GHB GHB FAQ: Complete

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Complete FAQ What is GHB?
What will GHB do to me?
Who uses GHB?
Isn't GHB that date-rape drug?
Is GHB toxic? Addictive? Dangerous?
How can I take GHB safely?
How much GHB do I take?
Is GHB legal?
What else is GHB called?
What about Hillory Farias?
Myths about GHB
Epilogue: So, why did you write this again?
[Go to the glossary][Go to the references]
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What is GHB?
     Gamma-hydroxybutyrate. "An endogenous^* regulator of energy metabolism [45]? A putative (now vindicated) neurotransmitter" [74]? "An emerging drug of abuse that causes physical dependence" [33]? "An agent of acute poisoning" [52]? A "remarkably safe and nontoxic hypnotic^* which is reported to be free of addicting properties?" [4] Just what is going on here?

     What is GHB? HOCH2CH2CH2COO-Na. A drug. A nutrient. A short-chain fatty acid with diverse effects on neurochemistry.

     What is GHB? One of the most interesting, and most demonized, neurochemical compounds discovered in the brief history of our forays into the couple of kilograms of jiggly organic stuff that I'm using to spin these words together.

     What is GHB? A white powder or a soapy-tasting liquid sold in clubs; an invisible chemical manufactured in the brain's dark corners when winter falls or tragedy strikes.

     What is GHB? A substance which is daily gaining popularity as an entheogenic ^* , recreational, or sociabilizing^* compound. A drug with decades of therapeutic uses behind it. Something which has suffered unbelievable slander, insult, and repression. My purpose in this GHB FAQ is to give readers an introduction to GHB and its effects, and to help those who have chosen to use it to do so safely. There are many such documents already available, but I hope that mine will be uniquely useful by coalescing both medical and cultural data in a single place, and by making my references as available and comprehensive as possible, to buttress my assessments and help others develop their own. I would love to hear from people who think I am wrong, evil, or misguided, especially if they have something to back them up. Like my mother always said, the best remedy for bad uses of free speech is more speech.

What will GHB do to me?
    This section ignores the long-term therapeutic and medicinal uses of GHB. To learn about its uses in narcolepsy^*, alcohol and opiate^* detoxification, childbirth, depression, and more, see the GHB Therapy FAQ.

     In short, a small dose of GHB will lend the user 1-4 hours of relaxation, disinhibition^*, giddiness, sociability, and/or Big Fun. That figure is serious; GHB is a quick, clean trip which leaves the user surprisingly clear-headed and sober. You can schedule a 5:00 job interview and take a small dose of GHB in the morning without having to worry about snapping into reality to find yourself with your teeth embedded in someone's desk, wearing his tie as a loincloth. There is absolutely no "hangover" effect, although people who take larger doses and fall asleep may not be too happy about being awakened.

     Some drugs have strictly delimited "plateaus^*." While GHB is not one, its effects do break down into several rough categories depending on dosage. To learn how to calibrate your own dose, see below.

Recreational and Entheogenic^* Effects:
Low (The "Happy" phase):

•   Euphoria^*
•   Sociability - one of GHB's most intriguing properties. Human contact, both physical and mental, becomes more appealing. Rat-contact is similarly enhanced [86].
•   Lightheadedness
•   Inebriation^* and disinhibition, equivalent to a few alcoholic drinks
•   Ataxia^*
•   Aphrodisia - Aside from general disinhibition and sensitization, GHB has been reported to increase erectile capacity and both time required for and quality of orgasm in both sexes [94].

Medium (The "Sleepy" phase):

• Intensification of low-dose effects
• Sleep - The property of GHB that caused perhaps the greatest initial stir in the medical community is its ability to induce sleep that is undistinguishable, subjectively and objectively, from the normal variety. This sleep may be of normal duration, or you may awaken to full alertness after a few hours [4].

