In Their Own Words: Motives for Drugging Among Individuals Who Drugged Others

• In Event: It's Not What You Think: Unpacking Drugging Victimization and Perpetration Using Different Methodologies

Abstract

Findings from 6,064 college students indicated 1.4% of students drugged someone, or knew someone who had (Swan et al., 2016). At this nascent stage of research on drugging, little is known about why some people drug others. Using data from in-depth semi-structured interviews, we examined the motives of 14 individuals who drugged others, and classify these motives as either benign on non-benign. The most common drugging incidents were benign, involving men drugging their male friends “for fun” in a party context. Individuals who endorsed these motives strongly disavowed any intent to harm the person they drugged, and some defended their actions by stating that they knew the person had taken that drug previously and would enjoy it. A smaller number of druggings were committed with intent that the drugger admitted was not entirely benign. The most common motive in the non-benign category was to calm the drugged person down or make them go to sleep, often because the person was being obnoxious. Although less common, others stated drugging for revenge was a motive, and one participant described drugging women for sex. To develop interventions to curb drugging behavior, it is critical to understand the motives for why individuals drug others.

Authors

• Suzanne Swan, University of South Carolina

• Nicole Lasky, Northeastern State University

• Bonnie Sue Fisher, University of Cincinnati

• Kayla Ford, University of South Carolina

• Andrew Schramm, University of South Carolina