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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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