It feels like...

[venta]

OK, yes, that was just a facetious entry because I suddenly found the phrase "straw poll" funny this morning. However, it has just reminded me of something I did want to ask about.

How many of you have ever heard of a "spikey" ? As in a small plastic thingy which might be given out free in pubs ?

This website explains what a spikey is. Have you seen these anywhere ?

I was shown one at the weekend by someone who'd picked it up in a bar in Preston - a huge bucket of them apparently stood on the bar, inviting people to help themselves. He questioned the bar staff as to what on earth they were (a small, plastic plug you put into the top of a bottle, with a hole for a straw, which prevents anyone dropping anything into your drink). When he later handed it to me to invite me to guess what it was, I failed utterly.

Stuart asked, in surprise, if this was really necessary, was drink-spiking so prevalent that it needed this kind of precaution ? Yes, apparently. "Everyone" in Preston knows someone to whom it's happened.

Now, I'm a bit sceptical - I'm prepared to believe there's a perceived threat, but is it really so widespread ? Richard, who lives in Wakefield, confirmed to me that it is apparently rife there, too, with many cases reported.

Are you aware of it being a particular threat in your area ? I mean yes, it's a risk, and it pays to keep an eye on your drink and make sure that someone will notice if you're acting funny or disappear. But the idea that a plastic stopper is necessary to stop someone dropping Rohypnol into your beer is a new one on me.

I'm also told that the reason bottled drinks are so popular these days is that they're harder to spike. Have I been living with my head in a bucket and missing all this ?

Should Pintwatch start campaigning for pint-glass-sized coloured stoppers ? Preferably with a hot-coffee-style sipping mechanism. Not a straw. Blech.

Comments

[erming.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, well I think I got my drink spiked in the Dev and had a very very bad reaction to what was in it.

I know a few other people both male and female who it's happened to.

Maybe your just lucky.

[zotz]

I'm aware of them via news articles, but I've never seen one. I've heard rumours of people having their drinks spiked, but I don't remember it ever happening when I've been around.

It's possible that this is mostly a scare - the perception being that it is several or more times as common as it actually is.

[neilh.livejournal.com]

It is, from what I understand, quite common at Slimelight, or was around two years ago - it might have calmed down a little now. However that might just have been bad cuts on the pills, you can't really tell, can you?

And I had a *very weird* time at Infest one year, which I can only attribute to some stray speed, no idea how that could have happened, everyone around me knows I don't indulge, and knows better than to try anything like that...

[zotz]

It's very difficult to tell. A small number of cases can have their stories circulated until it's hard to say how often it has happened. If I go by the number of people I've been around that it's happened to, then I'd say it's very rare. If I believe what I read in the papers, then it happens to most people most weeks. Presumably the truth's in between somewhere, but I don't know even vaguely which end it's close to.

[venta.livejournal.com]

And I had a *very weird* time at Infest one year, which I can only attribute to some stray speed

That presumably wouldn't be dissolvable in a drink, though ? (I dunno, I've never tried, I just don't think it would for some reason).

It's a fair point that in clubs (or whatever) where a lot of people are taking drugs anyway it's difficult to know how much might be down to people taking "bad" drugs, or bad combinations, themselves or just reacting unusually.

[triskellian]

Speed is indeed dissolvable in a drink.

[zotz]

Wouldn't it taste fucking foul, though? Most amines have a very strong and unpleasant taste. It's a well-known problem with giving people pills medically.

[triskellian]

I've only tried it once, a long time ago, and it was quite a small amount of speed (powder, not pill, if that makes any difference) dissolved in quite a large amount of a drink I don't particularly like (2 litre bottle of coke). I don't recall noticing the taste of the speed.

[neilh.livejournal.com]

I have no idea, I'm not a user, I don't really want to get to understand it that any more than I do already and there are, I'm sure, plenty of potential vectors.

[diffrentcolours]

I'm pretty sure I had my drink spiked at Slimelight, many moons ago now. I certainly didn't have enough alcohol to explain what happened, nor knowingly ingested anything else.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I was aware of a report about a year ago. The police picked up all the glasses in number of Essex pubs (i'm going to pretend they were randomly selected, but I don't actually know as the report didn't say). A quarter of them turned out to have held spiked drinks.

To me, that's a scary statistic.

