinking, so we're just thinking she's probably just feeling the effects."

The girls continued to hang out.

"We're telling her to chill out and lay down," Micheaux continues. "But she was adamant that her head really hurt. She told us this was not normal for her."

Related: Pregnant Woman and Her 2 Sons Killed After Apparent Carbon Monoxide Leak: 'Devastating'

About 20 minutes later, another friend began to feel sick, saying she had a headache, chest pain and fatigue. Soon, Micheaux, too, started to feel unwell.

She says she felt like she wanted to pass out. "I was feeling vertigo," she adds. "My head was already just really fuzzy and I couldn't really formulate a thought."

That's when, she says, a literal alarm went off.

"It was like, 'Warning, carbon monoxide levels are high,'" Micheaux says of the detector in the apartment. "It kept going off to the point where I was like, what is going on?"

At first she actually turned off the carbon monoxide detector. "I'd had an issue with my alarm before when it would just go off when nothing was going on," she explains."So I thought that same thing was happening."

"I turned both of the alarms off. They came back on immediately. So we're trying to figure out what's going on. I'm checking the stove. I'm trying to figure out, how to tell if there's carbon monoxide," she says.

"At that point, we were just really confused. Then my friend said, we need to call 9-1-1."

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When the fire department arrived at Micheaux's apartment they checked the carbon monoxide levels and discovered they were dangerously high.

"They said that I had carbon monoxide poisoning," Micheaux says. "They advised us all to go to the hospital to get treated right away."

Related: Morgan Miller Details 'Terrifying Experience' That Left Three of Her Kids with Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

When the group of friends arrived at the hospital at 9:30 that night, doctors took their vitals and gave them all electrocardiograms to check for heart conditions. They also measured the amount of carbon monoxide in their systems.

Micheaux says her carbon monoxide levels were at 17%. Severe poisoning is associated with levels over 20-25%, according to the National Institutes of Health, which states that abnormal levels are considered 3% or 4% for nonsmokers and 10% for smokers.

The women were placed on oxygen for 5 hours to help them breathe.

"After being on oxygen for an hour, my carbon monoxide levels were still at a 13, which is why we ended up having to be at the hospital for so long, because it took a long time to get to work that out of my system," she continues.

It was nearly 3 a.m. when they left the hospital.

Micheaux has since turned to TikTok to share her story and spread awareness about carbon monoxide poisoning. Her biggest piece of advice: Everyone should have a carbon monoxide detector — in every room.

"I'm not going to lie, I felt really bad in the moment," she said. "I was scared because when you hear about carbon monoxide poisoning, you usually hear about it after all is said and done. It's already too late. Somebody has died from it," she says.

"So when I heard that I had carbon monoxide poisoning, I thought I was going to die. It's not a laughing matter, it's not funny, it's scary when you think about it. I also felt bad because I'm like, wow, I did not know this. My ignorance put my friends' lives in jeopardy. So looking back I felt really bad and we were all pretty scared at that point."

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