A spike of hysteria?

Back in the Autumn, there was a wave of hysteria in the media about people supposedly being injected with “date-rape” drugs in bars and nightclubs. However, as this article argues, it is difficult to see the mechanism by which this could actually be happening.

Is it even possible to inject people with date-rape drugs? Syringes are certainly easy to obtain in this country. They can be bought in pharmacies or online. And, yes, GHB, the drug most usually associated with drink spiking, can in theory be injected.

But as a medical friend explained when I began to investigate, to drug someone effectively in this way would require a relatively high volume of the substance concerned. This would require a large syringe with a large needle, which would then need to be under someone’s skin for long enough – at least 15 seconds – to dispense enough of the drug to make a difference. It would be important to conduct this tricky process undetected, even though, as the medic explained, it would be almost impossible for the victim not to feel it. Alcohol could dampen pain, but not eliminate it.

It could be that the whole thing turns out to be something of an urban myth, with little or no foundation in reality.

It is certainly true that the spiking of people’s drinks with these drugs does happen and is a significant problem. But, even here, the scale of the problem might be exaggerated.

A 2012 study by doctors at Wrexham Maelor Hospital found something intriguing when they examined women who believed they had been drugged. Most of them, they established, had been rendered helpless not by ‘date-rape’ substances, but by binge drinking. The medics found no evidence that any of the women seeking help from emergency doctors had been spiked, although one in five instead tested positive for recreational drugs.

This was only one hospital and no such research has been conducted countrywide. Yet if it’s representative, we have to ask how we reached this state of terror.

While it may be hard to prove, the author also points out the lack of successful prosecutions for drink-spiking.

People may feel that their drinks have been spiked, but in fact excessive consumption of alcohol in a short time may have much the same effect. Spirits can creep up on you unawares, especially if the flavour is concealed in cocktails, and suddenly push you over a cliff. Of course it’s entirely possible that some ill-intentioned person has surreptitiously tipped a double vodka into your drink, but in many cases this will have been brought on by people’s own exuberant over-indulgence. I’m sure many of us will have similar memories from our youth.

The article points out that there is always an increase in reports of drink-tampering in the early weeks of the Autumn term at universities, where many young people will be exposed to a social environment and social pressures that they haven’t experienced before.

So, if you’re on a night out, it makes a lot of sense to choose what you drink carefully, and not to allow yourself to get into a condition where you’re no longer aware of what’s going on around you.