High (The "Dopey" phase):

• Coma - Or something that meets physical criteria for coma^*. One might dispute this name on the basis that the truly comatose don't tend to awaken unharmed in 2-4 hours [52][56][37].
It is important to understand that the above sources are actual studies of patients who have "overdosed;" many of them come from sources that are actively hostile to the dissemination of GHB. It is equally important to know that the are cases in which GHB has been highly dangerous: this occurs when it is mixed with alcohol, something I cannot warn against strongly or often enough.

Stupid (The "Doc" phase):

• Tracheal intubation^*, high hospital bills, and psychological evaluation: Effects confined to people who take sleep-inducing doses without telling anyone what they're doing, as this harmless state looks unfortunately similar to lethal opiate^* overdose.

Side/Less desirable effects
Low-dose:

•   Those to be expected from mild impairment of one's faculties of concentration.
•   Inability to drive / operate heavy machinery
•   Tonic-myoclionic seizures - that is, slight trembling and loss of muscle control. Harmless but unpleasant. This effect is highly variable among users, and poses an excellent reason to start with very small doses and slowly work up.
•   Nausea - especially on an empty stomach. This is only a serious problem when combined with sleep. Make sure that whoever is watching you knows to turn you on your side or stomach.

Medium-dose:

•   Grogginess if awakened
•   Cheynes-Stokes^* respiration - While frequently a cause of concern among medics, in this case it is apparently harmless.
•   More serious loss of coordination
• Sleep paralysis - this seems to occur only in narcoleptics^* [4] and in any case, resolves spontaneously and safely.

High-dose:

• Reduced or depressed breathing - while balanced by a reduction in energy use and a deepening of each breath[45], this may not be safe for everyone. Doses at this level are not recommended, nor are they particularly interesting.
• Incontinence - There are some reports of people urinating or defecating uncontrollably on GHB. For some reason, this was at one time reported as a very common effect. In fact, it seems quite rare and confined only to those who have taken a dose far past that necessary to knock them out (see above). The one reader who experienced this while conscious had just crashed from a 3-day methamphetamine^* binge and was debilitated in plenty of other ways, too.

Imaginary: The media impute many fantastic and empirically unvalidated qualia to GHB.
That is to say, these things do not happen!

•   Hallucinations - The media like to report every new drug as a hallucinogen, no matter how wildly inappropriate. One wonders what they're smoking.
•   Amnesia: Perhaps due to confusion with Rohypnol.^®
•   Heart Failure: There was one - one - case to support this belief. We now know that GHB did not kill Hillory Farias.
•   Death: The lowest estimated LD50^* for GHB I have seen is 1100mg/kg^* [33], although I believe this to be incorrect as Mamelak reports monkeys to have received 1000mg/kg without apparent harm [45] . In an average human, 1100mg/kg would be over 66g^* GHB, or 22 active doses, taken all at once! If you don't mix alcohol and GHB, this just don't happen, folks.

Who uses GHB?

     Weightlifters: GHB increases growth hormone release [7],[20], and thus is reputed to help build muscle. It appeared in 1990 as a bodybuilder's nutritional supplement [9],[69], and it was abuses of this incarnation that led to the FDA's initial campaign against GHB.

     Ravers^*: GHB has disinhibiting effects at doses below those causing drowsiness, and is often used (or even confused) with Ecstasy^* (MDMA or X).

     Narcoleptics^* and insomniacs^*: GHB has been shown to normalize and improve sleep in a variety of disorders while avoiding any of the habituation^*, tolerance^*, or withdrawal issues of other tranquilizers [4].

     People who want to relax, sleep better, or really enjoy holding hands.

Hey, isn't GHB that date-rape drug?
     The short answer is no. By frequency, the date-rape drug is undoubtedly the venerable ethane hydroxide - alcohol, which has been used since time immemorial to cloud the judgment and lower the defenses of both sexes. Another likely candidate is Rohypnol^® (flunitrazepam), a legal and popular tranquilizer in most countries outside the US. It has received much media attention lately for its ability to (sometimes) leave the victim awake but unable to remember anything that occurs while affected by it.

