Teenage girls are arriving at the Rotunda Sexual Assault Unit in Dublin with alcohol levels so high, that normally they'd be seen only in coroner's court.Potentially lethal levels of 300 and 400 mg are being recorded, says Dr Mary Henry.

The girls are arriving with the signs of sexual assault, yet they do not remember what happened to them. The Rotunda tests for date-rape drugs, yet not a single young woman has tested positive so far. The drugs remain in the body for 72 hours, so they should be detected.

So what's to blame? Alcohol alone, Dr Henry believes. She suspects that girls are unwittingly consuming more alcohol than they realise, when their vodka drinks are spiked with additional shots by boys buying drinks for them. Many of the new drinks aimed at the young women's market taste so sweet, that the alcohol cannot even be detected in them, she points out.

Some of the women arriving at the unit claim to have drunk very little, so heavily spiked drinks must be the answer, she suggests.

Other women, particularly teenage girls, are drinking so heavily that they believe five vodka tonics in a row is normal drinking. They are drinking to get drunk, says Dr Henry. When she challenges them on this, they say: "I believe in equality. I can drink as much as a man."