the thing that happened...

A couple of months ago this blog started to get a lot more personal, and once or twice I have mentioned, how something happened that made me look at everything that was going on, and question it, over and over again.

I think it might be time to talk about the thing that happened...

I was spiked.

I wanted to start this topic in a much softer way so as not to upset any relative that might be reading this and didn't know. But there really is no other way of saying it.

I was spiked.

I was also lucky, a friend was with me and she stayed with me, and I hope she knows that I will forever love her for being there that night. This story could have been very different and the thing that happened could have been much worse. I know that and I am so grateful that that wasn't the case. But lucky escape or not, the fact is that that night I was made a plaything.

When you are spiked, you are violated, regardless of the severity of the consequences or the intentions behind it, your control has been taken away from you.

Maybe a stranger has poured their shot into your glass, maybe some one is trying to completely knock you out, maybe they have just put a pill in your drink for fun. Whatever the motive or poison, in that moment they take away your control.

That is a terrifying prospect to face because we don't cherish our control until it is gone.

For me, I remained safe, but I well and truly lost control.

I have never taken a drug in my life. I haven't even smoked a cigarette never mind a spliff. Maybe if I had, my body would have reacted differently, my mind might have reacted differently.

I can't tell you the exact details of what I did or what happened, because the fact is, I simply can't remember. In my mind I have memories like photographs, and some blanks have been filled in by my friend.

A man, a que, a cocktail bar and somebody crying over and over again 'I'm not right I need a nurse.'

That somebody was me. I knew that I wasn't ok. Maybe I knew straight away that something had happened, or maybe I was just referring to the bigger picture, because regardless of what else happened that night, and I won't go into the knitty gritty (vomity) details of it, what losing control really showed me, was that I wasn't ok. That whilst somebody had taken control of me that night, I hadn't really been in control in the first place.

I cried a lot, I was hyperventilating and I was spilling the beans on everything that was going on with me. Stuff that I had kept locked up, stuff that I didn't even realise I was keeping locked up.

The aftermath of being spiked for me was not a court case or a police investigation (although I did report the incident to the bars I went in, and made sure the guys description was given in detail) but it did make me analyse in forensic detail every aspect of my life. For a while I couldn't go into a bar without panicking, my heart rate would rise as I sat at my desk at work stricken with anxiety, and I had very little sleep. I needed to take back control, not just from the guy that spiked me, but from my life, which seemed to have ran away from me.

The above picture is of an A2 mind map I made a week or so afterwards. I listed everything I wasn't happy with, everything I was worried about, everything I wanted to change, everything that made me happy, everything I had to look forward to, and everything I could do to improve my outlook. That mind map is still on the back of my bedroom door now.

The positive far out weighed the negative, but as I've said before it is damn near impossible to see that without having it all laid out in front of you.

Some things in life are horrible, and you need a moment, a week or a month, to take that in, to cry, to think, to analyse. To do what you need to do. And I am a strong believer, and a case study, that the way forward is to never ignore the bad things. Even with a little perspective on how bad or how unhappy you might be, a problem is a problem. Even if in comparison to somebody else’s or something else it might be minute. Even if nobody else really seems to understand. Even if it might not seem like a big deal. You still need to let yourself deal with it. You need that control, which sometimes you can only get, by letting go.

I was spiked, and I was lucky. But I wasn't Ok and I wasn't in control, and while I may be getting there now thinking about that night makes me feel physically sick, and probably always will. The crux of the matter is, I have to deal with the fact that I was a victim of somebody else's malice, on a scale that I have never had to deal with before. And hopefully never will again.

The thing that happened: I was spiked.

Bad things: happen.

And they can do: to anyone.

The sensible and helpful part:

I wanted to post some links about where you can go if you are struggling with things, if you think you were spiked, or if you have your own thing that happened...

• The NHS advice on what to do if you think you have had your drink spiked

• The NHS List of helplines for mental health issues 

• Frank - information on spiking and drinking

If you have been spiked, even if you stayed safe, please report the details to the police and the bars you were in. You may have been 'lucky' but others might not be... Thank you x