DRUG USERS NOW USING EMBALMING FLUID

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Embalming fluid is becoming an increasingly
popular drug for users looking for a new and different high - one
that often comes with violent and psychotic side effects.

Users - mainly teen-agers and people in their 20s - are buying
tobacco or marijuana cigarettes that have been soaked in the fluid,
then dried. They cost about $20 apiece and are called by nearly a
dozen names nationwide, including ``wet,'' ``fry'' and ``illy.''

``The idea of embalming fluid appeals to people's morbid curiosity
about death,'' said Dr. Julie Holland of New York University School
of Medicine. ``There's a certain gothic appeal to it.''

Formaldehyde can be bought in drug stores and beauty supply stores.
(It is an ingredient in nail care products). It is also available in
many school science labs. In addition, there have been reports of
embalming fluid thefts from funeral homes in Louisiana and New York.

Although there are no national statistics on usage, many drug experts
say it appears to have spread from the inner cities to well-to-do
suburban neighborhoods and college campuses.

``Whether they live in a million-dollar house or a $5,000 house, kids
who are smoking pot or crack and are looking for a different type of
high are turning to wet,'' said Julie Kirlin, a juvenile probation
officer in Reading, about 50 miles from Philadelphia.

Embalming fluid is a compound of formaldehyde, methanol, ethanol and
other solvents. The high depends on what the user is really getting:
Often the drug PCP is mixed in. In fact, PCP has gone by the street
name ``embalming fluid'' since the 1970s.

Twenty Houston-area users interviewed for a 1998 study by the Texas
Commission on Drug Abuse said the effects include visual and auditory
hallucinations, euphoria, a feeling of invincibility, increased pain
tolerance, anger, forgetfulness and paranoia. Stranger symptoms
reported include an overwhelming desire to disrobe and a strong
distaste for meat.

Other symptoms may include coma, seizures, kidney failure and stroke.
The high lasts from six hours to three days.

``Fry users are described like those who do a lot of inhalants -
they're just spaced-out, dissociative,'' said Jane Maxwell of the
National Institute on Drug Abuse's Community Epidemiology Work Group.
When they've taken PCP, ``they come into the emergency room and are
just wild. They have to be strapped down in their beds or they
destroy the room.''

In the Philadelphia suburb of Morrisville, a 14-year-old boy fatally
stabbed a 33-year-old neighbor more than 70 times last year after
smoking wet. The boy, who said he took wet to quiet the voices in his
head, is serving a seven-year sentence.

``This is a violent drug, and it will turn into a big fire if it's
not watched very closely,'' Kirlin said.

On the Net:

Texas study: http://www.tcada.state.tx.us/research/fry.html