When I was a teen the big thing was red devils. A couple of red devils ( barbiturate) and a couple of drinks the girls were in unable to resist guys. The funny thing was that it wasn’t usually the typical “bad boys” engaging in this form of rape which it is.
Truth may never be known about Cosby but I suspect he used his power and influence to get the girls in a position to have some drinks and drugs and then they were caught off guard by how much he gave them. Still rape as far as I am concerned but girls looking for something from a powerful guy are easy targets.
Acceptable risk is a funny thing. It means different thing to different people. Especially when those people don’t have a reliable figures for risk. Even when we get figures, it is human nature to fudge the numbers, adjusting the perceived risk for the situation.
Mixing drugs and alcohol IS dangerous. Mixing drugs and drugs, too. We KNOW this. Many famous people have died this way, I’m sure it’s happened to quite a few unsung individuals.
But, in fact, people DO mix drugs and alcohol all the time. Mostly, they do okay, occasionally they do not.
We all do (or have done) risky things (such as get on the road) and not paid the ultimate price.
Anesthesiology is about avoiding risk. If an anesthesiologist lost 0.1% of patients during elective surgeries nowadays, they would have something to answer for. People would ask questions and wonder if they cut corners. Their standards for risk are not at all like what passes for okay and n the common run.
This seems incredibly likely to me. Memories are incredibly unreliable, when sober; drugged memories are nearly impossible to trust.
That doesn’t mean the women are lying, or that they weren’t assaulted. A recollection of, “I realized I was drugged after one or two sips” is consistent with being given a relatively mild sedative (as in, virtually no risk of overdose) and being knocked out within a half hour or hour. Even though it’s an inaccurate memory, from what I understand, it’s the sort of memory such an experience could leave you with. It’s less consistent with being given no sedative, from what I understand.
But Cosby admits to giving women sedatives. The question is whether these women knew what they were willingly taking or whether he forced it on them or slipped into their drinks without their knowledge. So the key question is whether their memories might be incorrect on that specific point.
On the specific point of whether they knew what they were taking? I don’t see that as the key point at all. If someone willingly takes a sedative, and then they’re incapacitated so they can’t consent, and then they’re sexually assaulted, does the willingness to take the sedative change the legal status of the assault?
Not directly. But again, we’re talking about memories of what happened many years ago, and assessing the exact incapacity level can be difficult at the time, let alone many years later.
So it ends up resting to a large extent on how Cosby did it. If he slipped them these drugs unbeknownst to them, then this strongly argues that he was intending to incapacitate them, which supports the notion that such is in fact what happened. If he offered them some drug that they knowingly took, then that suggests that it was a relatively benign drug and was more about getting them relaxed and in the mood, as Cosby claims, which makes establishing incapacitation much harder.
Give someone who doesn’t take it 4x 350mg pills and they’re down… mind you, I’ve never done that but my own addiction issues had me scarfing 8 at a time and losing several days in the process… wicked stuff.
Have there been any of these “rape drugs” studies that took into account multiple drugs? As in one drug would not be a problem, but add another and it could be. I’ve known people take tramadol and alcohol together and be a floppy sleepy doll.