There is some evidence that the drug scopolamine may have some of the properties that the OP mentions. There are reports from Colombia and a few other South American countries surrounding “burundanga”, a street version of scopolamine. In most cases, a victim is robbed or sexually assaulted after being drugged. It’s difficult to say on a world-wide scale how many reports per year are authentic. However, scopolamine has been shown to reduce aggressive responses in primates and memory impairment effects in rats.
Scopolamine is indicated for things like prevention of nausea and motion sickness in low doses.
I got gross-motor-restlessness from one of the drugs I was given. Kinda frightening when it was unexpected. Not on the label, not on the insert, not in the Doctors drug reference. I never did actually track it down. It made me aware of the fact, which I hadn’t noticed before, that gross-motor-restlessness is actually normal for a lot of people. The pharmacists had it as a known side effect, so it must have been documented somewhere.
Surely she was just exaggerating for dramatic effect or genuinely didn’t remember the order of events (because of being drugged). It’s likely it was two sips into her second drink that she realised she had been drugged, which was probably at least 20 minutes or so after her first sip of her first drink. Plenty of time for any number of drugs to take effect.
If Cosby’s that good, he should have started a big pharma company to sell his amazing discovery. (For the humorless, there are substantial legitimate uses of sedating and relaxing drugs, these are extremely weight and dose dependent, which is why anesthesiologists earn the big bucks).
There is too much evidence against Bill not for there to be something against him, however, I suspect he used old reliable, alcohol.
ETA: bleach reports from medical practitioners who have observed this clinically or from victims; who are not all that reliable usually.
It’s certainly possible to make a mixed drink, especially something like a screwdriver, with a relatively tasteless alcohol, and a very strong mixer, much more potent than is requested. Long Island Iced Tea is another one that can be made much stronger than receiver expects. Also, a Bloody Mary. Tougher with, say Rum and Coke, because rum has a strong flavor of its own, and Coke is a very mild mixer. If you’re a bartender, you can use extra Coke syrup, but most people don’t have access to it.
It’s pretty easy for a host to get the guest to drink what he wants her to drink.
“Let me get you a drink. I make a terrific Bloody Mary.”
“Oh, I don’t like tomatoes. Do you have beer?”
“Fresh out. How about a screwdriver? I love those. I’ll make us each one.”
Then he uses slightly higher concentrated OJ, and three shots of vodka instead of one. If it looks pale, he adds food coloring.
I never keep herbal tea around, but I’ve faked it for people before by making really weak tea from my leftover leaves, with a couple of things from the spice rack thrown in, adding a splash of juice, and some food coloring. People go wild over it, and ask where they can get it. It’s all in the presentation and the “sell.”
Tell then the screwdriver will have “bite” because you used fresh-squeezed, or something, and any oddness will be attributed to that. Maybe there’s also a drug in it for good measure, maybe not.
**AK84, **I have seen tworeportsin the Spanish medical literature surrounding scopolamine poisoning. Note that there are many scopolamine trials in volunteers under controlled conditions for testing neurological hypotheses but those aren’t “poisoning” trials.
The first paper from Colombia describes three cases where the clinical side effects are consistent with a high dose of scopolamine (dry mouth, blurred vision, tachycardia, anterograde amnesia). The paper provides no toxicology evidence. This is typical; there have been very few cases which have had a toxicological component. Evidently scopolamine gets metabolized quickly and so it is difficult to detect.
In the second link (Gomila-Muñiz et al), they used gas chromatography to confirm a single case of scopolamine poisoning in Spain. Mass spec and gas chromatography are expensive, and so they are not routinely performed.
I agree with you and **EdelweissPirate **with respect to the reliability of eyewitness accounts. There is considerable alarmism surrounding burundanga which doesn’t help. The conclusion so far seems to be that the number of sexual assault/robbery cases is non-zero but poisoning of this type is very rare.
She’s talking about taking a can of orange juice concentrate and mixing it with less water than the label directions - if the can says mix with three cans of water and instead you mix it with two, it might cover up the taste of the extra vodka.
Yes. You can also tell a person who is already tipsy.
“Come on, here have another drink”.
“Oh., live a little have some more”
“Just top up a bit shall I?”
And before you know it, she completely hammered and pliable. People do this all the time anyway, with no intention of raping their companion.
This assumes that the drug is equally mixed into the drink. Something powdered might float on top for awhile when sprinkled in such that you could get most of the dose in one sip. Or if it’s in liquid form but less dense than the drink it would float on top.
Conversely, a drug might settle to the bottom and be unconsumed until the drink is finished. A drug isn’t necessarily going to be mixed in or soluble if it is.
Alcohol, Xanax and soma, or ambien, or some pain killers. Not sure of the quantities needed but I know girls who have been hooked on these combos and they seem all too willing to engage in sex with just about anyone, not being able to walk seems to be a problematic side effect.
