A Scots woman who believes she was 'spiked' abroad says she has been left too scared to travel alone after her holiday turned into a nightmare.
Lyndsey Watson, 36, had been carefree when she travelled to Madrid to meet up with a pal for her birthday at the end of February.
But what should have been a relaxing weekend away ended up a holiday from hell.
Lyndsey and friend Scott Massa had stumbled across a cocktail bar while exploring the city.
The pair were having fun as ordered their drinks, which were all made in front of them in the intimate bar.
But their fourth drink was made out of sight and delivered to the table by a female member of staff around ten minutes later.
Lyndsey, from Falkirk, had assumed table service had started and didn't think twice about taking a sip when she suddenly began choking.
Speaking to the Daily Record, she said: "I took a sip of it and swallowed something and was coughing and said there was something in that drink, the sensation was trying to swallow a dry tablet.
"I just thought it was a garnish.
"Never in a million years would have thought it was a drug that I swallowed, it wasn’t a sinister place, it seemed like a high-end cocktail bar."
The pair finished their drinks and were preparing to leave when the 36-year-old's world went dark.
To her horror, she woke the next day with almost no memory of what had happened to her over 12 hours.
"We were just finishing the drinks and had picked a club to go," she said.
"My friend went to the toilet and the girl who served the drinks was just standing there and didn’t say anything. It was really weird, she was just next to me.
"I don’t remember standing up and putting my jacket on, it’s so bizarre how quickly it kicked in.
"My friend said I stood up said ‘oh my God, something is wrong’. I couldn't even get my jacket on, or walk to the front door, if he had let go of me I would have just fallen on the ground.
"My toes were dragging along the ground on the way home and no one even questioned my friend."
Lyndsey spent the entire night vomiting on the bathroom floor.
She woke with what felt like the 'worst hangover' of her life - but Lyndsey says she knows this was not alcohol-induced.
She said: "I don’t drink to excess when I’m out.
"Four cocktails would never cause me to blackout. There’s no way, that instantly went zero to a hundred.
"I lost about ten hours, it’s basically amnesia. That’s the scary part, I’ve never experienced that.
"The next morning, I felt physically ill from being sick but it didn’t feel right. I know what alcohol feels like but this was something I had never felt before."
Lyndsey, who works for her family business, was also struggling mentally the following day.
She explains that she didn't feel she had the strength 'mentally or physically' to visit the hospital for blood tests or seek out a local police station.
But the 36-year-old has since reported the alleged spiking to Police Scotland, who she understands have passed on the information to cops in Madrid.
While Lyndsey has now recovered, her experience has left her permanently changed.
She has even cancelled plans to go solo travelling.
She said: "I was really anxious after it happened, my friend wanted me to go out but there was absolutely no way I could to a bar. The last thing I could do was have a drink, it terrified me.
"I don’t think I’d feel safe now unless I saw someone make my drink."
She continued: "I had loads of plans to travel on my own but I won’t do that now. I wouldn’t feel safe going out to a bar on my own, it’s not worth the risk."
Lyndsey is now determined to share her experience and warn others that incidents of spiking can happen anytime and anywhere.
She said: "The circumstances shocked me the most. I just wanted to make people aware it can happen to anyone anywhere. I didn’t quite appreciate that. It’s sad but that’s the world we're living in.
"I can't think about what it would have been like if I had woken up and hadn't had a friend to account for all the things that happened, it is just terrifying to me."
A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “We have received a report relating a spiking incident in Spain.
“Officers will speak to the woman to gather further information, with a view to passing a report to the relevant authorities in Spain.”.
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