Spike THIS!!

The other day my wife showed me a message she received from one of her coworkers about the dangers of going out in New York City.  The message claimed that several women had had their drinks spiked while out at the bars.  That the women “lost consciousness” after consuming several drinks, was the only evidence proffered. 

Now, I’ve always been a little skeptical of the average “I think my drink was spiked” claim.  Stories about GHB, Ketamine and Rohypnol finding their way into women’s drinks have in the past struck me as questionable for a couple of reasons.  For one, most of the women I knew in high school and college could drink more and pop more pills than the men.  And two, I could never understand why men would just give away good drugs on the uninviting prospect of humping some poor passed-out chick.  What a terrible reason to spend a few years in prison!!!  Indeed, why not take the drugs yourself and be assured of having a great time?  Prison free, no less!

This time, however, I had a little time on my hands.  So, before I let my personal preconceptions about urban legends and female vindictiveness lead me to hold unsupportable conclusions, I decided to do a bit of research.  After a few simple searches I found several sites that appeared to support the spiked drink thesis.  Maybe this is real, I thought. 

But as I read on I found many of these sites lacking in any quantifiable evidence.  In fact, the “information” they did provide seemed absurdly useless.  For instance, all the sites described the symptoms of drinking a spike drink as feeling “disoriented and dizzy.”  They claimed that people who’ve had their drinks spiked tend to “lose their inhibitions,” and “become unconscious, unable to defend [themselves], or unable to remember what happened.”

Now, I’m no scientist.  But don’t you typically lose your inhibitions, have trouble defending yourself, become dizzy and disoriented whenever you drink a lot?  Hell, I thought that was the fucking point!!!

Eventually I stumbled across an interesting article that deals with this issue head on.  Published in the British Journal of Criminology, the article declares as simply implausible the (strangely unchallenged) premise that women are commonly drugged while out drinking. 

“Drug-facilitated sexual assault is a culturally embedded crime fear, it has prompted the creation and distribution of ‘risk products’, and there seems to be widespread acceptance that it is a prevalent form of ‘date rape’. Yet, routinized DFSA is improbable as a widespread crime: it involves a stranger extracting an individual from her social group unnoticed, administering a substance undetected, precisely controlling drug effects, and reliably erasing memory of the experience. Indeed, the conclusions of scientific and police investigation suggest that DFSA is in fact a very limited threat.”

So why is there such a fear of a crime that seems so implausible?  The article goes on to answer this question.  But I won’t take up space with the interesting conclusions.  Have a look for yourself.

EMBODYING UNCERTAINTY? Understanding Heightened Risk Perception of Drink ‘Spiking.’ By Adam Burgess , Pamela Donovan and Sarah E. H. Moore, British Journal of Criminology (2009) 49, 848–862.