Editorial Note: This tale is definitely a more serious article than I’m used to writing but I feel it’s a cautionary story that all should hear.
This summer, two of my best friends Becky and Roxy (name’s have been changed), were attending a private fraternity party at a bar in downtown Austin where their friend helped to get them in. Both Becky and Roxy had experience drinking and going to parties from high school and their freshman year of college. The girls have definitely had some nights when they had too much, but when they explained this story to me, they said it was something they had never experienced before. What was intended to be a completely innocent night of drinks and dancing turned into a total nightmare. The girls were in a party of five, with one being the DD. Roxy and another girl would be the ones to go up to the bar and order drinks, and they made sure to order the exact same drinks every time.
The bar was packed with fraternity guys, Roxy later told me that when forcibly pushing didn’t work, she started to socialize with a couple of the guys and they helped her and her friend move up to the front. Between the time the bartender had made their drinks and the time they got back to their friends, Roxy hadn’t thought twice about watching her drinks in the crowd. She waited for her friend to order hers and they made their way back to the group. After the second round of drinks, that’s when everything started to get bad. There was a two drink limit for every time you went to the bar and ordered, so Roxy would always be the one to give Becky her second drink. After that second round, both Becky and Roxy completely blacked out for the rest of the night. Neither of them had any recollection of the rest of the events that happened that night. The next day, after each of the girls woke up in their beds, they asked their friends what exactly had happened to them.
Their designated driver (DD) described a terrible, horrific night. At about 2 a.m., when the bar started to shut down both Roxy and Becky lost the ability to stand. Their DD said that they were dancing one second, then the next would just completely drop to the floor and not be able to get up or move. The other three girls in the group who had been drinking the same thing and the same quantity as Becky and Roxy were totally fine and remained conscious. According to the three girls, Becky and Roxy threw up most of the contents of their stomach and were told by the bouncers that were not allowed to leave the club, as they could not even walk and would definitely be arrested for public intoxication after leaving the club. The DD said that they ended up sneaking out of the back door at about 3:30 a.m., two of the bouncers carried Becky and Roxy in their arms, and they took a pedicab back to where they were parked. Thank the Lord, my friends are completely fine and according to their babysitters that night, they never left the club and did not go off with any boys. However, this story completely changed my life. Both Becky and Roxy go to small private universities, just like I do. When I talked to them about the whole night they were still in total shock.
Roofies and date rape drugs are never on your mind at small schools. It’s so easy to get into the mindset of ‘Oh that’s just a horror story from the big state schools, that would never happen to me. Besides, I know all of these people so well!’ However, that is entirely not the case. I decided to write about this because after hearing what happened to my friends, it shocked me just how ignorant to the fact that being drugged at a party, or a bar, or a club can happen so easily. For some reason we have it drilled into our minds that oh no, that can’t happen to us. In the 5-10 minutes it took Roxy to grab the drinks from the bartender and head back to her group, someone was able to slip something in her drink that completely knocked both she and Becky out for the entire night.
When I asked Roxy how she thinks it could have been slipped in, she had such a guilty look on her face. “I was not watching the drinks at all. It never crossed my mind, I was turned around talking to all these different frat boys and my friends.” I asked the other girls in their group if they knew in the moment that both Roxy and Becky had been drugged. However, the girls had never gone out drinking with them before and had never experienced someone affected by a date rape drug. They too had never even touched on the idea that drugs could be distributed that easily. Just like a horror movie, you watch and hear the terrible story, but you leave telling yourself, “well, luckily that can never happen to me!” Just to feel some comfort. Unfortunately, it does happen, and all too often. Rohypnol, which is what we believe Roxy and Becky were drugged with, takes about twenty minutes to begin to kick in, which is when both Roxy and Becky first blacked out.
The full effects, such as trouble standing, trouble talking, inability to move, nausea, confusion, and the feeling of being paralyzed, peak at about two hours after ingestion, which is when the girls passed out at 2 A.M. Another scary but unfortunately true fact is that a lot of times, predators will drug as many victims as they can and wait until they are able to pin one out of the many alone. When I say “predators” this could be literally anyone, a frat bro, a close friend, the hot upperclassman, the nerdy high school senior who somehow snuck in, literally anyone.
Sometimes, it is truly almost impossible to tell the difference between someone who is just extremely intoxicated and someone who is drugged. The symptoms do have a lot in common with blacking out from alcohol, however, it is almost impossible to completely blackout from alcohol that quickly. It makes me absolutely sick to even think about if all 5 of the girls had been drugged and what horrific ways the night would have ended.
Which brings me to my next point, Roxy and Becky’s girl group had a designated driver who actually stayed sober. “
"Designated Drunk Driver” is not a thing. When you have a designated sober person in the group you have someone who can make smart decisions and someone to be there if something bad like this is ever to happen. “A babysitter” is unexplainably important. If you are going to party, if you are going to drink, be. Smart. Sure, nobody ever wants to be DD but it’s something we all must do. There are countless ways that not having a DD can completely end in a nightmare. With that being said, even a Coke can be spiked. There is never such thing as a "complete safe zone."
Be alert and be cautious.
So, especially for all you new freshman who have seen "Project X" and "Neighbors" and can't wait to turn up, go ahead and party on, but please be smart. No one is “safe” from being drugged. There is no such thing as a completely risk-free party. Even if you go to the smallest college in the world, there are just bad people and you can never be too careful. Becky and Roxy are fine, but I do believe being victimized like that has had a very emotional toll on them. Nobody wants to lose total control like that, no one wants to black out after two rounds and then wake up in their room with no recollection of what happened except for a random guy's’ number in your phone and a couple pictures of you passed out on the dance floor. Do not leave your drink unattended, do not accept an open drink from a stranger that you did not see the bartender make themselves, and do not ever look away from your drink because it can truly happen that easily. I know we’ve all heard the spiel ten thousand times from our teachers or counselors or parents, but it’s real, it’s not just a made-up fable. Have fun, but be safe and just be smart.
