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
Double X needs to reconsider this columnist
By: madkatmama | Mon, 10/12/2009 - 11:22
To the editors of Double X: I cannot beleive the advice that I just read from your so-called friendship columnist, Lucinda Rosenfeld. I don't think I need to say the same things that have been said in previous comments regarding the woman who was abandoned by her friends when she was drugged - you can read them for yourselves. I don't wish this woman's idea of friendship on my worst enemy. Shame on you, Lucinda - and shame on you, Double X, if this matter doesn't get the attention it deserves. My next letter is being sent off to Slate right now.
drugged
By: Bonnie | Mon, 10/12/2009 - 11:20
Hi Lucinda. Like everyone else, I was baffled by your claim that you'd do what you could from home but not respond in person until the next day. I simply cannot believe that is true. My guess is that when you wrote that, you were NOT picturing your own best friend calling you in tears begging for emergency help, but instead imaging the letter-writer.
One commentor pointed out the passive-aggression in this response; you clearly did not believe the advice-seeker, and you know what? Neither do I. If there had been just one bad BFF in question, then I might buy the story, but there were two. I would bet money that the writer either has a substance abuse problem, or is just a general dramatic wreck. Either way it's pretty clear that she's pushed her friends as far as they will go.
Before you think me insensitive, let me say I actually was drugged once. The people I was with recognized what had happened and got me help. Because I was not in the habit of suddenly becoming hysterical/collapsing/becoming violently ill. When it happened, it was clear that something was terribly amiss.
That said, I have also been in the shoes of those two BFFs. There was an emergency call from a friend's boyfriend. I did go to the ER with them that night, but gave a deaf ear to the claims of the "victim" that someone slipped something into her drink. She was a girl in the throes of a dangerous addiction, and deeply devoted to denial. Everyone she knew was on their last legs and her claim to victimhood only came as a last ditch effort, after a few too many emergencies.
Much as in the letter, her mom was the only one willing to swallow the story.
What the hell?
By: meglo91 | Mon, 10/12/2009 - 11:18
I'm going to assume the author was completely wasted or had just been clunked over the head when she wrote the first response. That is the only way to account for her bizarre conclusions.
I am recently married, but I would STILL come to the ER for my friends and expect that they come for me. At 4 am, in driving rain, wearing a hat, with a cat, whatever. I HAVE done this, in fact, and in turn have had friends drive me to the ER at inconvenient times, such as in the middle of law school finals.
I would even do it for a mere acquaintance or someone I had just met, because I believe that people should take care of each other. It was not too much for this girl to expect that, when she called her friends distraught and disoriented and needing to go to the hospital, they would come out to help her. It was the very least they could have done, and they didn't do it. She should immediately sever all contact with them and start looking for new friends who weren't born without empathy, pity, or any sense of loyalty.
Are you serious!?
By: LiLi | Mon, 10/12/2009 - 11:14
Most other posters have already chewed you out about your response to the drugged letter writer...but let me just say I'm really glad you are not my friend, let alone best friend.
Being drugged is serious, not a "freak" indicent. What if the person who drugged her had followed her and done something terrible to her!?
Mind-boggling
By: ktpeterson | Mon, 10/12/2009 - 11:09
Your advice/response to the woman who was drugged and ditched was one of the most atrocious things I've ever read in my life.
I started reading your column almost from the very beginning and I have found most of them to be quite questionable. I' wonder how on Earth it's been determined that you hold any sort of credibility to write about the subject of friendship. I'm very curious as to what is in your book but I cannot buy it now for fear that the cash spent to obtain the book would stand as a sort of endorsement for your brand of crappy friendship code-of-conduct.
Your response was irresponsible. You have plenty of articles to chose from to peddle your awful advice to so why would you pick one in which you clearly feel that the woman is fabricating parts of the situation? If you can't assume the benefit of the doubt, don't respond to it! If you chose to respond to it don't insinuate that the writer is a liar and that she really shouldn't expect even the slightest bit of consideration from her friends.
