A student nurse who had her drink spiked with drugs on a night out later discovered that her friend had put something in her drink for a ‘laugh’. She was left sick “for weeks and weeks” following the ordeal.
Gillian Reilly, 29, was attending her end of year night out at Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret’s University student’s union bar when she began to feel ill. She had been studying drama for three and was excited to spend the evening saying farewell to the people she thought were her close friends.
During the night she noticed a strange feeling ''like my insides were getting pulled out'', and later became violently sick. The next day Gillian said she felt so unwell she thought she was “going to die” and continued to be ill for weeks after the incident.
It wasn’t until later that a friend told her what had really happened. She informed her that one of their other friends had spiked her at the bar and ''thought it would be a laugh to put something in her drink”.
Gillian said: “We always had an end of year celebration at university, and I went with all of my friends I had known for a while. I was in my final year so it was going to be goodbye for a lot of us.
I was drinking anything that was handed to me, and was having a really good time, but soon I started to feel weird. When I got back to my flat I felt really weird, it wasn’t how being drunk usually feels.
“I started to feel really dizzy at first - but then I got these sharp pains in my stomach, and I started to feel violently sick. The day after was when I knew something was really wrong, it felt like my insides were getting pulled out, I was sick for weeks and weeks.
“I felt so unwell I honestly thought I was going to die. It’s scary to think that it’s not just strangers you need to look out for. Sometimes, it’s people you know.”
Gillian was spiked in 2016, but it was only recently that she felt able to address it and speak out. She said “I felt really betrayed, you feel like you can trust people and it just made me doubt who I can trust.
“At the time I didn’t tell anyone because I had been attacked physically before and nobody believed me. They even said that I’d hurt myself rather than believing it was my attacker, so I’ve been really wary of coming forward since.”
Gillian has now begun studying Adult Nursing at Sterling University and says her past experiences still haunt her. She added: “It’s made me wary of going out and going to clubs. I was really cautious in freshers week and I’m very careful about who I go out with.
Spiking at university reached dangerous levels last year after reports of needles being used to spike people came to light. Gillian believes that more needs to be done to protect vulnerable university students.
She said: “There needs to be so much more security to help people on nights out. There’s drunk, vulnerable people walking around campus, where’s security making sure they get home okay?”
Gillian added: “Starting university is supposed to be exciting - you don’t want to have to think about these things happening. You’re meeting lots of new people and you want to think these people could be friends, but it’s not necessarily the case.
''You may meet people who do this to harm you, or in my case, people who think it’s funny to spike people.”