     However, the spiking of drinks with GHB has been growing in notoriety as a date-rape facilitator [16],[50]. Routine testing of victims only began recently (March 1997), and I have been unable to find only very spotty data on its use. A single study [143] analyzed samples (presumably of blood) from 578 rape victims, and determined that 32 (~6%) had GHB in their systems. This unfortunately proves nothing, and never will be able to. There is no way of knowing how many of these women might have taken GHB recreationally, something they might be understandably reluctant to report if they were trying to build a criminal case. The article only reports five positive tests for Rohypnol^®, which is similarly difficult to interpret as it, too, is used recreationally.

     Despite extravagant claims by ill-informed popular sources, GHB is hardly a magic rape drug in any case. The inebriation^* it produces is hardly preternaturally incapacitating - the cognitive impairment is reported to be less severe than alcohol. A dose producing unarousable sleep would require the villain to literally carry his prey out, and do the deed with the possibility of their awakening to full consciousness at any time. The greatest danger is that this reputation will lead to more attempts, meaning more people will be unwittingly consuming GHB mixed with alcohol, and neither drug shows a worse face than under those circumstances.

     The most commonly cited case of GHB as a rape drug is that of Hillory Farias [61]. Ironically, this case did not involve rape and there is mounting evidence that she did not ingest GHB at all! For more information, see her eponymous section of this FAQ.

     The research cited here does point to three important, if less dramatic conclusions: Don't incapacitate yourself when vulnerable to assault, watch your drink, and don't suffer people who make you feel unsafe.

Is GHB toxic? Addictive? Dangerous?

TOXICITY

     As drugs go, GHB is about as "clean" as you can get. As an endogenous^* regulator of energy metabolism and a natural neurotransmitter, it is well-known to the brain and organs. They are used to its effects and have highly efficient systems for metabolizing it safely [150]. The substance is eliminated (that is, back to baseline levels) in 2-4 hours and continues to be so even after twice-daily doses for a week [10]. In one European study, no adverse effects were reported after several years of hypnotic^* use [94]. The LD50 listed above is huge, and there is literally no danger of acute toxicity.

     Many sources do report toxic and dangerous effects [37,38], [48], [70], but these are nearly inevitably caused by coingestion of other drugs (often alcohol), massive overdoses, or highly impure product. Others report effects that are inconsistent with many years of research and observation, and appear entirely fanciful [60].

ADDICTION
     If you consider yourself "addicted" to chocolate, driving fast, or pro wrestling, you might find yourself in the same state with GHB. Physiological addiction, on the other hand, appears largely absent, as demonstrated by the above studies and others. Users have sometimes reported adverse physiological effects, but these resolve in 3-12 days without sequelae [33], and seem localized to users of very high or frequent doses (an figure often casually tossed out is 30g/day) or co-users of other drugs. Psychological addiction is tenuous at best. Colombo [12] reports that rats forced to consume massive doses of GHB will intermittently prefer GHB solution to water, but notes that "no rat showed any sign of withdrawal when GHB was finally removed at the end of the 20-week period" or during periods of voluntary abstinence.

     Note that none of this means that GHB can't hurt you if you try really hard. In addition to the obvious dangers of driving while impaired or falling into a deep sleep in public places, there are reports of people who have managed to, for want of a more specific term, seriously mess themselves up by abusing GHB. If you take to carrying around a bottle and taking a gulp every time you begin to feel sober (as these individuals have been known to do), you are definitely going to develop problems. Needless to say, you would also have a problem if you carried around a bottle of Tylenol^® and gulped one down every time you began to feel anything (this particular problem is referred to as "death"), or if you carried around a barrel of water and took some every time there wasn't anything in your mouth. My recommendation is to restrict yourself (unless you are under medical supervision or another structured program of therapeutic use) to two doses a day, no more than four days a week, and I would consider even that to be quite excessive.

