By Amy Richardson

In May 2021, I received an email confirming my place to study Ancient History. I honestly never thought I would go to uni; I was constantly fighting a losing battle with my anxiety. September came around much quicker than I had imagined, and suddenly I found myself setting up my room in halls, decorating every nook and cranny with colourful clutter in a pitiful attempt to drown out my fears. I forced myself to meet my flatmates because I was determined to stick the whole thing out.

After my first night, there was huge internal turmoil and an overwhelming desire to drop out. But after two weeks my anxiety seemed to quell and ease for the most part. My colourful little room started to feel much more like home. My flatmates and I spent an awful lot more time together, connecting, bonding, and becoming ‘proper friends’, not just people that you feel you are forced to get along with because you share a kitchen. We three girls became inseparable. We went ‘out out’ twice a week, cooked together, and helped each other with uni work and boy problems. It was probably one of the happiest periods in my life so far.

Before I could stop and think, first term came to an abrupt end. Bizarrely, I noticed that my uni Facebook group and Instagram pages were overloaded with posts about women being spiked via injection, as well as spiking by drink. These brave women were sharing their experiences online with the aim of highlighting this increasingly threatening and personally violating issue in an attempt to protect others. These posts filled us with dread and made us all hugely anxious about the prospect of going ‘out out’ again.

After some time, we started to forget. The posts died down, and we naively thought the threat had somewhat subsided. Never in a million years do you think it will happen to you. Consequently, we had lots of conversations, rationalising it and debating the fact that we should not let a handful of twisted individuals stop us from living our lives. So as second term commenced, we started going ‘out out’ again. This decision caused me months of regret and anxiety, but I do realise that this was such a randomised event and that it was completely out of my control.

The night that I was spiked was early in the second term. Everything started like usual: we had a long ‘hot girl pres’ in the kitchen, took photos and went then out in town. I do not remember much after leaving the third place to meet some other friends, and I don’t know where the spiking happened. I remember feeling euphoric and extremely emotional. I couldn’t stop crying – but I wasn’t sad. Honestly, I had no inclination that any spiking had occurred.

The next morning, having woken enormously confused, I noticed an injection mark on my skin, and the puzzle began to slowly piece together. I spent the next couple of days being questioned and scrutinised by the police. (The case is ongoing, so I cannot recount that night in any more detail. The police are attempting to establish the MO behind spiking via injection as it is a new crime.)

The next few weeks were a complete blur. In A&E, after waiting for ten hours, I received various injections to protect me against any insidious diseases that possibly could have occurred due to the initial spiking. After feeling those injections, I was baffled as to how someone could have injected me without my awareness. I was personally furious for going out and getting drunk, and I was enraged at how violated I felt, but I also knew that others have had to deal with far worse episodes. To my knowledge, nothing else was perpetrated about my person.

I returned to my family home for a short period of time and couldn’t quite believe how much the whole saga had affected me. It became increasingly difficult to concentrate, my anxiety was through the roof, and I hated being alone. This was made increasingly worse by my constant lack of acceptance that the violation had taken place. I was adamant that everything was fine.

Even though I denied my feelings and tried to continue as normal, I couldn’t bring myself to go ‘out out’. When I finally returned to uni, I tended to fade into the background. My friends would go out, and I wouldn’t. I would help them get ready and partake in the pre ‘pre-drink’ gossiping, and then I would hide in my room for the rest of the evening. Countless times, I would listen to their ‘hot girl pres’ without me, feeling so alone and ignored. In truth, I was ignoring myself; my unconscious mind seemed to be telling me to GET OVER IT.

A month or so later, I was shopping with my sister for a Mother’s Day gift. We breezed past a building. Suddenly, I had a horrific flashback to that night: the building was a significant location. I ran back to the comfort of her car, holding back nausea, dizziness, and vomit. My emotions consumed me. Previously, I had applied for counselling sessions. Although, I was about as open as a closed book. I hate talking about my feelings, and I hate feeling them. But having this flashback changed everything for me.

I wanted to be able to walk around and love the sights and sensibilities of the whole city experience just as much as I did when I first arrived. But my fear and anxiety were just under the surface, ready to boil over. I didn’t want to tell my friends and family. So, I poured my heart and soul out in my counselling sessions to a wonderful stranger that I will probably never encounter again. However, I will always be enormously thankful for her insight.

It’s bittersweet to say this, but I was incredibly lucky. My situation could have been so much worse, but my anxiety and sadness are valid. They always will be. Just because a situation could have ended on a worse note does not negate the severity of the situation in the first place. Ignoring your feelings only compounds the problem, and you are not a ‘drama queen’ for feeling violated and scared. It has taken me many months to come to this conclusion. I wholeheartedly believe that accepting my entire emotional journey after being spiked has massively helped me to move forward with my trauma.