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.

Drink, drank, drunk.

There are some pretty good reasons for imbibing alcohol.(i) A few drinks can make you surprisingly eloquent, and increase your confidence in otherwise daunting social situations. It can lower your inhibitions, especially those related to low self-esteem. It can inspire a sense of closeness and camaraderie in otherwise disparate persons. It can make you feel good. It makes things funnier. It can be a lot of fun.

Drinking to excess is a different story. As well as coming with a list of side effects that far outweigh the aforementioned positives, getting completely woozled also cancels said positives entirely. A few drinks can make your more eloquent. Getting totally potted will not continue the trend. If this were true, pubs would be stuffed with angelically articulate winos, slurring their way through sonnets like a shitfaced Billy Shakespeare. This, clearly, is not the case. All the positives of drinking are removed by taking it too far. Having enough Dutch courage to finally go up to the girl you’ve been eyeing up is useless if all you can manage is to spray spit down her dress and eventually fall over. Getting completely winkled is generally accepted to be a BAD IDEA, unless you have a particular fondness for vomiting, or accidentally peeing on your shoes.

All the solid reasons for getting trampolined(ii) have a darker undercurrent. Drinking to forget, drinking to keep out the cold etc. all are effective solutions to a particular problem, but none are much fun, and it’s a shame that anyone has to deploy them.

And yet, getting kaboomed has evolved into a national pastime. This is normally the point when I would employ a series of statistics to illustrate my point, but it really isn’t necessary. Our reliance on the ol’ sauce is trumpeted from every media outlet almost every day. It recently emerged that 1 in 6 deaths (damn, there it is) in Scotland can be linked to alcohol (although let’s be clear: these are broadly defined ‘links,’ including things like some cancers that can be exacerbated by excessive alcohol consumption. It is NOT to be inferred that 1 in 6 Scots are drinking themselves to death).

So howcumzit? Everybody who has ever got truly buffaloed has experienced the negative effects. If you aren’t drinking heavily with an aim in mind, why are you doing it at all?

The first reason is obvious: alcohol can be freakin’ dee-licious. After a decade of hard work and practice I have developed a fondness for lager simply as a preferred beverage. After a tough day of loafing, nothing is more satisfying than a pint of something premium strength and Eastern European. It’s like a manly handshake and a nice big hug all in one frosty glass. I could easily spend an evening drinking lager ‘cause it’s nice, with getting babooned(iii) an unavoidable side effect.(iv)

Alcohol also has a detrimental influence on one’s rationality. If you’re a little bit drunk, getting a little bit more drunk can seem like a smashing idea. You know when you’re sober that it’s unlikely to improve things, but the logical parts of your brain use booze as an excuse to take some paid holiday, right when you could use them the most. Getting attenbouroughedv might never have been your aim, but before you know it you’re howling ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’ at the back of a cab driver’s head.

These aren’t bad excuses, but they do not explain what has become known as ‘drink culture.’ Getting peterboroughed has become an end in itself; one now drinks simply to become intoxicated. It is not due to a failure in rationality (except in the most obvious sense) as we begin consuming with the express aim of getting carpeted. It can also no longer be blamed on how scrummy alcoholic beverages are, as a significant proportion of drinkers now imbibe potions simply for their alcoholic content, rather than their taste. Admit it, sambuca tastes like Satan’s sandy bumhole. Any drink you have to immolate before you swallow probably wasn’t much cop to start with.

This is not an entirely new phenomenon. How much plonk you can keep down has been a manly competition since time immemorial. The days of quaffing Vikings are over, but competitive drinking still exists. Not everybody plays, however, and yet the streets are still full every evening with the tragically (or comically) din-dinsed.(vi)

I am certainly not immune to this, in fact it’s why this sort of thing is on my mind. Suppose I had had the self-control in the past to control my excessive drinking? How many ladies have I upset, how many friendships have I imperilled? How many regrets do I carry.

I got a bit maudlin there, sorry. I do have a point to make though, or at least a request. Maybe I should ask my readers (that’s right, the pair of you), to think about what it is you want from a night out, and whether you really need to get banjoed to get it. So that when you’ve reached that truly glorious stage of intoxication where you dance like a man possessed, flirt like you took lessons and tell stories to rival the greatest Jacobean raconteur, you could say to your mates: “No thank you, I have reached an adequate stage of consumption, and have no immediate requirement of an alcoholic beverage. Fetch me instead a soft drink of equal or greater deliciousness." Except, well, you might want to paraphrase, or they’ll think you’re a peenarse.

I sound like a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. And I doubt this post will mark a curtailment in my own drinking. I don’t want to impact on anyone’s enjoyment- quite the opposite. I honestly suspect that if we thought a bit harder about how tomatoed we’d like to get, we might be a tiny bit happier. And tiny or not, any increase is worth it, because as we all know:


(vii)

(i) I’m going to do a Michael McIntyre here and see how many innocuous words I can substitute for the adjective ‘drunk.’
(ii) That one’s definitely my favourite.
(iii) I’ve got an animal theme thing going now.
(iv) This does raise the intriguing question: would I drink comparable amounts of non-alcoholic lager if they can make one that doesn’t taste like a tramp’s wee-wee?
(v) It works with proper nouns! Yes!
(vi) That one didn’t work so well, did it?
(vii) If this image doesn’t bring a smile to your face, you need to speak to your doctor about possibly upping your meds. The man responsible is artist, explorer and semi-professional pistol duellist William Elliot, who’s fantastic artwork can be found here.