To think I’ve been spiked?

[Flyovertherainbow]

Was out with 2 friends last night. Only had 1 drink and never left my drink alone either. Felt really wobbly after and had a banging headache and couldn’t see properly it was like the room was spinning and fainted and still feel terrible this morning. 1 drink is not a lot for me and I definitely never left that drink alone so don’t know how I’ve been spiked

Sounds exactly like I felt after being spiked, like another poster said as though recovering from anaesthetic..
Drink lots of water, it stays in for about 24hrs but unsure if you can be tested especially as you are home.. no idea if police would/could test.
So sorry that happened to you, might be worth a chat with the pub owners/management they may have received other complaints?

@DdraigGoch If I were to put aside years of hands on experience in the bar trade and believe that that was a thing, even then it would only, at a stretch, be believable in a busy town centre bar or nightclub on a busy weekend.

In a pub on Christmas Day? I'm not buying it.

I think it's far, far more likely that the OP had an unusual reaction to the alcohol on this occasion, than the barman was being paid to spike her drink.

itshotoutthere that sounds like it could have been LSD?

It sounds more like dehydration or a virus than drink being spiked.

Drink spiking is really rare. Lots of people who think they’ve been spiked have drunk more than they realised or maybe they’ve not eaten, been dehydrated or maybe overtired and just had a weird reaction. If I’m tired I often feel drunk when I’ve only had a a small glass of wine.

Also think about it logically, why would someone spike you’re drink? You were out with two friends who presumably would look after you if you got ill. Much more likely to happen to someone on a “date” where there is ample opportunity to harm someone once they become incapacitated. Drugs are expensive they aren’t going to waste it on a random er just in the hopes they wonder away from their friends once they are in a state.

This. I have given many IM injections to unwilling patients in my time (patients under section, or delirious). It is not easy even with a team of people holding them down. It definitely isn’t something you can do without anyone noticing.

IM needles are actually generally the same needles we use for taking blood. Insulin needles do not go anywhere near deep enough to reach your muscles, and are so fine-gauge that you can’t easily inject more than 0.5mls unless you are planning on standing next to the person slowing injecting over a period of 10mins or so - which they are probably going to notice. You’ll need about 6ml of 200mg/2ml ketamine for the average sized woman, which is twenty of those 0.3ml insulin syringes. Even more for drugs like GHB, midazolam, etc.

We did have an SUI in our hospital a decade or so ago when somebody was given 10ml of insulin instead of 10iu - took the nurse over an hour to give it all.

A person who I considered a good friend spiked my drink at a party once.

He was hoping to have sex with me. It completely backfired as I ended up having sex with another girl in the middle of the party.

Literally people stood around watching and filming.

I don’t recall it very well. I honestly had no idea what I was doing. It was only when someone said the next day what happened, that I realised I had done something.

I also never clocked on they he spiked my drink. It was only years later when I told my dh what happened. He looked at me funny and said, it sounded like he spiked your drink!

Exactly. The sheer volume required means the idea that there is spiking being carried out by injection is totally unrealistic. Especially when it's much easier and much more undetectable to spike with alcohol.

The injection-spiking myth has all the hallmarks of a classic urban legend. It started to spread wildly last autumn when Halloween was approaching, we were just coming out of various restrictions, a new university year had just started, and everyone's anxiety about socialising was high. Injections were high in the public consciousness thanks to COVID boosters, which also coincidentally provided easy and frequent access to lots of unique blurry photos of puncture wounds which can be cropped and zoomed in on for social media. The story suddenly appeared with reports from everywhere within days - Edinburgh, Hampshire, lots of big university towns. Which means that either there was a VERY coordinated effort by a large group of perps to start using needles across the country to scare people, or it was an internet phenomenon.

It's like the razor blades in sweets over Halloween or the needles in cinema seats during the HIV panic. It plays on current trends and is only designed to scare people.

Also, people are talking about GHB and
rohypnol but technically, more alcohol than you ordered in a glass counts as spiking.

So if you ordered a single vodka and coke, but the bartender gave you double/triple vodka or even vodka, gin and coke, this is technically spiking because it’s alcohol you had no knowledge of consuming

I would think it's more likely you're coming down with something. Rest up & take it easy

Can I ask a question - if then the most popular form of spiking is adding more clear alcohol like spirit like vodka surely then you'd sip the drink and spit it out? So you wouldn't consume the whole thing and end up spiked because it would just taste horrible no?

Not necessarily. Sometimes, the mixer can disguise the alcohol taste so you don’t know

Not at all. Spiking can be as simple as ordering someone a double vodka and coke when they've asked for a single, or just adding plain vodka to an already strong tasting drink. For example, I can't taste the difference between plain old Redbull and a vodka redbull. And this can be further disguised if the vodka is flavoured and you are able to match it to the soft drink. It's even easier if the intended target is already tipsy and their judgement and awareness are impaired.

