DC

I am not doing too well at the moment. Things were bad enough already, having to deal with the effects of a serious of traumatic events including an actual assault in January (not serious physically, but shaking), without some imbecile deciding to slip something into the soft drink we had at the absinthe party last Saturday. And we are still getting symptoms, and it seems that in some respects I have been hit harder than the others who are affected. The worst thing about the symptoms is that they come and go abruptly, with no warning. This is especially the case with a severe lack of energy... that's not right, but I have a lot of difficulty describing this one. Anyway, it has thumped me every day this week in mid-afternoon. It is more distressing to anyone around me than it is to me, but I think that my lack of distress at the time is possibly a symptom in itself.

None of this is helped by the attitude of the two guys who hosted the party. (Well, the guy who hosted it and one of the guys he shares with). On Sunday, sheonamcc posted an account of how she felt (and a good thing, too, since she now cannot remember Sunday or Monday!) which drew a comment from one of the guys which I thought even then, fairly befuddled as I was, was a bit laid-back about the notion of her drink being spiked:

sorry to hear you think someone spiked your drink(s) hope that you did enjoy yourself and may return next time we have another ngiht

That was Sunday. On Monday, their attitude was a little different.

One thing that is important to understand is that our ability to make decisions has been significantly impaired. There is a remarkable degree of mental inertia. sheonamcc and I realised on Sunday that something had been introduced to our drinks, but it took us until Monday to get to the point where we could break out of the Maybe we should do something .... What could we do? .... Should we do that? .... I don't know .... Maybe we should do something .... loop. (At that stage, we had not realised that rhionnach had also been affected, though talking over the course of events and how she felt on Monday it became obvious, and although she is less badly affected than either sheonamcc or me she is still getting symptoms which interfere with her daily life.)

Up until Monday night, we had talked between ourselves, being affected by this and trying to work out what was going on and what we should do. We had posted a little about it here, because this is our LJ and why should we not talk about something like this? It is hardly trivial, after all. We did want people to know what had happened, and posting to LJ was easier to do than trying to decide who to email, for instance. On Monday night, though, we decided to do something; however, we couldn't do it straight away since I was not up to budging from this seat; and any urgency had gone because of the delay, since we were well beyond the point at which there would be any likelihood of getting a tox screen result. First thing in the morning, we decided. Against the advice of the only unaffected person in the loop at the time, we felt we should talk to current43 and brenmacneil since the party had been at their place. sheonamcc said she would do it since I was mentally very fuzzy and my speech was slurred. (A little earlier ambersrequiem had called me... or I had called her, I can't remember, but anyway she had told me I sounded terrible on the phone.) I was improving at that point, but not fast.

I gather that when she spoke to current43 (with brenmacneil ranting in the background apparently) [EDIT: I transposed that, I gather brenmacneil was ranting on the phone and current43 talking in the background; also, they phoned her in response to a text message, which I did not make clear], he was not happy that she had been talking about this on LJ. Not long after, I got a call from brenmacneil in which I think he was ranting, but it was difficult to tell since his mobile signal kept breaking up. Then I got a call from him on his landline, and the only thing which seemed to be on his mind was why had we written about this on LJ and not phoned him. I didn't get much of a chance to say anything before getting passed to current43, who was saying how furious he was about this. At the time I thought he meant he was furious about the spiking of our drinks, but now it seems he meant he was furious about our saying that our drinks had been spiked. He did express some concerns that he might get sent back to Canada, which seemed to me unfounded and I said so. He wasn't happy that we were planning to go to the police the next day. He asked me if we'd let him talk to the police, which he said he would do that night. OK, I said, but we would be going to the police the next day.

We didn't, of course, because I was still so bad I needed to seek medical advice. My GP is right next to one of the police Divisional HQs, so I had thought: see GP, see police. Except I got referred straight to A&E and spent the rest of the day there.

Wednesday I had been due to meet a member of the Politburo to give him T-shirts to wear at Redemption, and I had to cancel that; and we cancelled Yggdrasil, too. Wednesday was the day I felt so bad I flopped out in bed all afternoon. It was also the day brenmacneil posted a thoroughly obnoxious comment on dyllanne's LJ (it is friends-locked or I would link to it) in which he ranted about the fact that dyllanne was talking about what had happened to us when she had not been at the party, about the fact that we were talking about it on LJ at all, and implied that we were lying [WHY? Why on earth would we, or anyone else?] about having had spiked drinks, and then saying that their hospitality had been betrayed and they would never have another party and it was all our [i.e. mine and sheonamcc's] fault!

Yesterday I had to go to Govan to get the T-shirts to Michael; I took the precaution of getting Bruce to meet me there (getting to the Underground station was easy). Then we went to the Uni where I sat with him, sheonamcc and ambersrequiem for a while. (I was reluctant to go home and be on my own; some of the symptoms I am getting are very distressing and it helps to have some friends at hand.) Which was OK until I had another one of those weird turns I referred to earlier. Spooked the hell of the three of them and Aly, who came running, apparently. All I remember, despite not having been unaware during this episode, is suddenly seeing Aly in front of me and someone else... who after a few seconds I realised was ambersrequiem. I was also incredibly thirsty. They were all for having me whipped off to hospital, but managed to dissuade them (well, a precisely similar attack in A&E had not led to me being admitted to hospital, and the receiving physician had been honest that there was not a lot they could really do). After that, though, everyone who had not been affected by whatever drug this was was telling us to go to the police, and we felt we had to do what the People With Brains were saying.

So we did. The police officer we spoke to did say that it would be difficult to do anything after this delay (though he understood why we hadn't been earlier). Interestingly, he also told us that current43 had not gone to the police either on Monday night or subsequently. He said that we had to get a list of everyone who had been at the party (and that CID were interested). If the party's hosts were not prepared to give us a list, then, he said, they would start to wonder what the hosts had to hide.

We emailed them yesterday asking for the list. The response was two sentences: current43 had spoken to a friend who was a police constable. Get the police to go to their flat. The tone was quite odd.

So now I am beginning to wonder: do they have something to hide? Have they figured out who did it and don't want to say for some reason? Their behaviour seems inexplicable. If I hosted a party where someone's drinks were spiked I would want to make sure they were OK, and I'd be encouraging them to seek medical advice and see the police as soon as possible. I really do not understand anyone who gets angry with the victims of an assault like this. And I suspect I won't even when my brain is working as usual again.

[This was filtered because I wanted to avoid causing any more stress for sheonamcc (who was getting certain symptoms worse than me and was finding the behaviour of current43 and brenmacneil quite stressful, as if being drugged by some unknown assailant were not stressful enough). However, she has said she is happy to see the post unfiltered, since it is the truth and there is no reason to hide that; I heartily agree with that.]