The evening started out well. We were celebrating a birthday, I was enjoying the time at home getting ready with friends. After spending the first year of university restricted to a house with four new flatmates during COVID, we were finally able to live the full university experience.

We hadn’t had time for drinks before heading to the local bar. It was busy when we arrived, mostly with fellow students, but I noticed two or three men who weren't really interacting with anyone. They were just watching the dancefloor and maybe targeting people they could give a drink to. But it's all in hindsight. I was having a good time with my friends and didn’t think much else of it.

After finishing my first drink, I returned to the bar to order a gin and lemonade. It was as I was navigating the busy crowd on the way back to my friends that I think my drink was spiked. Halfway through it, I realised something wasn’t right. I put it down and went to the bathroom to try and recollect myself. By the time I headed back out, though, I was having difficulty walking.

I wasn't able to move. I couldn’t walk. I'm just falling everywhere, which I'd never usually do. It was like an out of body experience. Like I just couldn't use my body.

Fortunately, my friends, all medical students as well, recognised that something was wrong. They sat me down and gave me plenty of water and some food. Once they got me home, a friend even stayed in my room that night to make sure I was safe. But the following morning, I was feeling even more drunk than the previous evening. My friends used their training to check my vital signs and make sure I was stable, and by the afternoon, I finally began to feel normal again.

My friends knew this was out of character for me. I was always the girl who kind of looked after everyone else at that point. And I was always very careful with what I drank and what I did.

I had been aware of the dangers of spiking when I went out. I wore long sleeves to avoid needle-spiking and kept my drink with me at all times. But it wasn’t enough. I have friends who’ve been spiked before, and at this point, I think it's more normalised to expect it to happen, which is a shame. I was quite lucky to be in that situation where I had access to people who had gone through it before and had those tools to be able to check that I was actually okay.

I've stopped drinking completely. I just don't drink anymore because it's not worth experiencing that again. Or if I do drink, it's more with family or at home, in a safe environment.

Just make sure you go out with a good group of people, and that you have the ways and means of contacting extra support if you need to. If you need to go to your local A&E, they’d be more than happy to kind of take you on.

*This story is told in Kate's own words. An actor was used in the photography and names have been changed to protect her privacy.