People speak out about being roofied — and the emotional toll of being drugged against their will
Caitlin Gibson was 19 when she and a friend decided to spend a night out at a favorite bar. Though the friend quickly “ditched” her for a guy, Gibson says she didn’t mind — this was a place where she was comfortable, one where she knew the bouncers and bartenders. The last thing Gibson remembers from the bar is grabbing a drink and heading to the dance floor.
“The next thing I knew I was waking up in an unfamiliar room,” she tells Yahoo Life. “I was terrified, as I had no idea where I was and I didn't recognize my surroundings. I knew instantly that I had been roofied because that was only my first drink of the night, and I was usually a responsible drinker and didn't black out. I would have remembered buying and drinking more drinks. I also felt so extremely sick. It was much different than being hungover or having too much to drink.”
A friend found her unconscious in a bar booth, alone. He tried to take her back to her own home, but since she wasn’t able to share her address, he took her to his place to sleep.
Mia Mainville was out on New Year’s Eve when she and a friend decided to end their night at a restaurant. She had four drinks between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., but says she felt “more drunk” than her alcohol intake would suggest.
“I excused myself to the restroom, and do not have much memory of the following events,” the Denver resident tells Yahoo Life. “According to my roommate, after about 10 to 15 minutes in the bathroom, she decided to check on me, and found me face down on the floor, vomiting. She tried to sit me up and began asking me what was wrong, and I was completely unresponsive and not completely conscious.”
Elijah Maidez, now 33, was 18 when he was drugged at a party. After just a few beers, he began to feel “weird and disoriented.”
“My body was super heavy, and I couldn't seem to control my movements,” he explains. “The next thing I knew, I woke up across town in a bush, no shoes on, holding my skateboard. Unfortunately, the reason I knew I had been roofied was because someone else at the same party ended up in the hospital because of it. After they told me about their experience, it sounded too much like my own for it not to be the same thing. I felt weak and kind of sick the rest of the next day.”
The second time it happened, Maidez was 21. He was sexually assaulted at a party.
“I was talking with people and remember the girl being kind of aggressive early on during the party. I had seen her a few times before but didn't really know her that well,” he says. “I had a few drinks and remember feeling exhausted and kind of nauseous. At this point, I told my friend I was going to lay down in the back bedroom because I didn't want to drive home. When I came to, she was already on top of me and had taken off my pants. I remember trying to say something and she just smiled and covered my mouth. I wanted to try and move so badly but I couldn't. It felt like my entire body was made of cement. I don't remember her leaving or the end of what happened.”
What are roofies?
Dr. Kathryn Hawk, a Yale Medicine emergency medicine physician and associate professor of emergency medicine at Yale School of Medicine, tells Yahoo Life that the term “roofie” is a slang term for the drug Rohypnol.
“It can cause sleepiness, slowed reaction time, unconsciousness, reduced inhibition and an inability to remember things. It is not currently legal to manufacture or use in the U.S.,” she says. “Rohypnol and GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate), along with dozens of other drugs that can cause similar effects, are commonly associated with sexual assault and are sometimes referred to as ‘date-rape drugs.’”
For those who suspect they were roofied, it can be difficult to identify whether or not you have been drugged.
“Some drugs, such as benzodiazepines, may show up on standard urine drug-screen tests for several days after exposure, but it is often not possible to identify what, if any, drug you were exposed to,” Hawk notes.
That makes it all the more difficult to weed through the confusion that comes after being roofied — especially if it was by a stranger. Not much research is available on how many people are roofied each year. A 2016 study published in the journal Psychology of Violence, which surveyed 6,000 students at three different American universities, found that 7.8% of students had been drugged before without their knowledge, while 1.8% said they had drugged someone else.
Nearly 11 million women in the U.S. have been raped while drunk, drugged or high, according to the Office on Women's Health, and the U.S. Department of Justice says this trend appears to be rising. While roofies are typically referred to as “date rape drugs,” there are also druggings without a sexual assault motivation, such as when someone uses these drugs to incapacitate a person in order to rob them more easily.
'It stole a big chunk of my innocence'
The people Yahoo Life spoke with say that being roofied took a big emotional toll on their lives.
