Something very similar happened to me a couple of years ago. I’d had two 9oz V&Ts, (I’m usually good for five or six), and I started to feel dizzy. Within a few minutes, I could barely stand. Fortunately, I was only five minutes from home, and when I got there, I promptly vomited, passed out, and had to be put to bed. I woke up in the morning wishing I were dead. Disoriented, nauseated, and with a head that weighed approximately 800lbs. I’d never had a serious hangover before that.
I’ve been to that bar many times. I watched the usual bartender pour the usual amount of alcohol into the drinks, which I proceeded to drink at the usual pace. The only thing *unusual * about that evening was the vomiting and passing out. I don’t *know * that someone put something in my drink, but I’ve always wondered.
Cite? I find it hard to believe that this guy had an exhaustive list of all the cases and what their prior blood alcohol level was.
I mentioned above that we’ve had a rash of these lately where I live. One young woman, for example, had just arrived at the bar, having had a single glass of wine beforehand. She drank part of her drink, went to the bathroom, and got extremely sick and disoriented; other patrons thought she was very drunk indeed, but she had had very little. Her friends took her to the hospital.
I don’t have a formal cite but this has happened to me also. I had less then two drinks one night and promptly blacked out. Fortunately I was with someone that got me home safely. I learned my lesson that night about NEVER leaving a drink unattended in a bar.
Some of these stories involve people getting slipped a mickey without actually getting raped or mugged . . . Jeez, are there people who spike drinks at random, just as a prank? :eek:
I mean, at least muggers and rapists have a reason! But it appears there are some people who will slip drugs into a stranger’s drink just for mischief – and the victim might well try to drive a car, and kill somebody. It’s like that guy back in the '80s who sneaked bottles of poisoned Extra-Strength Tylenol onto the drugstore shelves.
Also, if you don’t have a very high tolerance (say, if you are a small woman who doesn’t normally drink a lot and skipped dinner) that extra drink might hit you pretty hard if the bartender accidently mixed it a bit strong (which happens).
Which is not to say that drink spiking does not happen. A friend of mine said a bar he went to in Miami was just had a number of bartenders arrested because they were spiking girls drinks. And of course there is that case in NYC about that girl who was abducted from some bar and killed.
I would say it’s relatively rare in the grand scheme of things, but you should still take certain basic precautions like not accepting drinks from strangers, going to unfamiliar bars by yourself as a woman or leaving drinks unattended.