A Spiking Story

Karina-Rose Wood

It was Friday night and the bar in Selly Oak was heaving. Every table was full of students engrossed in the question of who would be in Circo tonight, or avid football watchers occasionally shouting incoherently from their seats. As she entered the pub, wearing a neon pink visor, Fiona thought it would be best to grab herself the next drink on her pub golf card before attempting to find a seat amongst the swarm. “Vodka lime soda, please,” she ordered, before noticing a group of boys stand up and leave. “One second—I’ll be back for my drink.” She quickly went to secure the table she had spotted and waved her other friends at the bar down to join her.

Her drink waited on the bar’s ledge, like a silent predator.

It never crossed Fiona’s mind that her drink had been left unattended. Why should it? Why should she assume that the bubbles in her drink were not just innocent carbon dioxide, but could be a toxic foreign substance? Unfortunately, in the world we find ourselves today, keeping the potential danger on your mind is all too important. It could be the difference between a night spent in your own bed and one spent on a hospital ward—or worse.

Image from the "Stamp Out Spiking" campaign, stampoutspiking.org

Spiking Epidemic

One in ten women have had their drink spiked, according to a 2022 YouGov survey. So have one in twenty men. The substances used vary widely, with more than a hundred different chemicals used over the last three years. The most common substances, apart from alcohol itself, are ketamine, gamma hydroxybutyrate (known as GHB), and Rohypnol, perhaps the most famous “date-rape” drug of all. Their effects can include weakness, confusion, light-headedness, memory loss, vomiting, and abnormal behaviour.

In Fiona’s case, the symptoms were immediate and severe. She was left unresponsive and vomiting within twenty minutes of finishing her drink.

2021 was a year of crisis in spiking cases, with the greatest number occurring in university towns during Freshers’ week. Cases continued to increase over the following years, with 6,732 reports of spiking recorded by police in the year ending April 2023—a 13% rise from the year before. Women were a majority of victims, at 74%. By the summer of 2024, when the National Police Chiefs Council declared that violence against women and girls was a national emergency, spiking had become a major fear for female students.

Protecting your drink isn’t even the only thing that women like Fiona have to worry about. A substantial proportion of spiking incidents—and a majority in nightclub settings—are now what’s known as “needle spiking,” which is exactly as terrifying as it sounds. One second you’re on the dance-floor having fun, the next you’ve been stabbed with a needle and injected with an unknown substance.

Recently, the Met Police warned of another “dangerous new threat,” too: vapes laced with Spice and other drugs, offered to people who are not aware what they’re inhaling. The first I learned of this was on the safety page of my local club’s website. “Watch out for strangers offering you their vape,” they warned. “Vapes, like drinks, can be spiked.”

74%
of spiking victims are women.

On the Doors

Security teams play an important role in tackling the spiking epidemic, and in helping its victims. On the night Fiona was spiked, there were the usual bouncers stopping-and-searching people at the pub doors. So how did someone manage to get in with the substance used to attack her? I wanted to hear a bouncer’s perspective on what’s going on. Isn’t there more they could be doing to keep people safe?

Tom (not his real name) has been working as part of a security team for three years up and down the country, including in Bath, London, Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham. I asked him how often he’d encountered spiking. “It’s not a daily occurrence,” he told me, but it does often come in waves. Once there’s an incident at one club, reports will start to come from other venues too. Tom is clear, though, that “spiking is becoming more common and advanced. There is more of a range of drugs,” he says, “with different effects, making them harder to identify.”

If they’re going to deal with the problem effectively, and make clubbing safe for everyone, security need to be properly trained on how to identify and respond to potential spiking incidents. “We’re all medically trained to some extent,” Tom confirms, “but if someone comes to me believing they have been spiked the first thing I’ll do is call an ambulance.” Ideally, bouncers prevent spiking before it even happens. Tom says he and his colleagues were given “profile training, which helps us notice any suspicious behaviour.”

This seems comforting, but it’s only half the story. “There is sometimes a laziness in security,” Tom admits, “and not every venue even has it.” As ever, the problem comes down to economics—with pubs and clubs struggling financially in recent years, it’s all too easy to seek out corners to cut. “Owners don’t want to spend more money than they have to on security,” Tom tells me. “There’s often a shortage of security staff at venues. So definitely, more can be done if there was the funding.”