Gibson says that her experience was “hard” and that she “had trouble trusting anyone for a long time after that, because I never discovered who roofied me.”
She adds: “It stole a big chunk of my innocence, and I stopped being so friendly with other people. It made me more cautious as well, because from that point on, I made sure that I only went out with a close group of girlfriends that I knew would protect me if anything happened and wouldn't leave me alone.”
Maidez calls his experience of being assaulted by a woman while drugged both “embarrassing” and “shameful.”
“I never said anything about it to anyone else, just because I am a guy. The girl was tiny," he shares. At 6-foot-1, he says, "I should have been able to do something about it. I kept the secret for a long time after that.”
It can also be difficult for people who have experienced such an attack to find anything resembling justice in these cases.
Lynn Julian was roofied while at a corporate event in 2012. She tells Yahoo Life that hospital staff assumed she was “an alcoholic” after her boyfriend brought her in to an emergency room, having found her on the sidewalk. Julian says she lost six hours of time, but the only thing the hospital did was check her blood alcohol levels.
Mainville was also angry with how her case was handled. She had gone to the hospital after being roofied, and in the morning, asked for a drug test. The hospital told her she would need to file a police report to receive one.
“Because I was not unaccounted for during the time when the drugs had hit my system, I had no concern about sexual assault,” she explains. “When I arrived at the Denver police station to file my report, they asked if I had been assaulted. I responded that I hadn't, and the officer said that there was no reason for me to file a report if I had not been assaulted.”
While she says she felt mentally clouded for five days after she was roofied, it was the “lack of response, support and action” by the police and hospital that resulted in “a lot of internalized shame, trauma and embarrassment.”
Mainville says that “comments made by hospital staff and officers led me to question whether or not it had been my fault that this had happened to me — perhaps that I shouldn't go out to bars, or that maybe I shouldn't try to go out and enjoy myself at all because the city is too dangerous, or perhaps that being a single woman in a short dress on a holiday is too enticing for predators.”
Nevertheless, Mainville says that she is “adamant" about the fact that, as she puts it, "I should not have to change my behavior to allow for predators to run rampant." She notes that many products these days are marketed to women to prevent druggings and assault, but although it can be helpful to have them on hand, she sees no reason why potential victims should have to absolve their assailants of responsibility for the attacks.
Julian shares that, to this day, "the biggest emotional scars from that trauma resulted from how the staff at the ER treated me, not from the person who roofied me. Hospital staff need much better sensitivity training on how to deal with women who may have been abused. Whether they come in drunk or not, women need to be treated with respect and empathy.”
Dealing with the trauma of being roofied
Dr. Shaili Jain, a psychiatrist, specialist in post-traumatic stress syndrome and the author of The Unspeakable Mind, tells Yahoo Life: “The fact that a person was exposed to the threat of serious injury or the threat of sexual violence can itself be traumatic — not to mention the horrific violation of being drugged against your will and without your consent.”
She explains that these are all "traumatizing situations where people can feel fear, helplessness or horror — all emotions commonly associated with trauma.”
Jain says that, for those who have experienced trauma, it’s important to surround yourself with supportive people and seek help from a licensed professional if these emotions become difficult to manage.
Along with the fact that it can be challenging to make sure the perpetrator is prosecuted, Thea Gallagher, a clinical assistant professor of psychology at NYU Langone Health and co-host of the Mind in View podcast, points out that “Justice doesn’t necessarily solve trauma.”
“We think that their payment is going to make the pain go away, but they’re two very separate things,” Gallagher explains. “It might be comforting to know that, ‘Hey, even if I did get justice, this would still be something I would have to process through, regardless.’" She adds: "Sometimes bad people do bad things, and we have to live in a world where that exists, which can be a really overwhelming thought, but we can only control what we can control.”
Gallagher also says that it’s important to remember who is really at fault — the perpetrator, and not the victim.
“Sometimes people blame themselves and say, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have gone to that party, I shouldn’t have been drinking,’” she says. “But sometimes it can be helpful to say, ‘What would you say to someone else? What would you say to a friend you really love?’ Sometimes we victim-blame ourselves to make it so this can’t happen in the future, but it’s scarier to say, ‘Sometimes people take advantage of people, and that sucks.’”
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