     My conclusion is that GHB cannot be called by any reasonable criteria addictive. If you have experienced difficulty with knowing when to stop (or when not to start) with alcohol or other drugs in the past, though, you should exercise caution with GHB. To reiterate the point above, with the right mindset and/or genetic misfortune, anything and everything can become addictive.

OTHER DANGERS
     PLEASE, FOR MY SAKE IF NOT THAT OF YOUR OWN PRECIOUS LIFE, DO NOT EVER TAKE GHB AND ALCOHOL WITHIN A FEW HOURS OF EACH OTHER! The same goes for any tranquilizer or depressant. Their effects (or those of GHB; the difference is debatable) can be massively potentiated^*, and even a reasonable dose can become dangerous. You won't hear me say this much, because it isn't true very much, but in this case it is incredibly important: if you use GHB wrong, it can kill you. Given GHB's abilities to induce seizures, at least in some animals, at ultra-high doses [6], [8], people with a history of epilepsy or convulsions should exercise care as well, and build up their dose very slowly, with others present.

     Finally, I must note one more circumstance under which GHB can be wildly dangerous: when it is not GHB. Thanks to its governmental prohibition, most GHB now comes from what the FDA calls "clandestine labs" [13], but clandestine kitchens might be closer. Sodium hydroxide, used in GHB synthesis, is essentially lye, and there is at least one case of serious lung injury caused GHB that contained significant quantities [20]. Cheap syntheses with impure chemicals may contain almost any kind of toxin. Most common, though, is the simple fact that "street" GHB can range enormously in terms of concentration, and the user has no idea how much they are taking - just asking for an overdose.

    All such grimness can be handily avoided by making your own! The instructions are readily available and you can use your own food-grade reagents available from chemical supply houses and resellers. The former are impossible for individuals to buy from without committing extensive fraud, but many organizations do buy these chemicals and resell them, either as they are or in pre-measured "kits." Expect to pay a significant markup, but not nearly what you'd pay a shady stranger for a few drops of unidentified organic molecules at a club. To learn more about making your own GHB, see the GHB Supply FAQ.

How do I make sure I'm taking GHB safely?

Make no mistake, GHB can cause pain, expense, and tragedy if misused. You, of course, are not going to misuse it. Attend to these five points (each of which is elaborated in the full FAQ) and laugh in the face of Friedman^*:

1. NO ALCOHOL!
Yes, I repeat myself: Alcohol and GHB potentiate^* each other's effects [46], which makes the threat of respiratory arrest a deadly reality. Even small quantities can be hazardous. If I could impart but a single piece of advice through this FAQ, it would unquestionably be to leave this fell combination alone. Anything else that causes drowsiness or loss of physical control should also be avoided.

2. Bring a friend
Falling asleep in public is very, very bad. More than one person has suggested a "GHB-alert" bracelet that would tell passersby "let me sleep!" but the best way to avoid danger is to have someone on hand who can take care of you.

3. Know your source
Make sure the GHB is pure, and know the concentration so you get the proper dose. Essentially, this means never buying "street" GHB unless you know the dealer and are experienced with hir product. To buy or make your own, see the Supply FAQ

4. Know your dose
Useful and excessive doses can differ by very little.

5. Don't be stupid
You should no more drive under GHB's influence than under significant quantities of alcohol. If you're dancing, get adequate fluids and rest. Be aware that your judgment is somewhat clouded. The strange man asking you to follow him is probably not your long-lost uncle Earl.

How much should I take?

     First, seriously consider "none." GHB may be "clean^*"; GHB may be safer and less toxic than alcohol; GHB may be a generally benign drug - but it is still a drug and the decision to put it into your brain should be made with respect and caution. I intend to provide the information to ensure that those who choose to employ it can do so safely, but I do not want to make it seem too casual.

