Spikey Keychain Combats Rise in Drink-Spiking

Entrepreneur Abigail Goddard isn’t old enough to order a drink in a bar, but the recent high school graduate knows the dangers that can lurk inside. As a young girl, Goddard learned about the assault of a family member whose drink was drugged. The close-to-home trauma prompted her to create Spikey, an easy-to-use drug-testing device to prevent that danger and heartache for other people.

As a student at Ravenwood High School, Goddard had resources for invention, including access to the Williamson County Schools Entrepreneurship Center. As a pianist at Blair Academy for Music at Vanderbilt University, she gained exposure to a college campus, where she interviewed students about their experiences with drink safety in nightlife.

Goddard started with the idea of a cute keychain, an unobtrusive accessory that wouldn’t raise eyebrows on a date or at a party. She cold-called pharmaceutical companies to source test strips that could immediately detect drugs commonly used to spike drinks, including GHB and ketamine. After sourcing quick, convenient test strips, she attached them to some generic keychains to test the concept. Selling out the prototypes from her backpack at school, she knew she was ready to refine the product. Goddard hired a fellow student entrepreneur to realize her concept of a cute, discreet keychain that be emblazoned with names and logos and conceal the rapid test strips.

As for market research, evidence of drink-spiking is all too available in Nashville, where the rise of incidents has prompted the creation of the grassroots website spikedinnash.com, which tracks community-reported incidents of drink-spiking. On July 1, 2026, the state of Tennessee outlawed placing roofies and other date-rape drugs in drinks, elevating the practice to a Class D felony, with penalties up to a $5,000 fine and 12 years in prison.

Meanwhile, Goddard’s concept has won awards and funding at multiple entrepreneurial conferences, including LaunchTN’s 3686 conference last year. And she has sold thousands of products, including bespoke monogrammed and branded units, through bulk orders to organizations and direct to consumers online.

Drink-testing technology has been around, but Spikey makes it subtle and quick. “Before, tests were bulky, expensive and slow,” says Goddard, who heads to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School this fall, where she will continue to grow the line of convenient rapid tests that provide results in 15 seconds. “Discretion and speed were my focus, to give someone the confidence to bring a test to a party, date, or a bar.”

Spikey keychains and test strip refills are available at spikeyfirst.com.