meeting people in foreign countries

alafairnadia · January 2009

so, usually when I´m traveling I don´t have any trouble meeting people, especially interested guys. ecuador, however, is proving to be a harder nut to crack. there are several reasons for this:

a) where I live, everyone has know each other for 100000 years

b) the guys here think I want a "native" experience, rather than friends

c) the chicks here don´t talk to me unless they have to and find me entirely too bizarre for them

d) the expat males are all looking, or have found, a "native" experience, so I don´t exist

e) the expat females I meet are all 50+ and lonely, so I end up hanging out with them way too much.

I´m not lonely -- not in a serious way. and since my first outing to a club with a few local friends to go dancing, etc, resulted in me being roofied (no shit) I´m just a little wary of, well, almost everything.

anybody have suggestions? I have a feeling I´m way too strong minded to hang out with a lot of locals -- I seriously freak people out here.

flux · January 2009

what is roofied?

spa.spinprogram · January 2009

flux wrote: what is roofied?

roofie = date rate drug. Somebody did that to me once in Mexico and I consider myself VERY fortunate that I realized something was wrong right away and got myself back to the hotel, puked it out and woke up 12 hours later on the bathroom floor feeling like shit but safe and sound

danielle123 · January 2009

Subject: You are fortunate

Good for you for having the wherewithal to get yourself back to your hotel.

minet · January 2009

I am glad you are ok.

I know this might be weird- can you have a friend visit?
My friend was having a hard time with the non natives where she was living for a while and after I visited- they started talking to her.
Maybe they think you are a threat?
I know it sounds totally stupid.

I am sure they will eventually come around. My guess is that you are not too strange; they are jsut shy.

salgonator · January 2009

Subject: Re: You are fortunate

danielle123 wrote: Good for you for having the wherewithal to get yourself back to your hotel.

The same thing had happened to a friend of mine just a few days before, so when I went from happily buzzed to wasted out of my mind within minutes of the bartender (who had been flirting with me all night) giving me a free drink just as I was trying to leave...it all came together in my mind and I got the hell out of there pronto.

Alafair - I'd suggest making friends with just one well-connected local (preferably one who owns a bar or who has another reason to have a wide social network) and they should help smooth the way for you with the locals.

alafairnadia · January 2009

thanks all.

the roofie experience seemed so bizarre to me that it took me days and weeks to finally believe it. I mean, I can drink vodka seltzers for hours. but two? after dinner? I should be able to handle that. no. I was hammered and felt totally out of my body, kinda like I'd had a special brownie plus 10 vodka seltzers. so I called my cabbie and got home. my family was horrified and I slept, as flexi can verify, way longer than I woulda if I were just drunk. I was, in fact, passed out and incoherent for a good 10 hours.

I need to meet at least one bar owner here just because I want to trust the barkeeps (as in, I go dance with some guy, make sure my booze is safe dude), but I'm a little scared of barkeeps. I'm pretty sure that the roofie came from a guy who was totally in to me but I didn't have the time for who insisted on dancing with me. and ... had an entire group of friends sitting with us at the bar. where my drink was. so. gah. so scary to go from normal to "omfg".

in any case, thanks for the advice, I welcome anything else.

xo

carmen · January 2009

alafairnadia wrote: thanks all.

the roofie experience seemed so bizarre to me that it took me days and weeks to finally believe it. I mean, I can drink vodka seltzers for hours. but two? after dinner? I should be able to handle that. no. I was hammered and felt totally out of my body, kinda like I'd had a special brownie plus 10 vodka seltzers. so I called my cabbie and got home. my family was horrified and I slept, as flexi can verify, way longer than I woulda if I were just drunk. I was, in fact, passed out and incoherent for a good 10 hours.

for the record, I've been drugged in the city and had a similar experience except I was on sip 2 of my first mixed drink at 10pm- got the spins, my girlfriend who I was with went and threw up in the bathroom and we bailed out and both slept 16+ hours the next day. We were both HOLDING our drinks the entire time (although didnt have our eyes on our hands the whole time.)
I just wanted to bring this up because IT HAPPENS LADIES! Im hyper vigilant about watching my drinks being poured/never leaving a drink and apparently some guys are ballsy enough to drug it while in your hand. GHB is colorless, odorless and is a liquid that takes two drops in a drink to knock you out. Be careful!

alafairnadia · January 2009

there's also a spray -- it may not have been my drink at all. I though this was isolated to southern ecuador and peru but apparently there are lots of incidents here in the north. some kind of chemical that someone can mist onto their hands. they say hi, shake hands with you, and game over. no need to ingest. so, if that shit has hit NYC, I hesitate to guess the magnitude of the issue. but I have met a lot of tourists that were roofied in that manner in guayaquil and cuenca, not to mention peru. I guess there have been a few deaths from the stuff in guayaquil, mostly at gay bars.

so, meeting people is risky. I've decided that anyone who is creepy can't come anywhere near me, my beverage, my skin, my friends, my family, etc. I've been called a bitch a lot in this country.

opossumqueen · January 2009

How does the mist work? Is it by absorption? If so how does it not affect the perp?

carmen · January 2009

im wondering about this date rape spray- that would have to be pretty potent to absorb in that way (even a liquid drug like methadone wouldnt work that way) And as opossum said- how would you infect someone without wearing gloves?
Google yields absolutely nothing when i searched

alafairnadia · January 2009

I've mostly only read about it in spanish lang newspapers here (el comercio) and heard about it from folks. apparently I did have a detail wrong -- obviously you wouldn't spray it on yourself as a perp. you spray it on, say, the glass. called a friend in quito with connections to the queer community in guayaquil.

so the victim grabs the glass, for instance, and absorbs it that way.

she also told me that there is another method that works in more sexual situations, which most latin dancing leads to -- a pill on the perp's tongue. I'll see if I can find some of the articles reporting this stuff. obvi the easiest method is just to slip something into a drink. but there are other ways to screw someone over.

christobel · January 2009

A male friend of mine just got roofied by a woman right here in the USA. He was really freaked out but is fine(although quite a bit more suspicious) now.

