BY TAYLOR CHARETTE
It was supposed to be a fun night.
A gin and tonic with the girls while getting ready, a couple glasses of wine at the pre-drink, a beer at the club.
That was it. A single beer tipped the scale for Mackenzie, who does not want her last name used. After drinking a single brew she went from enjoying the night tearing up the dance floor with a group of her friends to feeling incredibly tired. She sat down.
She began to vomit. Security ejected her from the club.
Mackenzie, 21 came to on the sidewalk outside the club, her friends in a tizzy around her, screaming at her begging her to talk to them. “I couldn’t move and that was scary,” Mackenzie explained. She wasn’t able to communicate.
Her friends poured her into an Uber with one of them after the vomiting had passed. “I was really cold too. I really wanted to sleep,” she says. The two girls were heading to the friend’s apartment in Oakville where she could some rest.
The next morning Mackenzie woke up around 6 a.m. Unable to move, she knew she had been drugged. She was embarrassed. She knew what it had looked like and what her peers must have thought.
“I was so upset not because there was something in me but because everyone probably thought I was crazy,” she say.
She made it home to her parents’ house in Aurora, her bones were aching, she recalls barely being able to walk and her heart racing.
She passed out in the bathroom. Mackenzie’s mother, aware of what had taken place the night before, knew something was still not right and urged her daughter to go to the hospital.
Mackenzie tested positive for gamma hydroxybutyrate acid (GHB) and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).
GHB is a central nervous system depressant used as a general anaesthetic, as well as a treatment for narcolepsy and alcoholism. It is also used as a date rape drug. Its effects are felt within 10 to 20 minutes leaving its victims unable to resist a sexual assault. GHB goes by street names such as Liquid Ecstasy, Grievous Bodily Harm and Easy Lay.
A friend of Mackenzie’s, who was at the popular Hamilton entertainment complex with her that night, reached out to the club via email to tell them what had happened to his friend. He did not receive a response. They also did not respond to our request for comments for this story.
For weeks after Mackenzie felt depressed. She would cry randomly. Her doctor explained that she was likely experiencing a low after being high. The low was lasting so long because of the nature of the drugs she had been slipped. Beyond that, Mackenzie felt that something had been taken away from her. Her independence. She was embarrassed that in that moment she needed help and had to rely on her friends.
Although what happened to her was unfortunate Mackenzie is thankful that she was with a good friends who were sticking close that night. She is aware of how the situation could have been different. However she will not be purchasing a beer in a bar in the foreseeable future.