The Journal

Issue date: 11/15/07 Section: Commentary

Perhaps I was naive. As trite and cliché as it sounds, I thought, "it will never happen to me." However, as I sipped a cosmopolitan on a Friday night this past March, I came face to face with the harsh reality of the dreaded date-rape drug.

My friend (I'll call her Sue) and I simply wanted a girls' night out. We went for dinner and cocktails at one of our favorite bars in St. Louis. Neither one of us was looking for more than an evening of girly gossip and a french fry or two.

However, as Sue and I sat at the bar, we were approached by several guys. Being the designated driver and in a committed relationship, I turned away offers for drinks and focused solely on my friend.

I remember two guys in particular. They were very insistent that Sue and I join them downtown after we left the bar. We both politely declined, but the men kept pestering. The man who was talking to me was even a little touchy-feely. Despite everything I said, I found his hand placed on the small of my back. It became rather annoying, and so we got up and relocated ourselves.

The next event happened in an instant. Sue went to the bathroom, and in a span of no more than five minutes, she came back to find me hunched over the table with blood gushing from my nose.

After only a drink, I lost all motor skills and fell off my chair, landing nose-first on the bar. I was breathing slowly. My eyes meandered. I could barely speak. Not knowing what happened to me, she quickly paid our bill, and we began to leave. She said I couldn't walk, and had to have a man from the bar carry me to the car. As he threw me over his shoulder, she said I looked almost lifeless.

I remember everything that happened before the drug entered my system, but nothing after. There were eight hours I cannot account for, but Sue said I was still trying to function.

Sue was very perplexed about the entire situation and couldn't understand how after only one drink, I appeared so disheveled. She and I had gone out together all of the time, and she knew that something was horribly wrong. However, at first she didn't think about drugs. Therefore, she called my boyfriend at the time to come to my condo.

The next morning, my boyfriend and I went to the emergency room. He knew that someone had slipped drugs into my drink. Yet I couldn't believe what had happened to me. How? Who? As I sat in the emergency room, battered, bruised and emotionally broken, I realized I was one of the lucky few who managed to escape the drug without actually being sexually victimized.

Continued...

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