Study: Guys Say They Spike Other People’s Drinks ‘For Fun’
A new study on roofies found that some dudes will slip something in your drink just for funsies and not necessarily to assault you.
The researchers, led by Suzanne C. Swan, PhD, of the University of South Carolina, surveyed 6,064 students at three colleges. They found that 462, or 7.8%, felt they’d been drugged a total of 539 times. Meanwhile, only 83, or 1.4%, said they had drugged someone or they knew someone who drugged someone.
Clearly, this is a pretty big discrepancy — are those 83 students responsible for all 539 instances of drugging? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, we’ve all had that friend who insisted her dumb behavior at a party was due to roofies when it was really due to the nine tequila shots she downed at a pre-game. Even the researchers themselves admit they have no way of knowing whether the people in the survey actually just drank too much.
But the more interesting data comes from the people who did the drugging. It seems men don’t drug people that often for the express purpose of assaulting them. Instead, they do it as a way to make people have more fun. So nice of them to take on that responsibility, right?
Not really — because even if the person does end up having fun, they still haven’t consented to whatever drug you gave them. And more importantly, if you’ve drugged someone for fun, there’s no way of preventing someone else from taking advantage of how fucked up they are and assaulting them.
Some of the reasons listed in the study will make you want to bang your head against a wall, like a guy who asserted, “I put happiness in their drinks.” Because if someone he drugged ends up getting assaulted, I’m pretty sure they’re not going to be happy.
Others are kind of hilarious but still not okay, like the guy who said, “Because the person I [drugged] is a sadist pig and probable communist informer.” Uhhh… k! Maybe just talk to them about it next time?
As far as the actual drugging victims, 37.2% of male victims weirdly reported they “enjoyed the experience” of being roofied, while only 8.1% of female victims did. Maybe that’s because 16.8% of female victims experienced unwanted sex after believing they were drugged, while only 6.4% of male victims did? Seeing a pattern here?
And that’s the takeaway. It’s surprising to know more guys are spiking drinks “for fun” than “for raping.” But the thing is, even if the guy spiking your drink isn’t doing it to assault you, you could still be assaulted by someone else as a result of being incapacitated.
So let’s all agree to stop drugging each other’s drinks and have fun some other way, shall we?