To that note, her friends were good-for-nothing, and so is your advice. Your perception of what friendship is is so far removed from the reality of what most people experience that you should never have been put into a position to dole out advice. From what I can tell you're a self-proclaimed expert and you really need to be asking for help rather than offering it up to people.
Uh.
By: saraknew | Mon, 10/12/2009 - 11:03
I created an account just to comment on this column. Ms. Rosenfeld, perhaps you're having an off-day or a brain-freeze--but your reply to this woman was insensitive, irresponsible, and morally bankrupt. The conception of friendship you appear to have is shallow and, frankly, bizarre. Who wouldn't go to the emergency room to care for her roofied friend who was found alone on the street--no matter what time it was? Hell; I'd do that for an acquaintance I didn't know that well, or even like all that much! For a "best friend" it should be a no-brainer.
I think the weirdest thing about your response is that you seem to think that a boyfriend would be required to respond by getting up and going to the ER, but not a friend. In your view, is having sex just a way for a woman to buy insurance against the possibility of being left alone after being drugged and left on the street? If you're putting out for somebody, they have to come get you from the ER, but it's WAAAAY too much to ask from someone you're not putting out for?
Please apologize to this woman. I'm sure your considered understanding of friendship is not accurately reflected in your reply to her.
I think these friends are
By: Shelly | Mon, 10/12/2009 - 11:01
I think these friends are either heartless and jaded or sick of the letter writer's constant drama. If they had no problem bar-hopping at that hour, why would they care about travelling alone in their car (unless they were drunk)? Or they could have called a taxi to pick them up at their doorstep.
No boyfriend? Suffer alone
By: jerseygirl | Mon, 10/12/2009 - 11:00
I was particularly offended by the notion that only someone with whom you have a sexual relationship can be called upon in an emergency. Woe to you singles -- now not only do you suffer the usual insults of being single in a paired-up culture, but now you know you must drive yourself home from the ER because what mere friend can be expected to come out in the middle of the night?
But that said, I'll confess that there's something about this woman's story that doesn't compute. These have been her BFFs for 10 years... and yet she's never noticed that they are selfish jerks who won't come through in a pinch? That seems unlikely. The only way this makes sense at all is if the letter writer has habitually ended her evenings in this sort of predicament and her friends have decided they'd had enough. But of course this is pure speculation on my part. I suppose if I were Lucinda I might have asked the letter writer to reflect on whether she makes a lot of these sorts of demands on friends, and if so to consider the role her behavior plays....but if her behavior is blameless, then indeed she needs to find new friends.
Wow. Wow wow wow.
By: gmg22 | Mon, 10/12/2009 - 10:48
I signed up just so I could comment on that first response, which was astonishing in its coldness. Lucinda, if you didn't believe the LW's story, you should have just come right out and said so. (Passive-aggressiveness being a big cause of conflict among friends, as I know you know!) Otherwise, I can only assume you have never a)been single for a very long stretch or b)lived far away from your relatives. For those of us for whom this is the very 21st-century reality, often your "BFFs" DO in fact become your surrogate family -- and yes, if you wound up passed out on the sidewalk at 4 am through no fault of your own, they would get out of bed and come to your aid.
What's the point of having friends if you cannot rely on them?
By: Kapt Z | Mon, 10/12/2009 - 10:42
Most of what I was going to say has already been said by others so I'll keep it short.
Lucinda may have had a point(maybe) in her response if she was talking about 'casual' friends. She wasn't though. She was talking about BEST friends. The ones you consider 'family'. The 'been to hell and back with" friends. The ones that drive to the hospital at 4am, with a hangover, in a blizzard without even a second thought because they know you would do the same for them.
On top of that, they would be mortified that they, unknowingly, left you for dead in the first place and would be thinking that picking you up from the hospital would be the least they could do.
Maybe Lucinda never had friends like that.