I was reading about roofies after reading this article and came across the quote below. How common in real life is the deliberate use of roofiesand similar drugs to molest women vs simply taking advantage of women who are drunk to near insensibility? This survey of victims seems to suggest that most “I was drugged” claims predicate to being raped or molested are almost always a case of severe intoxication due to simply drinking too much.
How common is being “drugged” via roofies etc vs simply being drugged with alcohol?
I don’t have any data for you, but wanted to add scenario 3, which is spiking drinks with alcohol, or more alcohol than expected. My dad says they put grain alcohol in the punch when he was at Georgia Tech in the 50’s, even.
A friend of mine was telling me after I’d mentioned never having been drunk that she hasn’t either, but not from a lack of trying. She credited her Irish heritage. She did say, though, that she went out with a guy once and got completely loopy after one drink, and has thus come to the very heartfelt conclusion that this guy drugged it or spiked it in some significant way.
She’s a nurse working on her R.N., so wrongly or rightly, I trust her to know the difference between unexpectedly drunk and drugged.
In real world terms doesn’t this mean that a roofie poisoner has only about 15-20 minutes from intake to assume physical control the victim? If this is so I can understand being roofie poisoned in an apartment or private setting over drinks where a sexual predator figures he has control of the victim, but slipping someone a roofie in a bar seems kind of pointless if they are going to effectively crash in 15-20 minutes in a public setting with no guarantee that they are going home with you. In fact in most scenarios I’ve seen where women start acting erratic in bars (due to lots of alcohol) there usually at least one or more people women (even strangers) who assumes a protective role for the incapacitated person.
Given the speed of the drug it doesn’t seem to make a lot of practical sense for a sexual predator to use a roofie in a public setting as it appears all you’re going to have is an unresponsive woman in a public setting which generally invites attention from patrons, then management, and finally law enforcement.
In Wisconsin they circumvented the alcohol versus roofies issues by adding alcohol to the list of date rape drugs. I’m not sure what this means in practice – perhaps there is an enhanced penalty of it’s found that a man knowingly rapes a drunk woman.
Though honestly, if I was going to be raped, I’d rather be drunk than sober during the experience.
My understanding of Oklahoma law is that any impairment can be grounds for charges of rape. They don’t have to establish intent to incapacitate, merely that the victim was incapacitated, so could not exercise consent. According to the cop who told me this, this applies to alcohol.
I have heard that in California intercourse with an intoxicated women is technically considered rape under the law. Meaning that for most single people, pretty much all of their sexual experiences are rapes.
I’ve been told that there has never, ever been any proof of people secretly getting drugged at parties. This, apparently, is an urban legend. It can even be traced back to a silent movie where this thing happens. Ever since, the story has been known to surface once in a while.
I can’t cite this, because it is absence of proof.
This definitely not the case. It may be rarer than is commonly thought but it is not unknown (thisstudy found it 2 cases out of 1000 where the victim tested positive for GHB, and as the article pointed out the real figure is probably higher as after 12 hours it is not possible to detect).
I don’t doubt at all that roofie poisoning occurs in certain circumstances, but considering practical aspects of how the drug works it would seem that using it at a public bar would be either useless, or actually counter-productive for sexual predators.
If this is true and the spectre of getting “slipped something” at a bar or restaurant is largely an urban legend, how then do we explain the claims of women who say they are not normally unusually susceptible to alcohol, but got blotto after one or two drinks, and either suspect or are certain they were drugged.
Can this be explained by varying reactions to alcohol? Can the effect of drinking really vary that much from one time out drinking to the next? What would change this for a woman. Empty stomach, time of month?
It could also be that they were drinking something much stronger than their usual that particular night, or that they lost count of how many drinks they had for some reason, or they did something stupid for the simple reason that people sometimes do stupid things, and wanted something to blame it on.
I’d say this is an unrealistic expectation, to be able to differentiate thus just due to profession, or even individual use. Benzodiazepines act on similar receptors and in similar ways to alcohol. “Booze in pill form” is a good descriptor for the benzos.
And objective education in medicine and pharmacology does not confer subjective expertise in personal altered states. Believe me, I’ve studied this from a number of perspectives, including the perspective of study with the physician who won the Lasker award (America’s version of the Nobel for Medicine) for discovering the opiate receptor, and the perspective of being face down on the floor.
I too believe that drinks do get adulterated, all too often.
But many people also blame their behavior on drugs that aren’t there, rather than the one that is there: Alcohol. Alcohol can and does cause atypical behavior, loss of consciousness, retrograde amnesia, and blackouts. A few cases have been worked up where the person insists they must have been drugged, because they only had “one or two” drinks. Reconstruction of the evening (by eyewitnesses, blood alcohol content, drug screens, etc) demonstrates that “one or two” was 8 or 9, and no drugs besides alcohol were detected.
Yes…it’s rare, but not unknown. It prolly happens when a douchbag (who is very stereotypically douchebagish and treats women exclusively as sex objects) does it.
Does the spiking of drinks happen? I have no doubt about it. Many many times I have seen seemingly* drunk ladies being helped out of bars by men. So I wouldn’t assume “being in a public place” would be too much of a barrier. Hell, I carried my wife out of a bar, up a flight of stairs and into a car with nary a comment from anyone.
Does it happen as regularly as “the media” would have us believe? I don’t think so. Also, by self reporting the number is naturally going to be higher than the “real” number. To tell family “I went home with him because he drugged me” is waaaay more palatable than “I got stupid drunk and became a skank” - where’s the mystery there?
From my own personal experience once you get to a certain level you tend to forget or not relalise just how much you are drinking…
as in all the symptoms of drunkeness, but I didn’t do a tox screen
On the flip side, my cousin claimed to be a victim of the date-rape drug when all evidence (including past history, blood tests, behavior of the accused rapist, and witnesses) suggest alcoholic consent + subsequent blackout. She clung to the rape story, which evolved from fictional personal experience narrative into urban legend over the course of about a week–fascinating for me as a folklorist. I concluded that (1) the psychological “not my fault” benefits were strong, especially since she was cheating. A habitual liar and substance abuse perhaps has an easier time lying to herself. (2) It was a means of garnering sympathy from people whose sympathy was long ago exhausted.
It’s also a case where it did more harm than good: it was obviously statutory rape even if she did consent (BAC .31), but her story was so implausible that she could never have gotten a conviction. The victim wanted to press charges, but after a few weeks it fizzled. I don’t know why for certain, but I’m guessing inconsistent and implausible testimony on her part meant there was no point.
Happy ending: that was about two weeks before she (apparently) hit bottom. The last few months have seen a dramatic turnaround. We’re cautiously optimistic.