[neilh.livejournal.com]

In the same way as most bank notes in this country have traces of cocaine? That was traced to the counting machines they use in banks which pick up dust from those few notes which are used for such purposes.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Only if they had those drugs in the washing up liquid/sink area/water. And, frankly, that's not likely. Unless you have an alternative idea about how the drugs could get into the glasses?

I think that if this is a biased sample it's because of the pubs chosen.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I should add that I'm dissing the washing up theory because pubs usually use dishwashers and they usually have more than one rinse cycle.

[zotz]

A lot of pubs have those swirly tubs with the spinning brush. Or used to, anyway.

[zotz]

It's possible. OTOH that implies, given that people likely had more than one drink each, that at least half the people there had their drinks spiked on one given evening. I would find that hard to believe.

One notable point is that glasses are washed quickly in machines behind the bars - one glass could contaminate quite a few which follow it into the same water, if the test used was sensitive enough. It's hard to say without knowing more.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

one glass could contaminate quite a few which follow it into the same water

Only if the rinse cycle was inadequate. Although, I'll admit I'm no expert on pub dishwashers.

[zotz]

I know some pubs have dishwashers which work like domestic ones, but others do/did have a glasswasher with a tub of swirling water and a rotating brush in the middle. Like this, sort of. It's easier to imagine contamination with something like that, but I don't know how common they are now.

[timeplease.livejournal.com]

Pub glasswashers generally only have a short rinse cycle. They are optimised for speed rather than cleaning ability, and they make the glasses hygienic by rinsing at high temperature. They are unable to deal with glasses that are greasy, for example: butter, lipstick (ugh!), and so on.

We have another dishwasher (with a longer cycle) that we use for plates. When we notice a particularly dirty glass we run it through that instead.

(A pub glasswasher has a bath of water with detergent that's kept at about 55C. A wash cycle has two parts: first the water with detergent is sprayed over the glasses to try to get them clean. At the same time the rinse water is being heated to about 80C. The rinse cycle involves spraying the rinse water mixed with rinse aid over the glasses. The rinse water ends up in the water bath; the excess flows down the drain and more detergent is added.)

[neilh.livejournal.com]

No, I don't have any ideas, really, just thinking that there was an outcry over the cocaine/banknote thing until they traced the source. The other possibility is that they chose somewhere where it was the popular thing to do to drop your drug of choice into your drink - which would make it some kind of self-spiking thing, which surely doesn't count. And noone is going to admit that to a policeman, are they?

Were they just picking up trace or was it serious amounts?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming that would have been "held spiked drinks that night" rather than "ever" ?

I might guess that some people might have deliberately put "substances" into their own drinks, but even so 25% is (in my opinion) amazingly high. Even if the pubs weren't selected at random, it still seems quite high as a spike-rate.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming that would have been "held spiked drinks that night" rather than "ever" ?

That was my understanding. I'm working on the assumption that a dishwasher would remove drug traces here (also, the testing may well have been at a level for them to say that it was 90% likely that the actual drink was drugged).

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

.... not sure. I mean firstly your going to have a number of false positives when somebody gets totally blitzed, acts like a tit and then blames it on the booze - "I was spiked there's no way those 30 pints could have done that to me".

Thinking back I can remember one time somebody I was with, a young lady, going all rubber legged and odd. And there was a suspiction that was a spike, and that was years ago.

It's worrying if it is....

[marjory.livejournal.com]

there's no way those 30 pints could have done that to me"<7i>

Aha! Like everybody I have ever known who has claimed to have had a 'bad pint' when the first 10 were just fine 8they would know...)

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

Factoid: in the olden days (60s and 70s, according to Dad) chaps drank from the bottle, rather than pints, to show the ladies that they could afford to drink the expensive bottled beer.

I think the reason people drink from bottles today is because it's more fashionable than a pint glass, more portable (so you can carry it at your side and avoid it being stolen), and is generally the only way that alcopops are served - which is also important when the alcopop-buying generation are the ones that care about fashion.

Granted that bottles are harder to spike, but I think it's got as much to do with pissed people dropping their bottles on the dancefloor/pubs trying to sell the more lucrative bottled drinks.

[zotz]

Also, the bar owner can't water your drink if it's in a bottle. the quality's more consistent as well, so even if what you're drinking is no great shakes it's still better than the stuff that's been through their plumbing.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I can only remember one person I know getting a spiked drink, ever. It was his birthday, and he enjoyed it so much that he pestered those responsible until they told him what they'd used.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

OK, apologies, seems my memory is prone to exaggeration.