As for absorption, there is something called DMSO that is commonly available in any vitamin store. You mix it with any substance and the substance is instantly absorbed into the blood through the skin. It could be put on a glass, a doorknob, anything someone would touch and they will get dosed.

carmen · January 2009

I would imagine that GHB could be pretty readily mixed with DMSO, it just seems like a risky thing to do to try to drug someone as you'd be carrying around a spray bottle that could potentially kill you if it leaks in your pocket. (like carrying a vial of acid in your pocket, we've all heard that urban legend..) I would imagine GHB in the drink is way more likely than ON the drink, esp since its odorless and colorless and DMSO supposedly has an odor.

carmen · January 2009

also im not trying to be a hard-ass about this- this kind of stuff is sort of my bread and butter, and hearing stories always piques my interest (like when people used to say ecstasy was cut with heroin and cocaine, both of which are barely orally active and WAY more expensive than MDMA/MDEA or any usual cutting agent which seems like a poor business practice...)

christobel · January 2009

Carmen wrote: I would imagine that GHB could be pretty readily mixed with DMSO, it just seems like a risky thing to do to try to drug someone as you'd be carrying around a spray bottle that could potentially kill you if it leaks in your pocket. (like carrying a vial of acid in your pocket, we've all heard that urban legend..) I would imagine GHB in the drink is way more likely than ON the drink, esp since its odorless and colorless and DMSO supposedly has an odor.

I agree that in the drink would be much easier. I was just pointing out that DMSO is a viable option as well. Hippies used to use it to dose people with acid all the time(BTW a vial of acid that leaked in your pocket would not kill you but would make you high as hell). Yes DMSO leaves an oniony taste in a persons mouth after they touched it.

carmen · January 2009

Christobel wrote: [quote=Carmen]I would imagine that GHB could be pretty readily mixed with DMSO, it just seems like a risky thing to do to try to drug someone as you'd be carrying around a spray bottle that could potentially kill you if it leaks in your pocket. (like carrying a vial of acid in your pocket, we've all heard that urban legend..) I would imagine GHB in the drink is way more likely than ON the drink, esp since its odorless and colorless and DMSO supposedly has an odor.

I agree that in the drink would be much easier. I was just pointing out that DMSO is a viable option as well. Hippies used to use it to dose people with acid all the time(BTW a vial of acid that leaked in your pocket would not kill you but would make you high as hell). Yes DMSO leaves an oniony taste in a persons mouth after they touched it.

Oh I know acid won't kill you (although it may make you think you're dead...not that I would know from personal experience or anything...) but a decent sized vial of GHB well could (especially if mixed with alcohol!)

christobel · January 2009

Carmen wrote:
but a decent sized vial of GHB well could (especially if mixed with alcohol!)

this is very true

carmen · January 2009

I dont even know why GHB is considered fun for recreational use. I was pretty heavy into the rave scene 8-10 years ago and even people there didn't really use it. Why anyone would want to spend money to be like a vegetable is beyond me.

christobel · January 2009

Carmen wrote: I dont even know why GHB is considered fun for recreational use. I was pretty heavy into the rave scene 8-10 years ago and even people there didn't really use it. Why anyone would want to spend money to be like a vegetable is beyond me.

Interestingly enough, a GHB lover was explaining to me that in tiny amounts it makes him focus and feel "in the tao" but that if you do too much you get zombie-like. I will pass.

carmen · January 2009

Christobel wrote: [quote=Carmen]I dont even know why GHB is considered fun for recreational use. I was pretty heavy into the rave scene 8-10 years ago and even people there didn't really use it. Why anyone would want to spend money to be like a vegetable is beyond me.

Interestingly enough, a GHB lover was explaining to me that in tiny amounts it makes him focus and feel "in the tao" but that if you do too much you get zombie-like. I will pass.

The problem with GHB (well all drugs but especially those in liquid form) is that you have no idea how concentrated it is, especially with something like G where you can't taste or smell the concentration level. I guess you'd have to have a good supplier to get any level of consistency. Everyone that I know who wanted that "in the tao" feeling used ketamine which was cheaper and (at the time) much easier to get.

alafairnadia · January 2009

I've never done a lot of drugs: I'll admit to past use of shrooms and MJ but frankly my drug of choice is alcohol. a lot of friends of mine in europe still use ecstasy but I never wanted to having heard too many horror stories of shit cut with something nasty that makes you puke, etc. I'd rather just get wasted.

in any case, I don't know what I was dosed with, I don't have a ton of details about what other folks down here are dosed with (in case you guys haven't guessed, the internets down here just aren't as easy to find information in), so it could be the whatsit from the health food store or it could be ghb. I do know that I left my glass on the bar, so in a classic way, I set myself up. which makes me dumb.

still trying to figure out how to meet people.

meeting people in foreign countries

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