…but do you know where your drink is?

The Vancouver Police have just issued a warning for people in the club scene to be more vigilant not only about their drinks, but their drugs, and, yes, their bodies, too.

This is important for anyone of clubbing age to read, regardless of your town, and for parents to get informed about, so as to enlighten yer kiddies. This may come off as preachy, but whatever. I know whereof I speak, so ‘scuse me while I step upon my soapbox.

It turns out that the local gangs in our fair city have been getting better and better entwined in the club scenes, including all-ages parties, and are getting their drugs out there with more success than ever before.

Seems lots of folks are trying glam drugs like “Special K” (ketamine, aka horse tranquilizers used by vets to, yes, knock out horses… sure you want that in ya?), ecstacy, crystal meth (made with lovely things like sulphur, Drano, etc) that they either a) don’t understand the power of, or b) aren’t watching the dosages properly, or c) have no clue about the potential damage they’re doing.

As a result, the number of sexual assaults seems to be skyrocketing of late. The cops say more and more club-related sexual assaults are being reported every single weekend, and with Halloween being one of the biggest party nights of the year, they’re putting the word out there to make sure people clue in to how wrong it can go when you’re mixing heavy boozing with designer drugs you may or may not know the strength of. (By the way, cops speculate that only about 6% of sexual assaults that occur nationally in Canada get reported, so stats on what’s going on would be really inaccurate.)

It doesn’t take a lot to get your drugs or drinks spiked. I’ve had both happen to me. Someone sent me on an acid trip from hell a decade ago when I thought I was just smoking some happy dope. Hours and hours later, I finally came down, hiding in a corner behind some speakers, freaking the fuck out. Considering I was thousands of klicks away from friends and family, at a university newspaper/writer’s convention across the country, things could’ve gone much worse. Fortunately, all I remember is just being incredibly paranoid and scared. It popped my LSD cherry.

I can’t say the same fortune came my way the time I blacked out after someone spiked my booze at a party a few years back. All I remember is it being eight in the morning and waking up on a couch with all my clothes wet. I have no idea what happened that night, but I did have a guy apparently joke around with me as soon as I awoke (my legs were over his on the couch) and tell me “You were fabulous last night”, and while he said he was kidding, part of me knew the last thing I remembered before waking up was being fascinated by the eight foot-long turtles scurrying around in the bathtub across from the toilet and how much that fucked me up, and how much potential there was that something could have happened, and I’d never remember.

Apparently I was doing hot tub tricks later or something. I was, evidently, the life of the party. Pity I remember nothing. Fortunately, though, it seems most people could account for my whereabouts for most of the night… lucky I have a big, fun personality.

My point is this, and you can call me Mama Steff, if you wanna, but date rapes happen all the time. Stupid shit happens all the time. Drinking a lot is way easy to do, and mixing booze with anything else can really fuck you up. If you’re in a club, never EVER sit your drink down, and do NOT give it to anyone else to hold onto, especially if you know they want to fuck you. It’s so easy to dose you and take advantage, so just keep the power in YOUR hands by hanging on to your own drinks, eh?

Then there’s the small matter of drugs. Me, I like drugs. They’re fun. But the only drugs I do are the ones grown by someone, preferably Dead head type, who chats to his plants and ‘shrooms in a hydroponic greenhouse, thanks. I’ve tried the chemical shit, and bad things have happened every time. I thought I was gonna have a heart attack on Scooby Snacks, seriously. I almost went to a hospital. (Ephedrine, mushrooms, and some other little helpers all mixed together, sold in a pack of six pills, and some serious bang for the buck.) But I stick to the organics now.

You never know what you’re getting from a dealer. I love these people who just blindly trust dealers. They’re drug dealers. By their very nature they’re technically not trustworthy, you know? And you wanna assume everything’s peachy they’re giving you? Hell, I hear they’re grinding up glass and mixing it in with dope in the UK now, in order to get the weight up and sell you less dope ergo make more cash by hanging onto more of their stash. Powdered glass looks a lot like THC crystals, I hear tell.

Then the trouble with chemicals is, it’s pretty easy to fuck up the mix and get the balance off. You can’t labour under the assumption that the drug you’re doing this weekend’s the same potency as last weekend’s. And an hour later, when its full power kicks in, it’s impossible to turn back the clock on your dosage quantity, y’know? Hindsight 20-20 really sucks when you’re riding a high that’s too much bang for your buck.

The trouble with drug users is, too fucking many of you are too ignorant for your own good. If you don’t know what your drug is, what it’s made of, how it’s made, who made it, and how it got into your hands, then you shouldn’t be taking it. Seriously. If you’re doing Special K and you don’t know the ramifications, then you’re a fucking idiot. Learn something about it before you take that risk.

I’ve studied every drug I’ve taken, and the ones I’ve never touched are with very, very good reason.

And anyone who does crystal meth is a fucking idiot, whether they’re ignorant or not. Out of all the drugs out there, there’s no worse one to fuck with. And that’s in my humble little opinion, of course, but keep in mind I live in Vancouver, where drugs have taken their serious toll on our little populace, and we have 30 square blocks of one of the worst drug problems in the world, where crystal meth and heroin dominate the scene. And I also work in the film industry and have worked on far too many documentaries on how low one can go on meth. Bad, bad shit. Learn about this shit, seriously. And if you’re a parent, teach your kids.

Party up on Halloween. Just watch what you’re doing, be careful about your choices, and don’t get raped. If you don’t think it’s gonna happen to you, don’t kid yourself. It happens far more than you know, and about every woman, and some of the men, I know have had it happen to them.

Oh, and Happy Halloween. BOO!

(PS: While I like dope, a disturbing study has recently come to light in which it seems there might be a link between pot usage and schizophrenia. Too soon to know much, as it’s new information, but it’s something to be very wary of.)