The report is actually 8 out of 200 and was in one Chelmsford nightclub. I got the Essex bit right though.

Story is here.

[venta.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, it seems they were testing specifically for "date rape" drugs - so presumably wouldn't have noticed any other form of spiking. I'm assuming speed wouldn't work well as a drug for date-rape :)

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Note the last sentence: "the drugs are also used recreationally in nightclubs to increase the potency of drinks."

So it's quite possible that none of those 8 of 200 were spiked.

[venta.livejournal.com]

It also says that the people whose glasses tested positive did not suffer "any adverse effects from drugs" - it doesn't say they didn't experience any effects ;)

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Apparently, there's currently a six month study going on (being run by a number of police forces) to try and gather some statistics on date rape and drink spiking.

Be interesting to see what comes out of that.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that these spike-stoppers are more for the sake of confidence than safety - I'm not convinced that bottles are spiked by some geezer pulling a magnificant sleight-of-hand where he drops something into your bottle faster than the eye can follow, such that this plug is just the thing you need to stop him.

I'd have thought he does it while the bottle's owner isn't even looking. As such, he can take the straw out, put the drugs in, then put the straw back in. Or buy you the drink in the first place and spike it twixt bar and mouth.

Also, why has nobody yet said "If I spike you, you'll know you've been spoken to"?

[stegzy.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar with any such happenings in the liverpool area. Though that doesnt mean that there arent any instances of it happening. My immediate local has some fairly shady characters frequenting it and I havent heard of anything like that happening there ( Though some are like extras from Prisoner Cell Block H which might explain it)

I have heard tell of a local woman (ie in the North West) that was sent to prison for spiking mens drinks and then robbing them blind, shaving them and writing the word "Twat" on their forehead. But I may be mistaken...

[zotz]

Sounds like it may be a garbled version of a recent case in London. A woman was convicted of getting off with well-off city blokes, spiking their drinks once back at their places and making off with cash and valuables.

Ummm . . . here.

Unless you heard your story some time ago, of course.

[stegzy.livejournal.com]

yeah i think thats more likely to be the thing. My source is as reliable as the 89 bus

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

There is apparently a thingy somebody is selling on the interweb that looks a bit like a magnifying glass and can indicate whether a certain date rape drug is present in a drink. I can't remember where the website was (the URL is on a poster on the back of a toilet door three miles away from my nice comfy chair and I will look at it tomorrow) and I don't know how it works or which drug it shows up.

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

Another thing about these spike stoppers is they look like they make a hermetic seal between straw and bottle, so you'd need to suck incredibly hard to use them. Kind of like Ben Elton's Comic Relief skit on the fast food triple thick shake. "There's people walking 'round with bleeding earholes because they've been sucking too hard... if everybody sucked together the windows of the shop would cave in".

(OK, the stoppers probably have a hole to equalise the pressure, I just like the idea of a pub full of chavs sucking so hard that they swallow their own eyeballs. I'd pay money to watch that.)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I just like the idea of a pub full of chavs sucking so hard that they swallow their own eyeballs.

That's not at the bar, they've got a special room upstairs and it's a fiver extra, sonny.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

My mother told me about thos,e also that some people she knows buys bottled drinks for that very reason, and I pointed out that I only drink in situations where there are people I trust, so it's not an issue. I've never seen them in real life.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I only drink in the right places, but I've never heard of anyone I know having a problem with this sort of thing and haven't come across the stoppers. They seem like an obvious idea though whether they are a practical solution or a means of making money out of worried people I'll reserve my opinion on for the time being. I don't doubt that there is a genuine and serious problem at the root of it, and wouldn't want to make light of it, but it seems like incredibly fertile territory for urban legends, press-induced panic, and consequent foolish or profiteering reactions.

[taimatsu]

You obviously Do Not Read Enuff Glossy Wimmin's Magazines. They have spent the last year fulminating about drink-spiking at roughly three-month intervals. So I have heard of spiky things (and little things you dip into your drink, and something else to do with beermats) but not seen any.

[(Anonymous)]

Wasn't there some theory about getting drunk far quicker if alcohol was drunk through a straw? Mind you, I date from the student days when the quickest way to Nirvana was reckoned to be Coke (as in Coca Cola)and aspirins. Never tried it, though.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

In contrast to Coke (as in Cocaine) and aspirin, which just means that someone's ripped you off !

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if they've cut it with aspirin instead of doing it properly with drain cleaner crystals, you'd want your money back.