Welcome to "Friend or Foe," a regular DoubleX advice column for your queries about the trickiest of all love affairs: friendships. Lucinda Rosenfeld, author of I'm So Happy For You, a novel about best friends, is now taking questions at lucinda@imsohappyforyou.com.
Dear Friend or Foe,
A couple of weeks ago, my two closest friends and I went to a small live-music venue to hear a band. While at the concert, someone “slipped me a mickey.” I remember nothing about the rest of the evening, but I was told that the police officer found me lying alone on the sidewalk. I came-to in the hospital E.R.—alone. The entire experience was frightening.
Since then, I’ve tried to piece together what happened. Apparently, at the end of the band's set, I left for the ladies room with my purse—and didn’t come back. My friends figured I had left, so they left, too. Later, when I called them from the street, sobbing in hysterics and asking for help, they told me to go back to the club and that they would have an ambulance pick me up there. When my mother—who lives 2,000 miles away (and hopped on a plane the next day to be with me)—later called these two friends of mine to beg them to join me while I was recovering, they refused. It wasn't until I told them that the hospital wouldn’t release me until I had someone to drive me home that they came to pick me up. They then angrily drove me to my car, and I drove home alone. By then, it was the next morning.
I have known these girls for more than 10 years, and had until now considered them my best friends. But I can't help feeling as though they’d abandoned me. If I found out one of them had been taken to the hospital, I would have dropped everything and gone to be by her side. Am I expecting too much from my best friends, both of whom are mid-twentysomething professional women?
Sincerely,
Thanks for Rescuing Me After I Was Drugged and Left for Dead—Not!
Dear TFRMAIWDALFDN!,
Wow, that’s a tough call. A spouse or even a boyfriend? Yes, it would be his or her duty to haul ass to said hospital at 4 a.m. But your single female friends who are already, presumably tucked in their beddy-bies? I have to admit that, if I got a call like yours (or your mother’s) in the middle of the night, I’d do what I could from home, but would be hard-pressed to jump in my car until morning.
For one thing, it’s not even necessarily safe—depending on where you live and how far you live from the hospital—for a woman to head out alone at that hour. For another, presumably, by the time your mother called you were out of danger. Yes, overnights at the E.R. are the opposite of fun. So are disastrous drug trips. (I had one in my twenties, which pretty much sealed my fate as an illegal-substance ninny.) But only nuns make it out of youth without a few ambulance rides.
Here’s a little secret. BFFs are great when you’re upset about a boy/sick cat/whatnot. But there are limits to friendship—limits that don’t apply to our romantic partners or close family members. What I fault your friends for is not driving you all the way home the next morning, or at least following you there to make sure you got through the door on two feet. I also wish they’d been a less critical of what was, by your account, a freak incident. Why were they so unforgiving? I’d wager a guess that they think you’re lying about the mickey, tales of which are sometimes used as a cover for irresponsible behavior. (Only you know the truth.)
If your buddies refuse to believe your account, it might be time to reexamine the friendships.
Sincerely,
Friend or Foe
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Comments
This is the worst advice column ever.
By: Jessie | Wed, 01/27/2010 - 17:25
I never sign up to leave comments, but her answer to the woman who was drugged is UNBELIEVABLE. Is she honestly trying to say that, without a man/partner, this woman should not expect anyone to come to her aid when she was the victim of a crime??? Not even the very friends that accompanied her on the evening of the crime? All I can say is: I am SO glad this writer is NOT my friend.
But I write because allowing her to continue to advise people on how to be a terrible friend and terrible member of society is unforgivable. By giving her this column, you give her a platform of which she is not worthy. No one will always agree with an advise column, but this is beyond a minor disagreement. She advocating selfish behavior that leaves us all vulnerable. So much for insight on Friendship!!! Her motto is clearly: A friend in need is a burden that should wait for daylight hours, if even then.
I am married, but even then, my friends would not ditch me and then refuse to help me! And vice versa. If these women didn't mind being out late at a show, they shouldn't mind coming out to the hospital late either. Even if they couldn't come out, why are they dropping the woman off at her car to get home, when even the hospital wouldn't allow her to do that! That is disgusting.
