Comedian Bill Maher has shared that he was once “roofied” while out drinking at a bar, leaving him with memory gaps regarding the events of the night in question.
Speaking on his Club Random podcast with fellow comedian Jay Pharoah, the TV personality revealed that he went out to a bar more than 20 years ago where events took an unexpected turn.
After Saturday Night Live alum Pharoah revealed that one of his drinks had been spiked in the past, Maher stated: “I got roofied once… I just remember being at a bar. I’ve been drunk. I was drunk a lot in my 20s and 30s—and I hate to say it, kind of ashamedly—but into my 40s, a little into my 50s.
“But like, no matter how drunk I got, there was not like a four-hour period when I remember nothing. And that happened one night. I was at a bar. It’s about the year 2000. Again, I’m 44—I shouldn’t even be in a bar, but f*** it. You know what, some of us grow up late, or, if you’re lucky, not at all.”
“So I’m in this bar, and then I was home,” he continued. “Did I leave with a woman? Yes, and I don’t think she did it. She seemed to be in a very good mood the next morning. So nothing bad happened. But there was like a four-hour period where I don’t remember anything… I must have been roofied.”
“I don’t remember anything bad.” Maher reiterated. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, good, someone’s going home with me.’ I remember that. I felt good about that. I don’t think she had anything to do with it. She certainly didn’t have to roofie me to go home with her.”
As for who he believes might have been responsible, the Real Time with Bill Maher host theorized that it may have been somebody who saw him on TV and disliked him. He also speculated that he was given the date rape drug GHB.
“Here’s my theory… This was like a big bar… a very big bar around the whole room,” he said. “You could see, like, a million people. I would say this bar was, oh my God, at least 30 feet long… I think somebody across the way from me, some guy had brought some roofie s***. I say roofie, I don’t know what the drug was. Well, somebody told me was probably GHB, whatever that is, whatever it was.
“I think some guy was there, and there was no girl he wanted to [drug],” Maher went on. “But he saw me and hated me from television. Bill Maher from television, who was very popular and also hated by a lot of people. And thought, ‘Oh, I’ll f*** this guy up.’ That’s just a theory.”
Maher added that while he “made that up” as a theory, he struggled to see another reason “why someone would put [drugs] in my drink.”
A 2016 study in the journal Psychology of Violence surveyed more than 6,000 students at three U.S. universities and found that 462 respondents, or 7.8 percent, reported having been drugged. Among them, 12.1 percent said they experienced “unwanted sexual touching” and 5.4 percent said they were raped. The study also found that approximately twice as many women reported having been drugged as men.
Being drugged while consuming alcohol is particularly dangerous, since it may be hard to distinguish the physical and psychological effects of drinking from the added substance. Potential victims should watch out for extreme drowsiness, confusion, slurring and loss of consciousness, according to medical experts.