A bit of GBH can be terminally bad for you
November 28 2002
Move over ecstasy, the new designer party drug of choice is "G". Clubbers say it feels good. The only problem is it can kill you, writes Steve Dow.
It was a slice of heaven. Thousands were dancing, chatting, enjoying what was arguably the most majestic site in the world to have a dance party, the outcrop of Mrs Macquarie's chair at Sydney Harbour.
Strobing colours. Hands waving. Freedom. A packed dance floor in the balmy open air, people gazing at that iconic bridge, that Opera House, but more likely, each other. Gays and lesbians from around the world gathered for the famous sunset party this month.
I looked for an opening to dance into amid the sweat-drenched revellers, a little more space to move. A chasm suddenly opened behind me. I danced into it, and realised why the crowd had recoiled.
A bald, bespectacled, shirtless man was writhing, sweat pouring off his tanned body. His eyes rolled back into his head, his body jerked up and down.
Strangely, now and again he smiled. Yes, he looked happy. He, too, was in heaven as he struggled for breath.
I wrapped my arms around his chest to hold him up, and yelled to my friends to run to the medical tent. An off-duty doctor pushed through the crowd, and helped me get the man off the dance floor and outside.
"What have you taken?" the doctor shouted. The man groaned, rolled his eyes, and stumbled. No answer.
"What did you take? Was it G?" Again, nothing.
Finally, we got him to lie down on the ground - he refused to bend all the way, so we pulled his legs out from under him - and pushed him on to his side as the medical staff placed the oxygen mask over his face.
The man had not a friend in sight. Or maybe he did, and they just didn't want to know. Researchers say that is what often happens to users of GHB, or gammahydroxybutyrate, an anaesthetic sometimes known as GBH, or grievous bodily harm. Suddenly you are a social embarrassment.
It's a drug little spoken about, shunned by some partygoers, whose drug of choice is the more mainstream drug ecstasy. G users who drop on the dance floor are often left to sleep in corners. Unmonitored, they can sometimes asphyxiate, or fall into a coma, or die.
While people don't like to talk about the drug - a clear, viscous, salty liquid that is mixed with water or, more dangerously, alcohol - research released yesterday by Australia's National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre shows the use of G has skyrocketed this year, with 35 per cent of ecstasy users having tried G, compared to less than 1 per cent in 2000.
The drug works on the central nervous system. But there is a tiny window between its euphoric effects and falling asleep that users cannot always control.
Clubbers measure the drug before leaving home, or smuggle the liquid into raves in little balloons, and then struggle in the dark club or a dimly lit toilet to match their dose with water.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration has recorded more than 70 deaths associated with G, but this is almost certainly an underestimate: deaths can be ambiguous because users have often taken more than one drug. It is usually G, though, that tips them into the abyss.
The drug's popularity grew during the '90s on the North American gay party scene. G is suspected to have killed a prominent New York City gay nightclub owner in 1999, but the case was compounded by the man's consumption of other drugs. Two gay men died on New York's gay party mecca, Fire Island, after mixing it with alcohol. Another had to be flown off the island.
After heavy criticism, the Gay Men's Health Centre stopped sponsoring the morning parties there. As one gay friend from that scene put it, sex killed gay men in the '80s and '90s. Now, it's dancing.
And while New York's Twilo nightclub faced many battles with former mayor Rudolph Giuliani, it was its failure to notice a clubber sleeping after a GHB overdose that led to the club's lights being switched off for the last time. The man never woke up.
Is it Australia's turn next? According to Paul Dillion, a researcher with the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, the use of GHB in Australia is most prevalent among gay clubbers, but is becoming increasingly common among straight clubbers. Heterosexual ravers prefer, though, to use G as a "coming-down" drug at home, a sex drug.
Use of the drug is growing in Sydney and Melbourne. Recently, Dillion was called by a raver inside a Melbourne nightclub, who rang him to say a friend was unconscious. While they were talking, another person in the club dropped.
"It would be hard to believe that G hasn't been a contributing factor to a death in this country," says Dillion. "And if there hasn't been, then there will be."
So, what happened to the man lying on the grass at the Sydney Sunset Party? Who knows. But a few nights later, at another gay dance party, I ran into the helpful doctor once more.
"There'll be a couple more GHB doses here tonight," he predicted.
Sure enough, St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney saw six G overdoses that same Saturday night.
Most had to be intubated and had to undergo CT scans, according to emergency department director Gordian Fulde.
The hospital has not lost a G patient yet, but has come close. "What gets us is they seem to have an amnesia euphoria," says Fulde. "They don't realise they were close to death."
Dillion says he knows of revellers who have been rushed to casualty on numerous occasions after overdosing on G. But why?
Dillion puts it neatly. "Ecstasy is a head rush," he says. "G is a pelvic rush."
From the above link.
BigTrancer
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
