Promoting safety during the “Red Zone” of drink spiking

The “Red Zone” is the period from August through mid-November when more than 50 percent of sexual assault incidents occur, and drink spiking increases.

The One Young World Summit taking place at Montreal Convention Centre, until September 21, gathered thousands of young leaders to address the biggest challenges facing the world, including alcohol-related harm.

One of them is Shirah Bernade, the founder of NightCap, a business offering drink spiking prevention products.

She launched her business when she was just 16, after a close friend had her drink spiked during a night out.

“I had a friend that was “roofied” at the bar. She was a college friend and a couple weeks later I went to bed one night and I slept on it. I had a dream of a scrunchie that doubles as a drink cover. And when I woke up the next morning I made the prototype out of my mom’s stockings and a scrunchie from my room and I knew that it had the potential to save a lot of lives,” remembered Benarde.

One of Shirah Bernade’s videos attracted millions of views for her viral stunt “spiking” friends’ drinks with gummies, to show how easy it is to go unnoticed. 

Montrealer Fey had a drink spiked during a party she herself had organized during her time at university.

“We were a committee at university and we went to a bar and we privatized the event. So we get to the bar, everything’s going great. We have bottles coming in from the bar. Everything’s fine until around on my end 10 p.m. I start having absolutely… I don’t remember anything from my night. So at 10 p.m. everything goes blank and I end up waking up the next morning, not remembering anything. […] I had a bunch of reports from the other students that were there on that night that the same thing happened to them and two other students ended up going to the hospital because of it,” said Fey.

“I did not drink when I went out anymore for the next year and a half two years because I got very anxious over the situation. You never know when you lose a little bit of control and you never know what’s gonna happen to you. At the end I was lucky during that situation. I had called my best friend right before I had no control over myself and she came to pick me up. So I was lucky, but I know that’s not the case for everybody.”

“We have noticed that the most common person to spike your drink is actually somebody that you know. So as we think that we can be around friends at a private house party it is a false sense of security so you should really be aware of your drink wherever you are in any situation because it is very common for friends or even family members to be doing this,” said Benarde

A report from the Conseil des Montréalaises found that 99.4% of women are already using strategies to prevent sexual violence in the party sphere — highlighting the importance of collective responsibility rather than placing the burden solely on victims.

“We need to recognize that anybody can be a witness to sexual violence when it comes to the party sphere, whether it is the security agents, the DJ or just participants on the dance floor. So, taking that into consideration, I think it helps to realize that anybody can have a role in that,” said Alexandrine Beauvais-Lamoureux, co-founder of Scène & Sauve.

“It’s very important to go with people, you know have a circle of trustworthy friends And I think always having somebody sober to be able to you know help out if anything is going going around and obviously, don’t push your limits too much because at the end of the day It’s fun to have fun, but it takes a split second for it to not be so fun anymore,” added Fey.