An all too common story in the news is about how someone’s drink was spiked and they get assaulted after they pass out. Most recently, many of the women in the Cosby scandal have come forward with similar stories of being offered a drink, feeling woozy, and then not remembering anything until they woke up with their clothes in disarray. My question is, how can someone recognize they have been drugged? And if they can recognize that, how long do they have to try to get to safety before they black out?
I suppose for most of us, we have no experience with being drugged. So if it were to happen, it would be our first time and it might be easy to attribute it to something else and not realize we were in danger until it was too late.
Someone slipped something into my alcoholic drink once, but…
I don’t care for alcohol (no longer drink), so when drinking, I would take a sip at a time and drink very slowly. It could take me an hour to drink one glass.
With that said, when someone slipped something into my drink, I suddenly had a woozy sleepy feeling - and I noticed this was quite unusual and different from alcohol. But I only took a couple of sips before I noticed it. And that time period was about 10 minutes. So I recognized it and did not drink any more. (If I had gulped it, I probably would have passed out. It was quite strong. Probably some sort of sleeping pill.)
Note this was in a bar and I had gone to the bathroom - left my drink on the bar. So someone put something in it while i was in the bathroom.
To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never been roofied. But I think the problem is that the initial stages of the drug mimic natural feelings. You start feeling relaxed and mellow, which can be a normal experience when you’re having a good time at a social event. So you don’t realize you’ve been drugged into that state.
The stage where people become aware they’ve been drugged is when they lose physical control and can’t move. That’s not normal and most people are going to figure out they were drugged at this point. But now it’s difficult to react because the drug has taken effect and being unable to move limits your ability to react.
A dizzying, sleepy, floaty feeling. At the worst, you are sort of outside of yourself, like you are observing and not participating. Takes about 20 mins to take affect, which isn’t long, less in liquid form.
If it’s GHB, you go from 0 to slobbering drunk in nothing flat. Not fun. Or might have been fun if I had just been offered it instead having it forced on me.
I was on vacation, and partying with an eclectic bunch in a bar in Piccadilly Circus, when one member of the group bought a round of champagne. My then-girlfriend chose not to drink that night, so I set my flute down on the bar in front of her to show a magic trick to some friends she had made.
At this point in the night, I had only had 2-3 glasses of beer, and was hardly feeling anything. Within 10 minutes of finishing the one glass of champagne, I was full-blown can’t-feel-your-face drunk.
At 200 lean lbs, it really knocked me for a loop, but I’m sure it was intended for her, who was substantially smaller than me. I shudder to think what it would have done to someone who was 60% of my size.
I made the most of it, switching to drinking water for the remainder of the evening, and still managed to keep a few of our group out of trouble by breaking up a few fights. If I’d had 2-3 more drinks prior, I would certainly have been incapacitated.
From reading these posts, it seems that drinking slowly at first any time your drink was out of your control might be a useful strategy to avoid becoming drugged. You could feel the start of the effects and hopefully limit how far it went.
I agree that’s the best approach, but there have been stories of people drugged in places they wouldn’t have expected, like Cosby’s house and a party at a friends house. Plus, a new drink could be spiked before you got it.
Actually getting roofied via Rohypnol is extremely rare in the last 10-15 years. 99.9% of those who are sure they were roofied simply drank too much, too fast on an empty stomach with similar results re incapacity.
In general it’s also best to watch your drink get made. But I guess if that is impossible then drinking slowly is a possible precaution.
I’ve heard that it’s often people getting more alcohol than they expect, where they order a normal drink and are given a double or triple, or are given a drink with stronger alcohol than expected. In some drinks you’d be able to detect it more easily, but in sugary drinks or shots or something, I could see someone not noticing immediately.
I’ve taken Ambien (zolpidem), and it hits you very, very fast. I think using it to spike a drink would be really effective. I’ve never combined Ambien with alcohol, and I’ve only taken it in a full-blown insomniac bout, where I can’t sleep even with all the “sleep hygiene” in the world, plus 5mg melatonin, and a drug specifically for insomnia. So I’ve been pretty exhausted and sleep-deprived when I’ve taken it, and I haven’t had it crushed or mixed with anything, so I don’t know what it would be like in a drink. One thing I do know is that if it’s only the first or second time you’ve taken it, it can make food taste funny, so if you drink tastes really off, and you feel woozy, it could be Ambien.
One of the reasons, according to my doctor, that people sleep-walk on Ambien is that they don’t take it and go directly to bed. My doctor recommends already being in bed, and then taking it, and you may not remember your head hitting the pillow. Otherwise, if you try to a few last things, like brushing your teeth, getting undressed, etc., you may go into a hypnotic state as your brain fights to stay awake. That’s how fast it hits when you take it in pill form.
This is why I’m thinking that even if you aren’t getting a whole dose, getting even a little bit, mixed with alcohol, might really knock you for a loop, before you had the chance to notice things tasted weird.