A 20-year-old woman said she's terrified to think of what might have happened after she was drugged at a downtown Halifax bar last week.
Josée Blinn-Saulnier was at The Dome on Friday night with friends to celebrate turning 20 when she started to feel unwell. She said she had fewer than half-a-dozen drinks and knows her tolerance for alcohol.
“I know my body and know who I am,” she said. "I was outside throwing up and everything started to go wrong a little bit.”
She continued throwing up, and she and her friends went back to their rented accommodations.
“How sick I was and how I felt and how I was becoming, it was too extreme to be nothing,” she said. ”Something was wrong. I knew it was not OK.”
When they got back to the place where they were staying tremors started to overtake her and she began scratching herself uncontrollably, even thought she wasn't itchy.
“I had no control of what my body was doing,” she said.
Taken to hospital
Her friends called an ambulance and she was taken to hospital.
“They said it could be alcohol poisoning or someone tampered with my drink ... but we knew how much I had to drink, so we knew it was definitely drink tampering."
Staff at the hospital told her all they could do was let it clear from her system.
They waited until things settled and she had a nap before going back to the rental unit at 7 a.m., but the tremors got worse and she couldn't see well, so she headed back to the hospital.
Blinn-Saulner on her second day of recovery (Facebook):
She was given medication that ended up helping her sleep, and when she awoke her family came to get her and took her home.
There was a third trip to hospital after that, and she was told she was suffering side-effects brought on by the high dosage of whatever was put in her drink.
“It prolonged the side-effects, and I was in a borderline (overdose) state,” Blinn-Saulnier said.
She said hospital staff told her that if she had been drinking more, “I would have died.”
That night was spent in hospital for observation, and for the next three days she had trouble seeing and walking as the unknown drug left her system.
“It was Tuesday before I was able to walk again,” she said.
“Absolutely terrifying”
She said on her first hospital visit she was told there was no testing that could be done because there are too many drugs to be able to pinpoint what it was.
Based on the symptoms, staff told her it seemed to be a paralytic of some sort.
“Cognitively, I was talking to the paramedic and telling him stories and was able to be there mentally, but physically I wasn't. ... I was seeing double the whole time.”
Blinn-Saulnier said it was “absolutely terrifying” to have no control over her body, and to think of what might have happened if she didn't have friends with her.
“I had a good outcome, but I know there is somebody else out there that has had this happen to them but they didn't get as lucky,” she said.
“I know if I was not with friends and family, and with a stranger, I would not be able to do anything, I would be trapped,” she said. “It didn't scare me what I was going through, it scared me to think of what could have happened to me in the end, and what could potentially happen to other people.”
She said she had tried to be careful with her drinks and not let them out of her sight.
“I know I was definitely a target,” she said. “People are smart, people are sneaky, it doesn't matter how careful you are.”
She said that since she posted her ordeal online, people have been sharing their own stories with her, and she has a message for them and anyone else who has gone through the same thing.
“A lot of them are ashamed, and I understand that when scary stuff like this happens to people that they might feel ashamed and blame themselves, but I want people to know it's absolutely not their fault. This was done to them.”
"I don't think I'll ever go into a bar or a club again."
Blinn-Saulnier said she has no plans to go out drinking again any time soon.
“I'm ready to start my career, I'm ready to start life so I said this is it. My 20th birthday, I'm done with the bars,” she said.
“It has definitely put me a step back. I don't think I'll ever go into a bar or a club again. That's going to take a lot of courage.”
Police investigating
Halifax Regional Police spokesman Const. John MacLeod said police are investigating the incident.
“We're looking to see what evidence and information we can get,” he said.
He believes there are security cameras at the bar, and said police would like anyone who may have information to contact them.
MacLeod didn't want to speculate on what kind of drug may have been involved.
He said he had no specific statistics on the number of complaints annually on drink tampering. There is no reporting codes for them because it isn't part of the standardized database for crimes collected by Statistics Canada.
“Whether there is one or 20, these things are taken seriously because they are potentially harmful,” MacLeod said.
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