Hope you get fired soon
By: Apparently_ms_l... | Sat, 10/24/2009 - 00:51
Lucinda,
I hope I never have the ugly familiarity with what it is to be your friend because I pretty much the least common denominator of any friend I've ever had is that they would drive across town in the middle of the night when they found out that I was drugged and raped. Anything less would be sub-human.
Rohypnol
By: RickRussellTX | Mon, 10/19/2009 - 00:34
Folks are questioning the timing of the drug administration.
It's important to note that rohypnol acts quickly and prevents short-term memory from being encoded into long-term memory. In lab experiments (typically using much lower doses than are given for purposes of date rape), the imbiber often can't remember taking the drug at all. It acts that fast, causing the imbiber to lose the last 10-15 minutes of memory prior to ingestion.
So you can't really gauge anything by what the victim did or did not remember right before blacking out -- those events were probably several minutes before the administration of the drug.
I saw one experiment where someone watched two short videos a few minutes apart, imbibed the rohypnol, and several minutes later was asked to describe the "most recent video that you watched". They described the first video, and were flabbergasted to learn that there was a second video. A few minutes later, they were asked to describe the most recent video, and described the first one again, and didn't even remember the conversation that they had with the experimenter.
Creepy, disturbing stuff.
Please remove this columnist.
By: lef1202 | Sat, 10/17/2009 - 16:05
Please remove this columnist. Her outdated and out-of-touch advice is offensive and ridiculous. To tote such a person as capable of providing friendship advice is so ludicrous that it makes me question the legitimacy of this website at all.
Bad Advice from Lucinda -- dump friends who don't keep you safe
By: judybrowni | Fri, 10/16/2009 - 17:44
That was such spectacularly bad "advice" from Lucinda that I had to register to comment on this blog.
"Friends" who can't be bothered to help keep you safe, or even to check on your safety and well-being, are people to be avoided. And there's no excuse that can make up for their ignoring the health and safety of a friend.
I had something similar happen (without the stranger/drug aspect): when out of town and sick enough to be taken by ambulance to the emergency room, prescribed drugs I would then need to pick up from the pharmacy myself, still sick and feeling faint, and shaking, I called a "friend" I'd been travelling with to pick me up at the ER.
She said she wasn't feeling too well herself, I had to take a cab to both the pharmacy and back to the hotel, and spend at least an hour more, before I could even lie down in bed. As well as pay for a $50 cab ride.
Found the "friend" all dressed up, in full makeup, hanging out at the bar having a good time: I told her off, got another hotel room, took an airline flight back home the next day, and never had anything to do with her again.
I'd known she was self-involved and self-absorbed, if amusing, and no longer cared to trust my safety to that bitch.
Lucinda's advice was bad on several levels, and the biggest was that the writer can no longer trust her friends to care about her safety, and shouldn't.
I'll back off partially from
By: BureauCat | Fri, 10/16/2009 - 12:12
I'll back off partially from the allegation that her "friends" slipped her the drug, but not entirely. Note that their story changed from "You went off to the bathroom and didn't come back" to "You came back from the bathroom and danced with a guy." Shifting stories is a bad sign.
Yonrich, my heart goes out to you. May you continue to be strong. If you had kept it a dark secret, you would in a way be complicit in what was done to you. Instead, you bear witness. He tried to beat you down, but you are a hero.
Silly to suggest the friend were complicit in the drugging
By: govworker | Thu, 10/15/2009 - 15:30
It is silly to suggest that the friends either drugged or witnessed someone putting a drug in the LW's drink. It is more likely the LW put her drink down on a table or the bar and someone put something in it.
Remove Lucinda Rosenfeld from "Friend or Foe" Petition
By: Jujubee | Thu, 10/15/2009 - 14:00
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/removelucinda
equal opportunity speculation
By: joss | Thu, 10/15/2009 - 13:43
BureauCat, I think there's an easier way to conclude the drug proceeded her going to the bathroom and that is that she doesn't remember going to the bathroom. And while I think it is possible that a third party could have slipped something into her drink (also not requiring her to accept a drink from a stranger) without either her or her two friends noticing, as long as Lucinda is comfortable throwing out the possibility to the LW that she is an attention seeking, lying drama queen, then it's well worth raising the possibility that her friends drugged her. Maybe they were angry in the morning that she wasn't dead.
Out of Touch
By: GMD | Thu, 10/15/2009 - 13:30
You've got to get rid of this "advice" columnist.