When Dean Burns went for a quiet weekend drink with friends, he became one of the many thousands of 'spiking' victims in the UK.
The Reform UK county councillor for Ashford East has opened up for the first time about how the crime affected him and found out it had already struck two of his daughters. Simon Finlay reports...
Dean Burns, county councillor and family man, does not fit the stereotype of someone who might become the victim of a spiking attack.
Yet it happened to him at a pub in Ashford in the past couple of months, and has clearly left a mark on the father of four.
One moment he was among friends, the next being helped virtually unconscious into a car to be taken home by his wife.
Feelings of guilt, shame and embarrassment have, in time, given over to vulnerability and distrust - but it has also lit a flame inside to raise awareness of the crime and its prevention.
Like most sensible blokes of 50, Cllr Burns knows his limit and the two pints of hoppy IPA he had that day would not exactly constitute a skinful.
He had gone to the pub after attending a community event with some friends and when they left, he stayed on with local people for a chat.
When the effects of GHB, short for gamma-hydroxybutyric, hit him, Cllr Burns was all but insensible in a matter of seconds.
(Many do not realise the practice of spiking is not simply a liquid tipped surreptitiously into a drink, but can be injected using needles or planted in cigarettes or vapes.)
Much of what happened next, Mr Burns, who also is Kent County Council's deputy cabinet member for the environment, has had to piece together or be told later by those who were there that weekend late afternoon.
"It just happened so fast. You know, I didn't start to feel different... it just happened. When you're having a few drinks, you know what your capacity is and you know when you've gone beyond what your normal capacity would be," he said.
"But this happened in seconds. You tend to lose 90% of your consciousness and the only thing that carries on functioning is your ability to walk aided. Your vision goes, your hearing goes - which I was surprised by. One of the people helping me later said that it was like talking to someone who wasn't listening.
"I don't recollect the experience itself."
A close protection officer (CPO), who happened to be nearby in the packed pub, turned out to be his guardian angel that day. He spotted and recognised almost immediately that it was a spiking and helped organise getting him home.
"He (the CPO) was waiting until I was, as he called it, 'not in my own capacity', and said that it happened very quickly and that all the signs were there. He's recognised me from the past and he stepped in and managed to take me out of the pub."
Cllr Burns' wife came to collect him and she called his sister and brother-in-law over because she had never seen her husband in such a state.
He said: "I fell out of the car and crawled on my hands and knees to get to the house and I had never been like that, ever.
"We've all gone home after a good night out but always been able to get home. But on this particular occasion, my sister was trying to get me into bed. I was holding onto my bedroom door handle, literally with my full weight.
"When I collapsed on the floor, I pulled the door off its hinges and that's when they knew that something was seriously wrong because I was unconscious on the bedroom floor. They did eventually get me onto the bed.
"I was comatose until the next day. The strange thing is I actually felt okay the next morning, went downstairs and grabbed a cup of coffee. I went to the hospital and when I got to triage, they said that they don't test for spiking. I'm led to believe that they only test you for HIV or hepatitis, if you've been injected."
A visit to his GP revealed very high blood pressure and the doctor disclosed he too had been spiked when he was at university.
Cllr Burns was given some medication and tested his blood pressure for the next two weeks as well as having tests for his heart, kidneys and liver to make sure.
He said that as his body struggled to repair itself in the days immediately after the attack, he suffered unusual feelings of anxiety, depression and sadness.
Cllr Burns said: "You feel embarrassed... and you feel stupid. It's a drug to basically take control of your body."
But the grandfather of four said that for a woman who has been sexually assaulted, the experience would have been "100 times worse".
While the physical side of the spiking took about a week to recover from, the emotional effect went on for weeks.
"I just lost trust in society around me," he said. "I couldn't walk into a pub and have lunch - I just wanted to stay away from these sorts of places because it makes you realise how vulnerable you can be in these situations.
"I have changed the way I socialise - like drinking from a bottle instead of a glass - or with a coffee, I'll get a lid."
According to Home Office statistics, there were 6,732 reports of spiking between May 2022 and 2023, which included 957 instances of needle assaults, most commonly in bars and nightclubs. Victims are mainly young women but anyone can be targeted as Cllr Burns found out.
The charity Drinkaware has estimated 90% of cases, like Cllr Burns', go unreported to police, which makes statistics difficult to compile accurately.
Kent Police does hold figures since 2020 for both drink and needle spiking under five separate different crime types, including "administering poison as to endanger life" and "administering a substance with intent".
The figures for 2020 - which are certain to have been affected by Covid-19 restrictions - showed 58 drink spikings and just one with a needle.
But by 2022, when the figures peaked, there were 279 drink-related offences and 50 with needles, while last year there were 240 and 10 offences recorded respectively.
A YouGov poll in late 2022 revealed 10% of women and 5% of men said they had been spiked but people in groups are more likely to be victims.
The average age of victims across both sexes was 26 but 74% were women, according to the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC).
It was only when Cllr Burns opened up to his immediate family that one daughter disclosed she had been spiked and another said her friend was a victim.
The KCC councillor, elected to County Hall in May, has no idea who did it, but cannot rule out that it was someone known to him.
While women are invariably picked out for possible sexual assault, men are more likely to be chosen for theft, he says.
In reality, no one seems to know why it happens. According to government information, some people do it "for fun" but it does appear to be committed in order to facilitate another type of serious crime.
"For guys, if you're deciding to go out with your Rolex on and Calvin Klein jacket, there might be those who may want to take them off you," warns Cllr Burns.
He paints a picture of someone, who did not have his good fortune, scrambling around on their knees in the dark outside, zonked and ready to be relieved of whatever valuables they might be carrying that day.
Cllr Burns is working with Cllr Diane Morton, the KCC cabinet member for public health, to find out what more can be done by the council to prevent spiking in all its forms and to work with other authorities and agencies.
Kent Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Scott agrees with the legislation position of likening spiking to poisoning.
He said: "We have been through this office, Kent Police and the licensed trade for a number of years doing what we can to make people feel safer in the night-time economy."
The 'Best Bar None' initiative helps to put an onus of responsibility on businesses, while 'stop tops' have been made widely available to help prevent spiking.
Other measures include uniformed and plain-clothed officer patrols in town centres at night, as well as the use of drug-detecting dogs, but Mr Scott accepts the need to raise awareness.
He added: "There is an assumption that it's just women and girls who are targeted but it's men and boys, too."
The NPCC offers advice to victims if they feel they may have been spiked.
The body recommends calling 999 or 101 and reporting it to police. If someone is injured or has symptoms consistent with spiking, call the NHS 111 phone line.
If a sexual assault is suspected, go to the nearest sexual assault referral centre (SARC) to receive specialist care and support.