After barely two drinks, Maddie* was taken to the hospital for alcohol intoxication. “The alcohol in my body tripled,” is what Maddie says caused her to wake up alone in the hospital. She still doesn’t know what was put into her drink.
This is a phenomenon that is alarmingly becoming more and more common among students, and Maddie was just one of them. After waking up alone in the hospital, she tells her story.
She was out and having fun until she fell unconscious on the bathroom floor. Luckily, she was not alone. “I sobered up when I had to sober up,” her friend said about helping Maddie in her unconscious state. The original plan was to take her to the college dorms, but her friends knew the signs of intoxication and decided to rush her to the hospital. Hours after the incident, Maddie woke up alone in the psychiatric wing of the hospital. “My first thoughts were ‘what am I doing here? What happened,”Maddie recalled when she woke up surrounded by patients cuffed to their beds. Maddie had tried to rip her IV off, which is why she was placed in the psychiatry wing. She was discharged a couple hours later, met with her friends and headed home.
Maddie spoke to me about how she tried to piece together that night’s events for about two months after it happened. After that, she decided to give up and let go thinking she “would be sad to think it was someone who did that.” She is not 100% positive it was someone who spiked her drink, either. She thinks there could be a medical explanation why her body reacted the way it reacted to such a small amount of alcohol, but, when asked about the incident, she will say she was drugged. “It could have been worse,” she says. Her blood alcohol reached a bit over 0.30%, 0.40% being the level to leave you comatose.
True, it could have been much worse, but that does not take away from the fact that it happened. Many other cases of drink spiking have ended in rape, a coma and even death. Unfortunately, the victim is considered to be at fault most of the time, when it is clearly not true. I experienced victim-shaming firsthand when I was told that dancing sensually while out is an invite for people to drug you. This is incorrect, and I became furious, so my rebuttal was this: you are more prone to be drugged if another person wants to drug you. It has nothing to do with your own behavior. I have also randomly been offered a drink by a stranger. Of course, I rejected it, but that is not the only way to avoid being a victim. In Maddie’s case, she had served her drink herself, making it hard for anyone to slip drugs in it without her noticing. She took all precautions, and to this day, she has no clue what, or if,something was slipped in her drink, yet her laudable emotional strength enabled her to quit her over thinking of that night’s events.
When asked about how her relationship with her friends and family changed after the incident, Maddie said that her family are still shaken by the event. They mention it more than she does. In part, this is understandable because parents worry. However, for Maddie, this meant that her parents’ suspicion of Maddie’s friends being the perpetrators grew. Her mom “did not want her to confide in anyone,” which created tension between them. Maddie was more at ease with speaking to her friends, since they were the ones that helped her when she was at her worst. Nonetheless, the same questions were raised by Maddie and her family, “Was it this person? What about that other person?”
The advice Maddie has for those that have been drugged is to go to the doctor or a hospital, and ask for any evidence that may uncover what exactly was put in your drink and who put it there. Maddie, due to shock, did not ask much, so she encourages the victim to question a doctor or specialist about every detail of their condition, what led them to be hospitalized, or anything that can help put the pieces of that night together. Also, the “lame” tips and tricks that moms repeat all the time help, too. “Those tips will most likely save you the trouble of going through the whole ordeal, trust me,” Maddie pleaded. Remember: grab your drink from the top with your fingers holding the rim, never leave your drink unattended,never accept drinks from random people and take care of your friends!
*The name has been changed for confidentiality.
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