I’ve witnessed what Tom called “laziness” among security first-hand. Countless times I’ve been allowed into clubs with a bag on me that nobody’s bothered to search. I’ll be lightly patted and sent in, and I can see the bouncers doing the same to the next person. Such a light touch approach has often left me feeling unsafe. It’s easy to see how needles and drugs make their way into spaces where they can put people in danger.

Even the most thorough wouldn’t solve the problem, though, Tom says. “Sometimes people are very good at hiding drugs on them in places you cannot search, which makes my job difficult.” Once malicious people and their drugs are inside the club, the onus falls on bar staff to be able to spot and prevent potential spiking. “They need to be trained to be more aware and observant.”

Fiona believes that the bar staff could have done more on that Friday night. In the brief time she left to secure a table, her drink was being made. When she got back to the bar, she found it had been left unattended on the counter. Although she didn’t question it at the time, looking back, Fiona feels there was “carelessness” from the bar staff. “They could have kept my drink behind the bar until I returned.” This simple action could have changed Fiona’s fate that night. More staff, better training—there is more the industry could do to keep us safe.

Emergency Service

Luckily, Fiona’s friend noticed something was wrong and immediately called an ambulance. When they arrived, the paramedics assured her she would be okay since she had vomited so soon after finishing the drink.

As first responders, healthcare workers witness the most incidents of spiking. Yet charities and campaigners have raised concerns that many incidents are dismissed by both the police and the NHS, who generally do not carry out blood and urine tests to actually determine if the victim has been spiked. Fiona is an example—the paramedics told her it was “more than likely” she’d been spiked, but they didn’t conduct any tests to confirm the theory.

This is a common experience for lots of people who believe they have been spiked. In a BBC news report last October, victims of spiking said they felt “let down” by emergency services. Two students from Brighton were denied drug tests at the Accident & Emergency ward, and were discouraged from contacting the police. One of the students went on to explain how she felt “completely victim-blamed” by staff. She ultimately decided not to go to the police. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine defended the emergency services’ response. A&E’s primary responsibility, they said, was to address victim’s medical needs rather than collect forensic samples.

In the 2022 YouGov survey, 40% of people said they didn’t think the police would believe them if they reported having their drink spiked. Stamp Out Spiking, a campaign group, estimates that nearly 98% of victims don’t report the crime. Fiona was one of them.

Clearly, there’s a stigma around spiking that needs to be broken before victims can feel comfortable speaking up without shame.

Politicians from both major parties have committed to making spiking a specific criminal offence. As well as this, a new refresher training for door supervisors and security guards, introduced by the Security Industry Authority (SIA), is now compulsory for those wishing to renew their licence after 1st April 2025. The hope is that better-trained security at pubs and clubs will help clamp down on the problem. These changes on their own, though, won’t help victims who feel unable to speak up about what’s happened to them.

400
nightclubs have closed since 2020, according to the Night-Time Industries Association

Staying In

Despite efforts to clamp down on spiking, it may be too late for some clubs, bars, and pubs. Speaking to Fiona, it is clear that her experience has changed the way she feels about a night out. She has not returned to bar where it happened, once a favourite destination, since that Friday.

During the peak of the spiking crisis, in 2021, activists started a movement they called “Girls Night In,” aiming to boycott a nighttime economy they believed was failing young women. Their message—“spiking is part of going out, so we are staying in”—gained traction among students across almost 50 universities in the UK. It may have had a part to play in the industry downturn of recent years.

Rekom, the owners of Birmingham icon Pryzm, announced the closure of 17 of its venues back at the start of 2024. Since then, Pryzm itself has shut its doors, too. The Night Time Industries Association say nearly 400 nightclubs have closed since March 2020. Rekom’s CEO, Peter Marks, blames the cost-of-living crisis for the decline in student clubbing. But lax security and a culture of a fear might have something to do with it too. When fear of spiking—whether by drinks, needles, or vapes—is part of a standard night on the town, a girls’ night in starts to look like a much more attractive option.

I passed by the queue for Rosie’s club in Birmingham recently. The exuberance I remembered had been replaced by an unsettling stillness. The faint thump of bass could still be heard, but hardly any conversations or laughter. What once was a favourite Friday or Saturday night now felt hollow, all the fun sucked out and replaced with lingering unease.

Club and venue owners may now have to factor in increased security costs if they want to keep customers coming back. Creating a safe space for fun is in everyone’s interests.

This Article Appears In

Tower Volume 2 Summer 2025