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This reminds me of a question Ive had since college but have always been afraid to ask: are roofies actually a real thing? Every woman I know has a story of when she or a friend of hers was roofied at a party, but the stories always go something like "I went to a party and got unexpectedly blackout drunk despite not drinking very much." Or "I saw some sketchy guy slip something into my friend's drink from across the room." And despite all these stories, I've never seen a guy slip something into a drink (other than putting laxatives in another guy's drink as a prank). I've never seen or heard of roofies being sold, even by dealers who would definitely not be shy about such things. I've never seen or heard of a guy being accidentally roofied, or roofied as a prank. I've never seen anyone unexpectedly pass out or act alarmingly drunk after one drink. I hate to say it, but 100% of the evidence I've seen for the existence of roofies had come in the form of inherently unreliable, self-serving anecdotes.
Now, I understand that, as a socially awkward nerd who has not tended to closely associate with frat bros, it's entirely possible I've simply been blessed with a sheltered life. I'm really not trying to claim most of the women in my life are lying to me about their own experiences, but every instinct I've honed over a lifetime of calling bullshit is telling me roofies are the college equivalent of "caramel apples with razor blades hidden inside" urban legends that double as a convenient explanation for why you woke up naked in a stranger's bed with a pounding headache and little recollection of how you got there. Does anyone have any insight?
I recall an investigation in Australia where of the 200 or so alleged druggings, none of the women actually had rohypnol in their systems. What they did have was alcohol and other recreational drugs.
We also had a moral panic in the UK a few years ago about needle spiking (rapist stabs a woman with a syringe containing a sedative). The police confirmed there were no confirmed cases at all.
That said, our country's most prolific rapist actually did rape hundreds of young men with the drug, so it has been used for that. But I think in most cases, it's an explanation/excuse for women who get black out drunk and get taken advantage of.
Yeah, it's a bit weird to read comments about how drink spiking is vanishingly rare, right after listening to the press conference about the P Diddler accusations. I'm pretty sure both are true, and it's pretty crazy to wonder what percentage of the chemically-induced rapes in the last 25 years were literally just Sean Combs and his associates. I mean, the number couldn't possibly be that high, but with something like three thousand accusers and what appears to be significant evidence of guilt, it really activates the almonds.
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Former Frat Bro here.
I never saw it happen, never heard about it happening, never heard about guys wanting to do it even in a joking way. I graduated well before MeToo etc. happened but, even back then, we would have pre-party "briefings" where we reminded everyone that if a girl started to slur, wobble etc. To point her out to one of the designated sober brothers to get her off the property and, if necessary, call medical services etc.
It was a liability thing. Liability in the insurance sense (if someone gets over-served at your frat house and hurts themselves, it can actually be kind of a grey area), but also - moreso - in the reputational sense. We didn't want to be the House that girls saw as "the House where you always somehow leave really fucked up." That's an awful reputation to have. We, the brothers, definitely got shitty on the regular (to much rejoicing) but we never liked girls showing up plastered and certainly not getting plastered in the house. In fact, we didn't really like non-brothers non-friends-of-the-frat getting wasted because we couldn't predict their behavior.
I'll be the first to admit that Frat dudes do a lot of dumb stuff - but it's mostly very obvious, juvenile dumb stuff. Most Frat antics are like the early seasons of Jackass. Most of the hard drinking results in passing out on a couch. The sometimes reputation of Frats as these complex networks of coordinated sexual assault is pure fiction.
Because I can't resist a good story in this context - One time, we had a mixer with one of the sororities. This was known as the "Hot" sorority, so we all tried to look good and stay on our best behavior. While pleasant, they definitely were not "passing the vibe check." As time passes, there is much checking of the watches and dwindling of conversation. Our social chair - who earned that motherfucking title - is suddenly on his flip phone (yeah) in the corner dialing up half his phone book. He gives me an assured nod. 20 minutes later, about 15 ladies from a different sorority show up. Cue record scratch, cue "uh oh spaghetti ohs". Queen Bee A and Queen Bee B exchange some awkardness, mumbles about this being an "exclusive mixer" echo through the crowd. Social Chair (fucking earned it) announces "settle it with beer pong!"
3 straight hours of sorority on sorority combative beer pong. 2 dozen frat dudes ripping shots and heaters taking bets round by round. The winning team at the end of the night puked the champion's puke, the losers walked in soggy wedge heels home, stomachs intact but hearts empty.
God bless you, Craig.
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All I can say is that it's surprisingly easy to get genuinely blacked out, no memory drunk while remaining capable of walking and talking. All it takes is drinking too much spirits too quickly, and it's not as much as you might expect if it's consumed fast enough.
