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A young Jersey woman is pioneering an online campaign to raise awareness of the importance of protecting your drink on a night out after experiencing the horrors of spiking first-hand.
From debunking myths, handing out bottle protectors and giving advice, 22-year-old Holly Shrimpton’s brainchild ‘GRL SFTY’ aims to clamp down on spiking and protect its victims.
It was a “horrific” experience Holly had at a house party whilst studying in London that made Holly take the issue into her own hands. The young activist shared her recollection of when her own drink was spiked with Express…
Pictured: GRL SFTY are distributing 'anti-spiking' bottle protectors as part of their campaign.
“We were sat next to each other on the sofa and there were several people that we didn’t know. From that point on there was about four hours where we both don’t remember anything – a complete blackout period," Holly recalled.
“My friend got really physically sick, so she went home almost instantly, but I didn’t have the same reaction so then I ended up staying out apparently for the rest of the evening, but I don’t remember any of that which is horrific."
Incidents like these don’t just happen in big cities like London - the States of Jersey Police receiving 13 reports of drink spiking in 2018 alone.
Holly explained that the most terrifying part of her experience is that she was spiked in a place where she thought she would be safe.
“I thought I could trust these people implicitly which, as it turns out, I couldn’t… I realised I couldn’t trust those friends around me to make sure I was safe.”
The idea that spiking only takes place in bars and nightclubs, Holly says, is one of the myths she’s trying to debunk with the ‘GRL SFTY’ campaign.
Not being able to remember anything from the night before, people started telling her that she had been “starting to get aggressive” and “being really inappropriate” – behaving in a way that she says was entirely out of character.
“I know personally that that’s not myself.”
This was hard for her to come to terms with, as she didn’t like thinking that people were getting a bad impression of her because of how the spiking drug was affecting her.
But, Holly said, no one believed that she was spiked “because I wasn’t sick and I wasn’t passed out on the floor.”
The whole experience, the young woman says, made her feel “very vulnerable."
“I felt like I just couldn’t go out. I didn’t want to be drinking, I didn’t want to be in a situation where other people were drinking… I became very closed off.”
However, Holly decided not to let the unfortunate experience defeat her: “I think that was my way of recovering… I decided to put my energy into something positive."
Pictured: Holly wanted to turn her experiences into something positive.
Whilst researching her own symptoms, Holly discovered that there was hardly any material online which is accessible or relatable for young people about the dangers of drink spiking.
It was out of this need for “something which was going to be exciting and engaging for young girls to get involved in” that ‘GRL SFTY’ was born.
The campaign gives advice about how to protect those you think may have been spiked, provides information about common symptoms of drink spiking and allows women across the country to become a ‘GRL SFTY’ ambassador.
Since graduating, the five girls are taking the values of ‘GRL SFTY’ back to their hometowns across the UK and Holly hopes to bring local bars, events and festivals on board with her campaign.
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