To expect to be tested after having my drink spiked

[isaidwhatisaid]

Last night I had my drink spiked. I am 100% sure that is what happened. I was in the pub. I had a couple of glasses of Rosè and started feeling like I had 10 tequilas so I went to the toilets where I uncontrollably slouched down on the cubicle floor, went limp and just resigned myself to waiting for my friends to come and find me. At that point I was sure I had been drugged as the effect was getting worse and was a very different feeling from being too drunk (which I wouldn’t have been from a couple of glasses of wine anyway).

Long story short, an ambulance came, I was taken to A&E and after waiting for a few hours was told that they wouldn’t carry out any toxicology tests because that’s up to the police to do. I reported it to the police today at the local station and they told me they don’t have the resources to do drug tests and that A&E should have done it. They have logged the crime and will review the pub’s cctv evidence but it’s unlikely that any drug will be picked up in my system now, even if I manage to get a blood and urine test tomorrow. I also spoke with a paramedic today via 111 referral who informed me that I should make a complaint about A&E and I spoke to my GP who said that I should make a complaint about the police.

Has anyone else been in this situation and know who is responsible for testing? I have been trying to find an answer all day and the closet I could find was an FOI release by the Met Police that states that they should use a Forensic Medical Examiner to carry out tests. I’ll get back onto the police tomorrow but I just feel like I’m not getting anywhere and I want to do everything I can to stop this person from doing it to anyone else.

I guess it makes no sense to me, because even if it wasn’t to the standard to prosecute, routine testing could still tell you eg. 70% actually do have the drugs in their system even though they just appear to be really drunk, or actually most people are just drunk and only 5% have actually been spiked.
If the number is high, then it would justify getting the resources, but you can’t ever do that if you don’t have the raw data, it’ll be just dismissed as ‘most are just drunk and they haven’t been spiked’ when actually, no one knows .
Rape is practically legal, the conviction rates are pathetic, and even worse when you consider most aren’t reported in the first place.
This is just another thing that feeds into that, and it’s just really disheartening tbh

The most common and easiest way to spike a drink is by adding more alcohol. This is one of the reasons why people presenting at hospital with suspected drink spiking often "just" have a very high blood alcohol content.

The odds are a toxicology test wouldn't show anything more than alcohol I'm afraid. It doesn't mean you weren't spiked, however.

I do think many people who think they have been spiked have had too much to drink. Or the alcohol has had more of an effect than usual.

Yes I read that. I don’t think I was spiked with alcohol as the effect was completely different to anything that I have felt from alcohol, but it’s possible if it was a very high %.
It was odd how quickly it wore off though. I went from legless to ‘fine’ really quickly. Also no hangover at all. Usually after throwing up alcohol I feel better but in this case I was just dry heaving for ages, couldn’t move my arms or legs and just wanted to sleep.

You acted how everyone would by going to the toilets if you feel ill. This is why toilets need to stay single sex and have gaps at the bottom of toilet doors. I saw a hand and foot sticking out of the gap and we managed to get to the unconscious women (who had vomited) and phoned an ambulance.

Not to mention my bowels relaxed. It was a complete loss of bodily control.

I've worked in different A&E departments. I agree that spiking of drinks does happen. But the labs didn't run those kind of tests even if we'd asked for them - just not available. I'm not sure if that's the same everywhere.

This happened to one of my colleagues and he was told by both the NHS and the police that they would only test if a crime had been committed (surely the spiking itself is a crime?), eg if he had been robbed or assaulted. The police told him to just assume he had been spiked because it is so common in London. Sorry this happened to you.

Forgot to say the NHS also said they would test only if it was required to determine treatment because someone is unwell. Not as routine just because someone suspects it.

Also what I did manage to throw up was thick brown stuff.
The police have logged a crime report and told me that it comes under GBH.

I literally watched someone spike my drink once as they hadn't realised I was standing behind them. Managed to snap a pic of them doing it, reported it to the bar manager who had the bouncers chuck them out. I also called the police and showed them the pic. Absolutely nothing happened. I felt like I was wasting their time.

Rohypnol (if it was that) can make the person heavily sedated and last through to the next day which is why it's called the date rape drug, it's unlikely to be that going by what you've said, but that's not to say it was extra strong alcohol or something else spiked, or it could just be one of those things.

OP sorry this happened to you.

I had my drink spiked once and can relate to the loss of bodily function, it's not like getting pissed / 'having one too many' where you're falling about and slurring, I was literally on-my-belly-slithering (like a snake) to the bathroom (luckily I had a lift home before the full effects kicked in) I had no use of limbs - that has NEVER happened to me (before or after) no matter how much alcohol I've had.

Absolutely disgusting that neither party (A&E nor Police) are admitting liability for drug testing.

I'm glad, that you, like me, didn't suffer further assault, as I would imagine that was the perpetrator's intention...

Oh and ZERO hangover the next day, felt right as rain - which, if it had been alcohol would have been nigh-on-impossible as I suffer massively with a hangover!