Why go to the risk and trouble of acquiring illegal drugs when you could just buy a cheap and legal substance that is freely available in large quantities in the area you intend to find a victim? Some will, of course. But most spiking is done with alcohol.

I don’t drink anymore, but when I was younger I quite liked vodka and j20. The vodka cut the sweetness of the j20 and the mixer cut the bitterness of the vodka. It honestly tasted like a glass of orange and passion fruit juice.

So a double could easily have been slipped in. A triple, you could taste the vodka but not enough to be bleh about it

Thank you both!!

Went to A&E. to cut it short they said I drunk too much but I definitely didn’t as I only had 1 drink. They wouldn’t even do a blood test or anything to see if I had been spiked.

Feel nowhere near as bad now though, feel a lot better

It absolutely baffles me that so many think that needle spiking is not ‘a thing’. I have no idea why my post regarding my DD being needle spiked was deleted - strange. to the original OP, I really hope you are feeling better. I think you know if if something is not right.

I wonder if it wasn't predominantly women who were spiked either with drugs or alcohol the consensus would still be ot didn't happen or they just lost track of how much they drank.

I haven't been drunk in.17 years.on a.night out id be able to tell you exactly how much id had to drink. My potential spiking incident happened 2/3 years after I stopped getting drunk when I.went out. I remember exactly what I had to drink. All.2 glasses.of .it.

Op remembers too.

I dont understand why thats so hard to believe.

It's not impossible, but there are a lot of other possible explanations.

Some time ago I read about a stufy a police force did around drinks being spiked, where they essentially did all kinds of extra testing of people who thought their drinks might have been spiked. What they found was most of them hadn't.

As far as I can remember, they said the most common cause seemed to be that people really were not at all good at remembering how much they actually had been drinking and had a much higher blood alcohol than their reported drinks would have given. But there were also things like a person having an unexpected reaction to alcohol, people who were probably ill, or some kind of unintentional cross-contamination with other drugs, like medications or recreational substances.

Given that you don't seem to have had a ton to drink and were not away from your drink, I wonder if being ill isn't a more likely explanation.

I had a drink spiked once now 10 years ago and also was only on my 2nd drink when suddenly i remember nothing. Apparently i had gone up to a man and kissed him, then luckily i walked outside to the bouncers and kept throwing up... I think that saved me. Anyway I was horribly sick until the afternoon the day after.

I read it and I’m completely baffled too.

Hope you're feeling better OP.

On needle spiking - it's a vanishingly unlikely/impossible thing to happen.

One police force investigated 24 reports of alleged needle spiking around the time it was making headlines, and there was no evidence that any type of spiking substance or drug had been administered in that way. Most were too much alcohol (though of course there was potential for drink spiking) and many had recreational drugs show up when tested. But no evidence of anything that could have incapacitated someone without their consent issued by a needle.

Not sure why you think this is simply a U.K. phenomenon. It’s been reported across Europe. Mainly associated with cities with nightlife and lots of young people.

In 2022 a French minister confirmed that French police had found that while some people may have been mistaken, the majority of those who reported incidents had been injected with something.

The French have much more systematic and thorough protocols of documenting and testing between police and hospitals and they don’t seem to share the skepticism of female victims. A French police spokesman commented that: “L'absence de traces détectées ne peut être interprétée comme une absence d'injection, elle peut être due à un prélèvement trop tardif". (The absence of detected traces cannot be interpreted as absence of injection, it can be due to testing too late.)

If a young person goes to hospital with signs of a chemical “soumission” medics look for a characteristic red prick with surrounding bruise. They are then treated with HIV preventatives.

General observations from the French experiences:

• More women than men, but quite a number of young men.
• Many people do feel the prick despite what is claimed here.
• Effects don’t last that long, correlating with the small injected amount.
• Some people experienced symptoms that cannot be attributed to excess alcohol such as unwanted psychedelic experiences, fever
• Incidents are sometimes associated with another crime such as sexual assault, and also with theft, but they look at it more as assault for kicks
• There are many instances of photos of the characteristic red prick mark with bruise.

Here is an example of a U.K. woman who was confirmed to have been spiked with morphine in a club in Kent.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-63782642

The toxicology tests took 5 months to return.

There seems to be a misconception that hospitals routinely carry out thorough toxicology testing in the U.K. - they don’t, and don’t have the resources. The do basic testing for substances such as alcohol, cocaine, heroin etc.

I’m afraid it’s clear you have zero idea of the reliability, breadth and time-specificity of drug screens. Your view that a test of exposure to ‘all possible spike drugs’ was the first giveaway.

In any event, hospitals perform tests that will change clinical management. They do not gather evidence, for obvious reasons.

Joined up thinking is indeed scarce…….