Spike.

This blog is supposed to be funny, or at least, humorously themed. It would be inappropriate for me to provide concrete social and moral directives to my readers because I lack both the insight and the right: I am hardly perfect myself. The messages I try to convey through Verbal Slapstick are more the ‘after school special, just try and be nice to everybody’ clap-trap you can find inside any Sunday paper or fortune cookie.

This post is different, then, because it seeks to explore a particular crime, and speak out against it. I will make no effort to be balanced in my argument, nor will I attempt to justify said crime by anticipating mitigating circumstances, because I believe there to be none. It is a social issue that I feel comfortable discussing in some depth because I have both seen it firsthand and because it largely affects people of my age and broadly, my social background. It’s drink-spiking, by the way. I don’t know why I didn’t say that before.

Statistics are unnecessary, as is a Wikipedia description or similar. You spike someone’s drink by introducing a substance that they did not expect or want in it. Most drinks are spiked with chemicals that have tranquilising effects, ones that often either compound or mimic the effects of alcoholic intoxication.

I cannot ‘put myself’ into the mind of someone who spikes drinks. I can imagine, if I try really hard, a scenario in which I might murder someone. If I were the last of my species, doomed to wander the universe alone, and I confronted the being responsible for humanity’s demise in some sort of climactic battle (lightsabers, maybe) then perhaps I might, in a justified rage, kill him or her. Perhaps I can imagine, if my circumstances were lowered to miserable levels, stealing to provide for myself or my loved ones. I cannot imagine spiking someone’s drink. Nuh-uh, nothing doing.

The next thought exercise, therefore, might seem a little redundant, but let’s run with it. I’ll go through my own perception of drink spiking, and try and get as close as I can to the mentality of someone who commits this act.

Item 1: Drink spiking is an intended prelude to a sexual act. I find it patently unlikely that someone might get their drink spiked and then wake up in the middle of a long conversation about Kierkegaard with a stranger. People who spike drinks do so with the intent of initiating sexual relations with the person they spike.

Item 2: Drink spiking is the tipping factor in an act that would not otherwise have occurred. If you spike someone’s drink, it is because you don’t think you’ll be able to have sex with them without it. Again, I find it unlikely that one would want to have sex with someone who cannot reciprocate affection due to their own intoxication when an alternative exists.

Conclusion: Drink spiking is a prelude to rape. Obviously not a particularly difficult conclusion to reach, but one that should be stated. They didn’t want to have sex with you. You spiked their drink. This did not make them want to have sex with you, yet it allowed you to have sex with them anyway. Drink spiking allows individuals to circumvent the sexual consent of another. Sex without consent is rape.

Let’s go again. I’m getting a bad taste in my mouth, but I’m not done yet

Item 1: Drink spiking mimics the effects of excessive alcohol consumption. That’s how it works. You don’t spike a stranger’s drink in a teashop and watch them collapse into their sticky bun. Drink spiking occurs in places where excessive alcohol consumption might occur anyway, and masquerades as such.

Item 2: It is understood that excessive alcohol consumption may lead to bad decision making, and the occasional amorous encounter that might otherwise not have taken place. People do, occasionally, fuck people they might not otherwise have when they’re drunk. They do it because they are horny and their inhibitions are lowered.

Item 3: Lowered inhibitions or not, people still have the right to consent. Even if they’re extremely drunk, people can still say no.

Conclusion: Drink spiking legitimises sexual assault by disguising it as the accepted lowering of inhibitions that occurs with the consumption of alcohol.


General conclusion 1: People who spike drinks are rapists.
General conclusion 2: People who spike drinks are seeking to legitimise the act of rape in their own mind.

That’s about as far into it as I can go. Either people who spike drinks are rapists pure and simple, or they are trying to disguise the moral reprehensibility to themselves and the outside world but, and here is the thing, they are still rapists. Man, I’m getting sick of typing that word.

So what is to be done? How to curb the worrying spread of this crime? Well, the simplest way is to make people more cautious with their drinks, and this is what I see all around me in clubs and bars. Signs flash up on the mounted TV screens telling people to watch their drinks. Unattended drinks are cleared away by staff. Specialised straws and caps prevent access to peoples’ beverages.

All good ideas, each one effective in its way. But it strikes me that if the second of my general conclusions is true, then we are going about this the wrong way. Instead of protecting potential victims from the crime of drink spiking, we should be forcing potential perpetrators to confront the enormity of their actions. Shame is a powerful weapon in the enforcement of moral law. You’re less likely to drink drive if your friends express a low opinion of it. You might be less likely to kill someone in anger if a bystander called you a murderer. And anyone who spikes drinks and doesn’t consider themselves a rapist should be corrected. That’s what the signs in clubs should say. That’s what we should all be saying to ourselves, all the fucking time.

Everybody knows people. Everybody has parents, neighbours, colleagues. So everyone who spikes a drink is known to SOMEBODY. And that somebody ought to express their opinions on it. Drink spiking legitimises nothing.

Maybe I’m naive. In fact, I’m certain I am naive: perhaps even in this post I’m exploring an issue I know too little about. But I’m tired of taking precautions. I’m tired of hearing horror stories. I’m tired of seeing it happen to people I know. If I saw a sign in a club that read: ‘Drink spikers are rapists’ then at least I’d know they’d seen it too, and that at least they know what crime they’re committing.

I posted this largely because it’s been on my mind a lot recently. Now, hopefully, it’s off again, and we can get back to funny lists and alliteration next week. Look after yourselves till then.