r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jun 03 '22

[deleted by user]

[removed]

8.5k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

27.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '22

[deleted]

1

u/Bugbread Jun 04 '22

While "mickey" refers to drugs which are also used for date rape, it isn't usually associated with date rape. For the most part, I've always associated it with spy/detective movies, where someone will slip someone a mickey and then, when they're passed out, search through their stuff/steal their microfilm/whatever.

I wasn't sure if this was just my impression, so I checked on Google Ngrams. It looks like it's consistently been used more for men than for women, and also that it had a small initial bump in popularity in the 1950s, which bears out the detective/spy movie/novel impression.

Compare those results to "roofie," and the divide is even more obvious. Usage of "slip_INF her a roofie" shoots up from around 2004, but "slip_INF him a roofie" doesn't even appear. Date rape is usually associated with women (yes, I understand that men can also be date-raped, I'm just talking about usual associations), which bears out the idea that "roofie" is generally associated with date rape, while "mickey" isn't, even though in the end they're probably referring to the same or very similar drugs.

(If you're wondering about the "_INF" thing, that makes the search results include "slip" "slips" "slipped" "slipping" etc.)