     If you have decided to try it, the first step is to find your dose. I will express doses in grams^*, although the most readily available way to measure liquid is by volume (usually teaspoons^*) from a liquid solution of known concentration. This is yet another reason to make your own GHB. After performing the synthesis, you should know exactly how much you have, and can then dissolve it in water and dilute it to any volume you please, setting up a ratio to determine how much is in any one measure.

     Begin on a day when you have taken no other drugs, have several hours to spare, and can count on someone to look after you and know how to react if you doze (answer: turn you face-down and leave you alone). Take no more than 1g, and for several hours observe the effects carefully.

     If you desire something stronger, and do not feel yourself irresistibly tranquilized, the next night you can increase the dose by a gram, and continue until you reach an optimal level. Many people do use it as a sleep aid; Mamelak et al. determined that it is "potentially useful for the large number of patients who have difficulty falling asleep but who once asleep are able to remain so."[4]

     Generally speaking, an aphrodisiac or sensitizing dose is between .5 and 1.5g, with the relaxing and stimulating effects coexisting with a light inebriation ^* as one approaches 3g. Medical sources report soporific^* doses of 1.2-3g [7], [4], [47], [33], although the lower doses in this range are usually taken by subjects who are prepared to sleep, and there are definitely records of people remaining awake at these levels [9]. Anything over 4g may reach into the "unarousable sleep" category and should not be approached without carefully probing your sensitivity to GHB beforehand, as discussed above.

     A note on "dose-boosting" - GHB takes 15-30 minutes to begin to manifest and may take over an hour to come to full strength. It is important to refrain from trying to increase its effects by taking more. You will be making such a decision with clouded judgment to begin with, and by the time the combined doses reach peak blood levels they may be more than you can handle.

Is GHB legal?

Depends - where are you?

Australia
GHB is illegal to sell, own, or produce [115]. However, it apparently enjoys some licit use in psychotherapy [114].

Canada
GHB was recently moved to Schedule III (if the categories are the same as in the US, this means it is acknowledged to have some medical value but also abuse potential), making possession illegal without a perscription. Prior to 19 March 1998, it was legal to import for personal use, so outdated information on this score may still be around [149].

UK
GHB is not regulated by the Misuse of Drugs act, so synthesis and consumption are completely legal. The Medicines act prohibits sale without a perscription [112].

South Africa
GHB is not restricted under South Africa's version of the Medicines act and is thus legal to possess, use, and sell. However, the authorities are reportedly attempting an informal crackdown on casual use, to the point that Biogenesis, a major reseller of GHB powder based in South Africa, refuses to sell within the country. See the suppliers FAQ for other options.

USA
Since 1990 it has been illegal to sell GHB for human consumption, and the FDA seems fairly serious about cracking down on violators [87]. They cannot make simple possession illegal, however (hence the popularity of GHB-making kits). The DEA has not yet regulated it (which would make owning or synthesizing it highly illegal), although things appear to be moving in the direction of adding GHB to schedule I^* [14], putting it in the distinguished company of crystal meth and crack. Individual states have the power to illegalize it within their own jurisdictions, an option which the FDA and DEA have been pressing them to exercise. So far, such laws have passed in Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Texas [111].

This information is obviously incomplete and subject to change. Please contact me if you have any corrections or additions.

What is GHB commonly called?

1. Liquid X / Liquid Ecstasy^* - Probably the most common street name, this evidently comes from raves and clubs in which GHB is prized for its disinhibiting^* effects. While some may find it similar to MDMA^* [68], the two drugs are chemically and neurologically completely different.

2. Cherry meth, scoop, Georgia Home Boy, soap, GBH, Grievous Bodily Harm - "Soap" is probably a reference to the taste of GHB. The latter two are evidently the product of a heretofore unobserved dyslexic prohibitionist subculture.

