New York ? A mother drank vodka and smoked marijuana while taking a vanload of children home from a weekend camping trip that ended in disaster when she went the wrong way on a highway and crashed into an SUV, killing eight people, police said Tuesday.

Diane Schuler, who died along with her 2-year-old daughter and three nieces in her red minivan, had more than 10 drinks of alcohol in her system and a high level of the main ingredient in marijuana, authorities said. A broken 1.75-liter bottle of Absolut vodka was found in her wrecked minivan, police said.

The revelations from the 36-year-old Long Island woman’s autopsy helped explain how the woman her family called “an accomplished working mother who always put her children before any other priorities” wound up driving the wrong way for nearly two miles on a suburban parkway before slamming into the SUV.

The July 26 crash on the Taconic State Parkway, about 35 miles northwest of New York City, also killed three men in the SUV. Schuler’s 5-year-old son, in her minivan, survived.