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As noted by others, in studies date-rape drugs are exceedingly rare. People vastly overestimate how consistent their drink-tolerance is, it depends on so many factors that people aren't tracking like food intake, hydration, sleep, stress. And, personally, alcohol tends to make me want more alcohol and other intoxicants, so that it's like driving on an icy road: it's not a problem to get going but it's a problem to stop. Most reported roofies are likely to be alcohol induced, or other recreational drugs taken willingly while drunk.
But, it should be noted that the Mickey Finn cocktail or "angel dusting" a joint for purposes of robbery is pretty well attested, so it's not totally beyond belief. But it's more likely in a seedy saloon than a frat house.
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Similarly, some of the accounts of being 'roofied' I've heard from some girls end up sounding very much like they simply had a straight up panic/anxiety attack. "I had trouble breathing, my body froze up, my vision got blurry/dark, and I felt like I wanted to puke." These symptoms could be socially induced without drugs.
And ironically, if you hammer into girls' brains that they're at risk of being roofied, then they're simply more likely to interpet any symptoms they experience as that rather than more likely causes. Which, well, better safe than sorry.
Not to say it doesn't happen, but the scuzzy behavior I directly observed was usually a guy trying to keep a given girl isolated while her inhibitions are lowering, and keeping her plied with alcohol and fending off any good samaritan until he can 'close the deal' and escort her to his room or car or the nearest hotel.
Roofies might make that tactic easier but it actually directly depends on the guy who slipped it in her drink being the guy who actually has 'possession' of her when they kick in. I dunno if its honestly worth the risk for most guys, even assuming they can obtain the drugs.
EDIT: Now, I can maybe see it be a known tactic for a group of guys to cover for each other and maybe prey on women by spiking drinks and letting one of their members take the score, but as @wemptronics mentions below, this starts to imply a much larger 'conspiracy of silence.' Like, who is the Jeffrey Epstein of Rohypnol supply for frats?
And as you say yeah, they're a pretty convenient excuse for a sexual encounter you later regret, that can't be easily countered by the other party.
This is much more of a "seedy bar/club with shady strangers" thing than a fraternity party thing. Not that young women shouldn't be in the habit of guarding their drinks, because in their 20s they'll probably in club spaces at times.
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Yeah, I suspect the same. Panic attacks, alcohol, or misjudged (intentional) drug mixtures.
I was curious so I did some light searching. It just doesn't seem very common. Especially in the college environment. Here's one article from 2023 about some college kids that went to the hospital. There's no further information, so this could just well be some teens that mixed the wrong drugs, got sent to the hospital, and told Mom they were roofied so as to escape responsibility.
Boston had a bunch of reports on spiked drinks in their bar scene through 2022 resulting in this article. But, even the article says the spike of reports that year wasn't attached to reported crimes. Just more than usual number of people saying they had drugs put in their drinks.
The risk of spiked drinks seems overblown and often conflated with intentional recreational drug use. My gut instinct is that half or more of spiked drink reports that involve alcohol are, in fact, excessive amounts of alcohol. The committed, regular binge drinking 20 year old girl is not wise or experienced. She drinks 4 shots instead of 2 in an hour and she might as well be drinking a can of ketamine-GHB soup.
There are sketchy dudes slipping drugs into girls drinks somewhere. If it is as large of a concern as it is made out to be, then they might be the most effective, disciplined population of criminal out there. Perhaps roofie rings are a Greek tradition insulated from the prying eyes of the outside world. The old generation inducts the new generation of rapists how best to take advantage of young women discretely. They have rites of passage, a vow of silence, and pass on their source for GHB or whatever.
The spiked drink may be a narrative prone to exaggeration and moral panic. But, it's still a good idea for young people, especially women, to look out for each other and develop buddy system habits when partying. Which is my guess at the impetus behind it all.
Good preliminary research. If tox screens rarely show date-rape drugs in the person's system (admittedly I don't know how reliable those tests are OR how long the drugs are detectable in the body) then yeah, update in favor of it being something else.
Yep. Just as with the "razor blades in halloween candy" story, if it were a widespread issue then people would probably stop letting kids go trick-or-treating. If date rape drugs are used at every other frat party, eventually people will get wise and stop going.
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It's comparatively rare, e.g.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16054005/ (21 positives of 1014 reported drug facilitated sexual assaults)
That's not to say DFSA doesn't happen. It's just that nearly always, the drug in question is alcohol. And I'm sure you've seen sketchy dudes slipping vodka into a partying girl's shot glass.
As another note... This was pretty much impossible to Google. Every link you see come up is either people hyperventilating about the problem with no statistics about its prevalence, or statistics about how many people are sure they've been roofied or know someone who's been roofied.
Fascinating, thank you for the study! That more-or-less matches my intuitions: it's something that happens rarely enough that it would make sense that I've never personally experienced it, but often enough that some number of my female acquaintances probably have, even if most anecdotes are false-positives.
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