I got Roofied.

A tale of community

Photo by Teslariu Mihai on Unsplash

I got Roofied.

Trigger warning: non consensual drugging. The good news is there’s a happy ending!

Hi. If you’ve heard the hot goss about someone getting roofied at a local queer bowling event - it was me. I’m ok with you using my name and here’s why:

Gossip can be used with integrity. We can use it intentionally to keep ourselves and our community safer and  more enjoyable. Using my name makes it hit home harder because I’m less of a concept and more of a person people know. In fact, I might actually know you! Also, by sharing my experience and being open to talking about it, I hope to give people more ways to understand how to practice their own safety… and who knows, maybe I’ll even get some justice out of it. 

I have included a paywall in this post as a way for you, my community member, to show me some of the justice I won’t get from police or the person who drugged me. Please give at a level that feels right(eous) for you. Your contributions will help me feel more trust in my community.

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Photo by Benjamin Faust on Unsplash

Story Time!

For the record, I don’t place any legal blame on the event coordinators or the bowling alley at all - though I was deeply disappointed that the security camera footage couldn’t even find my white shirt in a black lit space. The responsibility falls 85% on the person who drugged me, 10% on the bowling alley for having unsafe policies,  4% on me for trusting my drink alone while I bowled and 1% on my team for not looking out for each other (and me specifically!) I’m using percentages to paint a picture, not place any legal definitions on anything - the “real” numbers might look different but I don’t really care about that right now. 

What I care about is that you know what happened. Here’s my end. I can’t speak for anyone else but myself.

It was the last night of bowling league. There was even a super chill, fun tailgating beforehand (something I hadn’t done in maybe 10 years - what a treat!) The bowling alley has a policy of leaving beverages and things that could spill and get sticky up on the cubby spaces where the balls and coats go. It makes sense. They don’t pay for enough people to clean messes on the bowling floor. That policy requires you to trust other people with your drink safety while you actively bowl or go to the bathroom.

Somewhere between the 8th frame of game 1 and 1st frame of game 2, someone put flunitrazipam (rohypnol) in my half-drunk mai tai (7:20-8:30pm). They waited for my partner, Hannah, to walk away and for me to be actively bowling. They were watching. 

I don’t know why they targeted me. That’s the piece I’ve yet to resolve. I didn’t make any enemies knowingly. I’m 38 for fuck’s sake! I thought that alone would take me out of target range. What’s hard is that I don’t know if it was someone in our queer community or one of the 5 unaffiliated people playing pool about 15-20 feet away from me. Unless I find out who it was and they tell me why, I’ll never know why they targeted me. (I surrender to the unknown in order to grieve my loss - how else can I heal?)

I drank my drink and talked with my new friends and bowling buddies. Then in about 10 or so minutes, I went from a 2 on the drunk scale to a 10. I’ve blacked out once in my life before this and it took a whole night of drinking alcohol in my early 20’s. I’m usually a 1-2 drink kind of person at most so I was deeply confused as to why after not even finishing one drink, I was so intoxicated. I started slurring and wondering why I couldn’t speak. I nearly fell over bowling and rolled gutterballs (bogus). I felt like my voice was getting harder and harder to hear as I struggled to make enough effort to be loud enough to be heard. I was more confused than I have ever, ever been - and for some context, I survived a brain injury so I am no stranger to confusion. 

I stood at the top of the stairs calling for Hannah desperately. I thought maybe I was having a bad reaction to my medication mixing with alcohol, though I knew from experience that it couldn’t be the case. Already my mind was so gone and struggling to make sense of what was happening to me. I didn’t even think of roofies because my mind literally couldn’t think or problem-solve at that point.

Photo by Ricardo IV Tamayo on Unsplash

Filling in the gaps

I remember telling Hannah I needed to go home. Then I remember almost nothing until 2am. 

Here’s what Hannah told me happened:

We waited about 15 mins for Hannah to sober up a little more completely. She didn’t want to jeopardize my safety any more than it already was. During that time, I didn’t go to the bathroom or leave her side. Thank goodness I didn’t, otherwise I may not even be here to share my experience with you. 

We went to my car and she drove us to her house. My body was writhing and couldn’t get comfortable. I was incoherently “speaking.” I dozed off several times in the shower while I was trying to get my body to calm down. I wasn’t making any sense. And then I just fell asleep. I crashed. Hard.

I woke up around 1 or 2 and drive myself back to my house because I felt hungover, but sober enough and knew I would sleep better there. Critical thinking wasn’t yet available to me, but my reflexes, processing speed, and memory were back enough that I felt safe driving. Once home, I went back to sleep again. 

For those trying to solve my crime, I’m as certain as anyone can be about anything that my partner did not roofie me. She has no idea where to buy it or connections to buy it, isn’t into being sedated herself, isn’t into punishment or that kind of abuse of power, has way too much integrity and I also do have flashes of memory for most of the things she mentioned and no flashes of anything that made me concerned. She didn’t take me to the ER because we both thought I was just too drunk or had a weird but manageable reaction to medications. It was very confusing for everyone, including my bowling team. Hannah was VERY close to bringing me in and was watching me vigilantly, so please consider showing her the same kindness I have.

The next day I had enough brain to figure out that I had been roofied, so I took myself to the ER to get tested. 

The ER staff didn’t even know they could test for those kinds of drugs in urine - that’s how uncommon it is for people to properly care for themselves after getting drugged. Thankfully, I have good insurance and could afford to go to the ER. I tried to go to an urgent care or walk-in clinic but they all flat out refused me and told me to go to the ER. They did some digging and found they could outsource testing and that I’d get results in a few days.

So - just to be clear here - in order to prove that I was roofied, I had to have access to the resources in time, money and insurance to go to the ER because nowhere else could process it. It was really cognitively taxing to figure out where to go and how to care for myself. ( The sheer amount of resources I needed in order to have any sense of justice disgusts me. That’s why I put a paywall on this article - to give you an opportunity to  balance some pieces of justice for me.)

Results and healing after