And, said Riviello, “You may feel more hungover than usual. You may wonder why you feel so bad because you only drank maybe a few drinks at most, and you’ve been able to handle more in the past. A lot of times, the symptoms don’t become apparent until after the assault happens. Meaning you wake up in the morning and you feel all of those things I just described. It can sometimes happen very quickly in people too, and that’s why they may not recognize it. It may happen so quickly that the recognition comes the next morning or after the attack.” Riviello added that a number of factors — the drug or alcohol used, the size of the person whose drink was spiked, their tolerance for the drug or alcohol, if it’s something that they’re taking or using already — play into what sort of side effects or symptoms any one person may experience. In her book, Donovan argues that various “date rape drug” myths interfere with good care for drugging victims and also backhandedly stigmatize people who are voluntarily intoxicated when they are victimized by assault. Donovan said, “Both self-blame and indifference can emerge when someone is assaulted while ‘just drunk’ — even though this is the … majority of DFSA (drug-facilitated sexual assault) cases.” Aside from alcohol, it’s not always the drugs we have been taught to think of that are involved in drink spiking. According to Riviello, “It’s often very common prescription medications, but also common over-the-counter medications that are slipped into people’s drinks. And now, with the availability of different packaging and different formulations, some of these don’t alter the taste of the drink; they could be dissolved quickly.” Donovan echoed this point, telling BuzzFeed, “Labeling certain drugs ‘date rape drugs’ is not only inaccurate (any drug can be used this way, including over-the-counter drugs like diphenhydramine, also commonly referred to as Benadryl) but has also been derailing state-level attempts to decriminalize small amounts of drug possession. It has also created misunderstandings when larger drug seizures take place.” She continued, telling BuzzFeed, “Testing needs to stop being a mess, and public health entities need to follow a set of protocols when someone suspects drugging.” Ultimately, the belief that this type of assault is entirely preventable isn’t fair to those it happens to. Riviello said, “There are good safety tips. As far as protecting your drink, not accepting things from strangers — those kinds of things are just good advice in general. But I think you could sometimes see the difficulty with it when [certain companies or people] start selling products to specifically put over your drink.” The idea of “drink condoms” may be a tough sell, Riviello added, because you have to buy them, you have to carry them, you have to put them over your drink, and you have to be inconvenienced, since, when you want to take a drink, you have to take the condom off. Unfortunately, Donovan added, there’s no foolproof way to avoid drink spiking if you are to have a reasonably active social life. It is a small but real danger and has been for more than a century.