Nice theory. You think we don't look for patterns across the several hundred night time economy venues in the city central area alone? You know, the Red Lion multiplied by oh, a couple of hundred alcohol serving pubs and clubs within walking distance, whilst people pub crawl from one to another. Assuming, like, some can remember - two drinks in two pubs, do you know which one your drink got spiked in?

And I didn't say you had a CCTV image - that's only if you are lucky. Do you genuinely not realise that CCTV doesn't cover everything at all times?

Oh, and we aren't the police.

For your information only three of those incidents probably happened in a "single" location. One of the four universities, in one of their seven bars. Or possibly one of the three pubs on the road outside the secondary entrance. That's ten possible locations within about 1000 metres of each other. If that's lazy policing, I'd love to know how much better you'd do.

We have hundreds of venues and many thousands of people out drinking - and also voluntarily taking drugs - every weekend. Perhaps you can manage to track down the source to your local public house in the village. Not so easy in a city where people are circulating as a matter of routine. Yes you may be able to show you have drugs in your system. How they got there is another matter.

@Quveas are you working with a University research department? Bath or Kings College London have some great groups open to collaboration.

I’m saddened to hear that these tests aren’t routine.

I completely get that the police and NHS are stretched for resources but surely this could help prevent a crime from being committed.

I am pretty sure I was spiked too.

I had 1 and 1/2 drinks and my friend had 2.
We’d only been in the place for less than an hour and had to go home because we could barely speak or stand.

When I got home my legs completely collapsed on the stairs and I couldn’t move any part of my body, it was like I had sleep paralysis and I ended up spending at least 5 hours on the stairs.

My friend spoke to me the next day and said she’d never felt like that before but she was sick multiple times and then her mum put her to bed thinking she’d had loads as she couldn’t walk and kept slurring her words.

I think she got most of it out of her system which is why her mum didn’t question it.

I am 99% sure it was the bartender that did it because he kept looking at me and seemed very interested in my drinking my drink and I thought it was odd at the time as he had loads of people to serve but kept watching me drink.

I never reported it though as I couldn’t be sure.

It's simply that to be admissible in evidence, there are requirements to be followed to ensure that samples cannot be tampered with, that are additional to the usual basic precautions that would be used for normal blood samples. It's not the hospital's job to have a collection/transport chain that satisfies legal requirements.

A&E are there to look after you and make sure you're well, police are there to gather evidence and arrest people who have offended against you. It's shit but it falls within the police remit, not A&E.

What?

We test for drugs (the few that we can test for - our standard testing may well not reveal an agent used for drink spiking) if it will make a clinical difference to the patient. Because we are treating the patient, not gathering evidence. What we don’t do is handle the specimen as if it were evidence (because it’s not….:…I order tests as a dr because they’re clinically indicated and might progress treatment) and so no, of course we can’t establish the chain of evidence required to prosecute someone. It’s an entirely different purpose.

Where I work we are required by law to take blood samples checking the alcohol level of anyone involved in an MVA. It had to be specially enacted because otherwise we do not gather evidence, the police so that. It is simply not our role. The blood alcohol samples used as evidence are taken in a particular way and stored separately in a system we cannot access. Because we are health care
workers, not the police.

We do not test people who report drink spiking because we have a limited range of drugs for which we can test, our urine drug screens can’t give us accurate info about recency of ingestion, the evidence that’s been collected from studies has shown that when tested the most common single agent identified is just alcohol, and it’s not clinically indicated as the patient’s management won’t change.

I got spiked once and they did a toxicology screening, but only because I could list the very last Ng list of drinks I'd had. I was very honest with them that I was very drunk, but this was different. Thankfully they believed me and I was right. The police never did anything, but did say that the place I was spiked (we were in the same bar all night) was notorious for it.

That’s not the sort of person you are… yet here you are, still casting aspersions on a thread where women are telling their experiences.

Maybe it is in fact the sort of person you are.

This is really useful, thank you. It’s the fact that so many professionals have told me different things that I have just been left feeling fobbed off, confused, uncared for and angry on top of feeling violated and low.
I’ll be writing to PALS (I think it is) just to get this information in writing so that I can pass it to the police. I know people experience much worst things and the reason I want to push this further is not for myself, it’s for other people who will experience this. We need these low life perpetrators to be caught.

I find the most shocking thing is that my friend was spiked and she was treated as a drunk. Left on a trolley, no monitoring. She was freezing but it was only when I said something they tried to take a temperature and then wrapped her up. They were so blasé about it, and I appreciate we had been drinking I know her so well I knew she wasn’t ‘just’ drunk and I was scared… but when I said anything it was all about too much alcohol. I get it, the nhs are floored and treating self inflicted over indulgence is not what the nhs wants to be doing, it’s still bloody awful on the receiving end.

To be honest, that is pretty appalling. Where we can identify a hot spot like this (and it is rare now because word has got around) then the full force of our partnership comes down on them. Licencing start poking around, the police do visits frequently... the list goes on, but you'd be surprised how many agencies can get up close and personal to the owners or managers of places where it is common. Unfortunately, it is perhaps the success of that strategy that means its now harder to focus on a few places because the perpetrators know that everyone, including managers and staff, are looking for them.