Date-rape Me, My Friend

by mamilton horris

photo by maggie lee

This is a touchy subject, I know. Largely because everybody seems to think that at some point they have been given an adulterated drug. Everyone who has done enough LSD will tell you they have dropped a blotter with strychnine, everyone who has smoked a little weed will claim to have once smoked PCP, and everyone who has been to a rave has been slipped a roofie. Now, I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, it does. But the vast majority of the time, your “PCP-laced” weed was just weed, your “dirty” LSD was just LSD, and your “roofied” drink was just alcohol.

A study conducted in the UK analyzed the urine of 75 women who reported having been slipped a date-rape drug. The study found that exactly zero of them had been given Rohypnol, GHB, or ketamine. Almost all of them were extremely drunk, though. A similar study found sedatives that had been taken involuntarily in less than 2 percent of the cases. These studies are hardly infallible, and again I’m not saying it never happens, but all signs seem to indicate the most popular date-rape drug is sold legally at every bar on the planet!

So if the majority of date rapes in 1994 are perpetrated under the influence of alcohol, why pretend otherwise? Because it’s an easy way to prohibit inconveniently fun drugs. Who wants to be the asshole who stands up in court to defend the supposed tools of a date rapist? Nobody. In fact, a similar tactic could be used for almost any unwanted drug: If we have date-rape drugs, why not jaywalking drugs or stabbing-people-in-the-face drugs? Could it be that the real problem behind date rape… is rapists?

That said, I am quite experienced with today’s most popular so-called date-rape drugs, and I thought I would share a few of my experiences with them. So let’s open the date rapist’s malevolent medicine cabinet to see what delectable potions he might employ, shall we?

KETAMINE

Special K, Kit-Kat, K, Kitty

Is this a joke? Am I even going to dignify this with a response? Fine, I will. The idea of using ketamine as a date-rape drug is so totally weird, so twisted, that there must be a separate level of hell for people who do this. I suppose it’s technically possible, but just thinking about the logistics of pouring half a gram of bitter ketamine into someone’s drink, the victim somehow not noticing, and then waiting through the half hour of janky and nauseating come-up before they are semi-comatose is totally mind-boggling. If this has ever actually happened to anyone, I genuinely feel sorry for you. I have had (consensual) sex on ketamine before, and the only word to describe it is “cubist.” If you are aroused by

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

then be my guest, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Ketamine is certainly the black sheep of date-rape drugs. It’s not really a sedative in the classic sense, and it has profound psychedelic effects. The idea of having some freak’s evil genitalia violating you while in such an expanded state is utterly horrifying. In fact, I don’t want to think about it anymore. Gross.

When used for good and not evil, K is really fun, and thankfully, it’s still totally legal and can be bought from a variety of chemical-supply catalogs and veterinarians. I nominate Special K as the best legal drug of 1994. Please don’t kill yourself or rape people with it.

GHB

G, Gamma-G, Liquid X

I’m just going to be totally honest and admit that I’m on GHB right now. Maybe it’s my neurochemistry, but I have never gotten a huge kick out of G. It feels good for five minutes, and then I feel tired. I have seen friends take it and look like they were having a four-hour orgasm on Ecstasy. Am I doing something wrong?

GHB has the dubious honor of being dubbed both a date-rape drug and an aphrodisiac. It’s found naturally in the human brain and, used in moderation, may even have some health benefits. Two years ago, you could buy GHB in sex shops, health-food stores, and mail-order catalogs anywhere in the world, but I can already see this one being made illegal before the new millennium. Luckily for G-heads, it can be synthesized with incredible ease from the closely related industrial solvent GBL. In fact, you can drink GBL on its own, but it should be noted that it tastes so outrageously awful that you would have to surgically remove all your rape victim’s taste buds before slipping this into his or her drink. GHB tastes foul as well, but I will begrudgingly admit it could slide into a drink undetected.

FLUNITRAZEPAM

Rohypnol, Roofies, Coma Biscuits

How many drugs can boast being both a noun and a verb? Not many. Flunitrazepam, brand name Rohypnol, is the infamous roofie. All I can say is you should be so lucky as to get slipped a roofie, because it feels fucking incredible! You have to drive down to Tijuana to get these because they are not approved for medical use in the US. But when I have the opportunity to use them it fills my eyes with tears of joy. Valium is nice, but there is almost nothing in this world so rapturously smooth as a roofie on a summer’s evening.

Courtney Love is prescribed them and Kurt Cobain was hospitalized recently after overdosing on Rohypnol and champagne—everybody’s doing it!

Flunitrazepam has all the wonderful qualities people look for in alcohol with almost none of the negative effects. No nausea, no vomiting, and 12 hours of sloppy disinhibition. Interestingly, benzodiazepines like flunitrazepam are almost completely insoluble in water and alcohol. If you drop a crushed Rohypnol tablet into a drink, it falls to the bottom like gravel. Yes, I tried to roofie myself, and it did not work. I ended up looking like a fool trying to suck the precious roofie powder off the bottom of my glass with a straw. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are planning to start filling the tablets with blue dye as an added precaution against date rapists. Why not!

There are many other drugs that have been claimed to be used to rape people with—everything from marijuana to cocaine to who-knows-what. The real question here is, what drug can’t be a date-rape drug? In case you didn’t get my point the first time around, the issue here is not drugs but rapists. I suppose I deserve a big karmic mouth-raping of my own for saying all this stuff, but the main danger with date-rape drugs is getting addicted to them because they are so outrageously pleasurable. And on that note, I’m going to sip a little more G.