3. Gamma-OH, Sodium Oxybate, gamma-hydrate, Somatomax PM - Brand names from various pharmaceutical companies. Gamma-OH is used by Laboratorie Egic of France, which sells it commercially in a banana-flavored syrup. Sodium Oxybate is produced by Biocraft Labs and Sigma for relief of narcolepsy^* and other sleep disorders (the only use approved in the US, and that on only a limited research basis) [51].

4. Nature's Quaalude^* - Apparently confined to the weightlifting culture of the early 1990's [69]. Neither the biological nor the experiential effects of GHB are particularly similar to quaaludes ("downers").

5. easy lay - If someone refers to GHB by this name, it's time to leave, or perhaps to engage your ultimate kickboxing skills. This "date-rape" reputation doesn't need to travel any further.

6. Gamma-hydroxybutyrate, sodium gamma-hydroxybutyrate, sodium-4-hydroxybutyrate, 4-hydroxybutyric acid - technical names. Aside from the first, you're unlikely to see any of these outside of a chemical or pharmaceutical catalog.

7 . "Exothermic^* reaction kit" - To circumvent laws that forbid the sale of GHB for human consumption within the US, internet outfits almost uniformly offer the chemicals needed to easily synthesize GHB as teaching tools, the premise being that there is a vast market willing to pay $50-200 for the privilege of watching a reaction that is visually indistinguishable from baking soda in vinegar. Brand names include Power On/Power Off and Whi-zzzzz, or in some less paranoid cases "GHB exothermic reaction kit."

What about Hillory Farias?

      A sad story, no matter where one stands on prohibition. In September of 1996, this innocent and well-reputed 17 year-old went to a dance club in her hometown of La Porte, TX, where she spent the night with friends, drinking Sprite. That night, she suddenly and inexplicably died. Analysis found no drugs or alcohol showing up in her blood [61].

      Then, someone thought to check for the sinister new date rape drug, GHB. There it was, 27mg/kg [42] - far more than natural concentrations, but reachable with a dose of less than 2g. Open and shut. In her death, all GHB's sins remembered: The secret administration, the sudden death, the low, reasonable dose that yet can kill.

      If you've been paying attention so far, at least one siren should be sounding.

      GHB's effects do not develop over many hours; any conceivable toxicity, normal or abnormal, should have appeared within fifteen minutes. Hillory drove herself home and said goodnight to her grandmother; a theoretical dose huge enough to kill her would have made both of these activities impossible.

      If not the drug, then, what killed Hillory Farias? In their seminal book on GHB [151], Dean et al. claim that the coroner eventually determined that she suffered from a congenital heart disease, and was in fact killed by a cardiac thrombosis - a blood clot.

      This convenient resolution, though, ignores the GHB that was present in her body. Did Hillory simply have the unbelievable misfortune to be chemically assaulted and suffer heart failure in one hellish night?

      It seemed that we were forced to this improbable conclusion, until Fieler, et al. turned up a surprising new piece of this puzzle[140]. In a test of their GHB assay technique, they were able to detect GHB levels of up to 168mg/L in the blood of cadavers that had not ingested any! Barring the possibility of a desperately confused necrophiliac at the coroner's office, it seems that the body may produce huge quantities of endogenous^* GHB when near death. Considering various findings that GHB protects the brain [141] and organs [30] from low-oxygen conditions, and the body's own use of GHB to reduce oxygen consumption [45], it seems reasonable to theorize that a death due to loss of circulation would naturally lead to the production of high levels of GHB during (or after) the final moments. Note that this is, as of now, by no means a supported or peer-reviewed conclusion, but I hope to soon have it critiqued by minds armed with medical training.

GHB myths:
GHB has no dose-response curve!!!!

In other words, there is no reliable relationship between the amount of GHB you take and what happens to you. A dose that gets you high tonight might land you in the emergency room tomorrow, or in Tahiti two days from now. GHB isn't a biological agent, it's the devil in a teaspoon^*!

Perfectly untrue. Granted, the borderline between doses that will make an individual euphoric^* vs. dormant is thin, but the areas enclosed are reasonably wide (That is, most people have a good margin between an effective dose and a soporific^* one, but there may not be much warning that a dose is close to pushing them over). All other things (e.g., mental state, physical fatigue, presence of food in the stomach) being equal, GHB's effects vary no more than other drugs'. Even opponents of GHB admit, in more sober moments, that the dose-response curve does exist [34].

GHB will stop your lungs!!!!

GHB does slow one's breathing, and this tends to make medical professionals very jumpy. Not knowing why their patient has such depressed respiration, they intubate^*, and when the GHB wears off in its natural handful of hours, credit themselves with a daring raid into the very keep of death to steal back the precious soul under their care. What they do not know is that GHB's other physiological effects cause those sparse breaths to take in more air, and may also induce changes in oxygen use and metabolism that leave actual oxygen/carbon dioxide levels unchanged [45].

Please know that I'm not talking about GHB mixed with alcohol, heroin, marijuana, Valium or other benzodiazepides, SSRIs like Prozac, MAO inhibitors, or anything else. Alcohol and other depressants, at least, have been shown to truly make GHB as dangerous as you may have heard.

Note: The above may appear belittling of physicians, nurses, EMTs, and others who labor for our health. I in fact have great respect for those who seek to understand the body and all its wonderful mechanisms, and who use them for the good of others. In the absence of other useful knowledge, their reaction to GHB-induced coma is not even unreasonable. In terms of treating the condition, however, it is wildly inappropriate. Thus, it is up to the user to stay out of their hands!

GHB is paint thinner and lye!!!!

Forget GHB! Did you know there's a drug regularly used by well over 50% of the population that's made out of an EXPLOSIVE metal and a POISON gas? And it can cause heart attacks! Paint thinner don't look so bad anymore, eh?

The chemically-educated probably recognize the substance in the above rant as NaCL, table salt. The situation with GHB is similar: Gamma-butyrolactone, which is a chemical in industrial solvents, and sodium hydroxide^*, the active ingredient in lye^*, undergo a chemical change on the molecular level which makes them into something quite user-friendly. It is for the purpose of ensuring that whatever you consume is, in fact, real GHB without any of the above adulterants that I recommend you make your own.

GHB can cause heart failure!!!!

The only case I have ever heard that can possibly be interpreted this way is the Hillory Farias story, which has been totally discredited.

GHB is a new synthetic "designer^* drug" about which we know nothing!!!!

GHB was first synthesized by Henri Laborit in 1960 as a possible anaesthetic and a method of raising GABA^* levels in the brain. Since then, hundreds of studies have administered widely varying quantities to alcoholics, narcoleptics, chronic depressives, pregnant women, and the occasional "normal." What we know about GHB fills volumes, and one persistent piece of knowledge that bridges the span of decades is that no study has ever reported any of the dire effects alleged by prohibitionists.

So, in a way, I suppose they are right. GHB is a drug about which they know nothing.

EPILOGUE So, why did you write this again?

     Look, I'm angry. GHB, used recreationally, is a safe, nontoxic, and by most accounts more pleasant alternative to alcohol, which causes brain damage and organ toxicity, hangs in the body far longer, and can leave the user ruined the next day. Yet my government has made the poison friendly and acceptable, and the relaxing, useful substance a dire threat! Drug users - even those who can cut through the mountains of propaganda - are forced to choose between toxicity and felony. I find it completely unacceptable to live in a society where alcohol is the accepted "drug of convenience" and is consumed thoughtlessly, by default - which it is. Not without assuming the most paternalizing infantilization or the worst incompetence can I comprehend laws that tell responsible, nonabusive adults that they can safely consume two or three socially approved drugs but that they cannot be trusted with others. I want to destroy the lies and manipulations, and the institutional abuse of power, that make this deplorable situation possible.

     And because you, dear reader, deserve some big fun.

-Michael Cohn, 28 April 1998

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