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The Popular Drug
Four Connecticut teenagers were in top spirits after taking final exams. To celebrate, they left Ridgefield High School and drove to a local diner, where three of the boys measured out a small amount of a clear liquid into their milk. Later 16-year-old David Grover drove them to his house to pick up his viola for orchestra practice. Feeling mellow, he and two pals poured more of the drug into a bottle of soda and passed it around. Then they headed back to the car.Grover drove only a short distance before saying, "I need to pull over." He staggered from the car in the driveway of a recreational area. Soon he lay down on his back and passed out. Before long, two others joined him, slumping into unconsciousness as well. The fourth boy, who had not taken any GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate), looked on as his still-unconscious friends began to twitch convulsively and vomit. Now panicked, he summoned help. Minutes later police arrived. "They were covered with vomit," Sgt. Daniel Ryan of the Ridgefield Police Department recalls. "The officers found no pulses, no signs of life. They were dying." Medics from three ambulances worked desperately on the boys, then rushed them to the hospital. Firetruck hoses were used to wash down the mess left at the scene.
One boy revived that afternoon, another the next day. Grover lay in a coma, on a ventilator, for two days. Today he still has a short-term memory deficit from the time his brain was deprived of oxygen.
Driven Underground
These three young men are victims of a fashionable drug that has been sweeping through the country. "GHB is considered even cooler than heroin," notes Ginna Marston at the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA). At $5 to $10 a hit -- one to two teaspoons -- GHB is relatively cheap. It is also difficult to detect, and easy to concoct from recipes anonymously posted on the Internet -- "easier than baking bread," according to one message.
At low doses, the drug acts as a relaxant, lowering inhibition and creating a euphoric state of well-being. It does so by depressing the central nervous system, as do alcohol, barbiturates and tranquilizers -- only indescribably more so. "You feel kind of drunk, warm and cozy," one user explains. "And there's no hangover." But it doesn't take much GHB to move a user from cozy or euphoric to unconscious, or even dead.
GHB came on the market as an over-the-counter sleep, diet and body-building aid in the '80s. "It didn't take long for users to notice the drug provided a buzz," says Trinka Porrata, a former narcotics detective for the Los Angeles Police Department who now consults nationally on drug issues.
The FDA seized dietary supplements containing GHB after a number of illnesses were reported. "The drug just went underground," Porrata notes. "And the number of victims has increased steadily."
A Certain Cachet
In January 1999, 15-year-old Samantha Reid and several friends were watching videos in Grosse Ile, a Detroit suburb. That evening, GHB was poured into her glass of Mountain Dew -- to make things more "lively," as one individual said. The freshman basketball player fell into a coma and died the next day. Three young men were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to up to 15 years in prison. A fourth, convicted of being an accessory after the fact, was sentenced to up to five years.
The DEA has recorded more than 5700 GHB-related cases in the past decade, including overdoses, possession, trafficking -- and more than 65 deaths. Experts believe there are many more, partly because lab tests used by law enforcement and health professionals do not routinely screen for GHB. The Houdini-like drug, which is quickly metabolized by the body into carbon dioxide and water, vanishes with barely a trace within 12 hours.
Ironically, GHB's danger is part of its attraction. "One of the drug's nicknames is Grievous Bodily Harm," says PDFA's Marston. "Rather than warning people away, the name has a certain cachet for some. ‘Look at me,' users say. ‘I'm on the edge. I'm dancing with death.'"
Walt Davis (not his real name), a 20-year-old disc jockey, attests to the drug's popularity at all-night parties called raves: "You get bored with what you've done; you keep searching for that next answer, that better high." Adds Jacqueline Marque, a recent college graduate from New Orleans, "A lot of people go to raves just because they love the music and like to dance, but if you're interested, drugs are readily available -- including GHB. Most raves offer 'chill-out' rooms for people too high to dance any longer. There's always someone who's passed out."
Too late some of these partygoers learn about another, seamier side of the drug. "Kids trust people they've never seen before," one law enforcement officer told Reader's Digest. "With GHB on the scene, sometimes they discover a week or two later they've been raped."
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