Trace side effects typically represent unrelated problems. If they pop up - even to the slightest degree - in clinical trials, the FDA requires that they be reported by the drug manufacturer. Granted, there are some substances that produce unusual reactions in a tiny, tiny fraction of the population, but it’s more likely that a person who reports itching simply had an unrelated fungal infection or rash or whatever.
Are you sure they weren’t willing to engage in sex in order to get more drugs?
I don’t think it was Temazepam. I was sexually assaulted while on this medication to help me sleep (PTSD).
I found it took about 30 minutes before I seriously should be in my bed or risk sleeping wherever I stood. My memory of the assault is pretty fuzzy, but there.
I’m not sure anyone is going to be able to CSI what knocked a person out 30+ years ago. Memories are unreliable, people often hugely underreport what they drink socially so as to not seem like sloppy drinkers. Once a person is halfway to being wasted on booze, and this may only be a few drinks for many women, if you add any number of drugs to the mix they will shortly be out like a light.
Now, 30 years later are you going to say “after 4 glasses of wine he passed around some 'ludes and I was gone” or “I was s good girl from a good family who took the mystery relaxation pills he was offering without question and then the room began to spin”.
Any number of drugs and alcohol combos will knock people out then and now. I don’t think we have to call in Sherlock Holmes to crack the case.
I meant if he had orange juice concentrate that was underdiluted, and someone without a lot of experience with mixed drinks, who might not know what a certain amount of something would taste like, and it wasn’t an alcohol like rum with a really strong flavor of its own. Rum does have more of a distinct flavor than vodka, especially cheap vodka.
Another factor is how tired someone is to begin with. Someone who has had a long day, and not quite enough sleep the night before can be flattened by one strong drink, while someone who had the day off, slept in, plus took an afternoon nap will handle it a lot better.
Thanks for all the replies over the years. I believe now that the whole idea of a “Mickey” (short for “Mickey Finn”) is an urban legend. There is no known drug that can do that reliably without either failing completely or killing someone accidentally. That doesn’t mean that the gist of the idea isn’t true but the details cannot possibly be right.
I don’t mean to discount the accounts in general but there is something odd when people are so specific about details that cannot happen. We all know for a fact that many men have gotten women liquored so that they could take advantage of them and some have undoubtedly given them drugs as well but slipping it in a drink simply isn’t going to do it. It would almost certainly taste completely nasty and you can’t control the dose even if you are so inclined.
Again, this isn’t a political thread or a social activist one. It is strictly factual and I have to mark this one as a likely myth no matter who is involved. That is what the SDMB is supposed to be about.
If anyone has a factual explanation for the way it could happen, they are still welcome to explain how it could be true.
How about, he put something like Quaaludes and Miltown (to randomly pick some drugs I’m pretty sure were available at the time) crushed them in coffee that was strong enough to cover the taste, and GOT LUCKY.
By getting lucky, I mean, if she’d drunk less, she wouldn’t have passed out, and would have had there wherewithal to simply leave, but if she’d chugged the whole thing, she likely could have died. Because he got lucky, she happened to ingest just the right amount.
Maybe he had tried this before, and had not succeeded in get women to become compliant, so he slowly increased the dose, until he hit on something that, while it could kill someone if they downed the whole drink, usually made them to stupid to keep drinking before they had the chance to finish. Just to be safe, he may have taken the drink away once the women were woozy.
But you can’t dismiss luck as a factor. If it weren’t, Cosby would have been up on homicide charges in the 70s. Or else, he would never have succeeded at molesting anyone, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Up front: I am not a doctor, I am not a pharmacist, and I am not a rapist.
Ergo, I have never tried to dope anyone and have no qualifications to judge whether “roofies” or any other so-called “Date rape” drugs can rapidly knock out a woman and leave her easy prey for a creep.
What IS known, whether or not such drugs really work, is that many women who believe they have been drugged have actually consumed a LOT more alcohol than they thought they did.
If such drugs DO work, there is zero doubt that there are slimy males out there who wouldn’t hesitate to use them, and that such men should be prosecuted without mercy.
But a lot of women who think they were drugged were merely drunk, of their own volition.
Hard to imagine that he gave dozens of women enough of a drug to kill them if they consumed the full drink and not one died - or even needed to be hospitalized.
Most likely many of these women are not remembering the details accurately.
:dubious:
He figured out which drugs to given women which would lead to sedation reliably regardless of the following
i) The size of the individual and whether they had eaten
2) The concentration of the dose in its delivery mechanism; such as coffee, alcohol water.
3) The effects of Alcohol, coffee, milk as well as temperature on the chemical composition of the drugs
4) Leading no adverse reactions ever. No one died.
What Billions of dollars, decades of research and the Planets best minds have not gotten, a comedian seeking to get laid has managed.
If Cosby was smart he should agree to give the secret out in exhange for a pardon. They will pardon all his crimes, make him a billionaire, give him a full service Harem and a Nobel Prize if he has actually done that.:rolleyes: