LETHAL CLUB DRUGS BRING NEW CONCERNS

MDMA. GHB. Keatmine.

They're known on the street as "Ecstasy." "grievous Bodily Harm."
"Special K." And other names.

These are not your father's, or your mother's drugs. These are the
Generation X of drugs.

The club drugs.

They've been around a few years. But they are becoming more and more
popular among today's youth, casting a dark cloud over the otherwise
downward trend in teen-age drug use.

Since January, Dr. Michael Ritter of Children's Hospital of Orange
County has counted at least 40 young people brought to the emergency
room in Mission Viejo for GHB-related overdose.

GHB, the initials for gamma-hydroxybutyrate, brings on sudden and
intense intoxication. It can cause respiratory depression, seizures,
comas.

Ecstasy provides the combined effects of a stimulant and a
hallucinogen. Prolonged use can produce memory impairment, paranoia.

Ketamine is similar to PCP. It's a legal sedative used for both
general anesthesia in humans and to tranquilize large animals. Users
sprinkle it on their cigarettes and marijuana, or snort it. It causes
hallucinations, violent behavior, loss of pain sensation.

The club drugs still trail alcohol, marijuana, speed and other more
traditional substances in popularity. But they are enough of a concern
to make them the topic of several recent drug-prevention forums held
in Orange County, one of which drew 250 people.

GHB is particularly worrisome to a veteran emergency-room physician
like Ritter, who has conducted some of those talks.

"This is one of the most dangerous drugs I've seen," Ritter says.
"Drink one shot of this stuff and you're high. Two shots and it's like
drinking a case of beer. Do three shots and you go into a coma."

The drug, originally developed as an anesthetic, is illegal. It's been
used as a treatment for narcolepsy. Derivatives can be bought in
underground "health food" stores or manufactured from ingredients and
directions available on the Internet.

No GHB-related deaths have been reported in Orange County. But three
young people have died in Riverside and San Diego counties this year
from the colorless, odorless, flavorless liquid that can get you
wasted in a matter of minutes vy just drinking a capful.

It's cheap - a capful sells for $2 or $3. It has a short half-life, so
users get high for a couple hours and then show no signs of
intoxication. It doesn't show up in regular drug screens, only in test
run by special lbs.

"They come in extremely intoxicated or completely comatose," Ritter
says of the emergency-room cases he's seen. "Then half of them have to
be put on a ventilator. They come out of the coma in a couple of hours."

Consider the experience of a 19-year-old woman he recently treated
when her boyfriend brought her to the emergency room on a Saturday
night.

The Dana Point woman spoke to the Register on the condition that we
not print her name because she is worried about her employer's reaction.

She had been at a party, drank a few beers and then took a friend up
on an offer to take a swig of what he said was "Firewater," a drink
like GHB, but one that she heard was legal and not as dangerous. The
friend told her he got it at a health-food store in the mall.

She didn't want to try GHB, even though "it's like the new thing. It's
at parties everywhere around here. But I heard that it was like the
date-rape drug."

She took the drink but felt nothing. It didn't hit her until a
half-hour later, as she left the party.

"All of a sudden it was like, boom. I started feeling really drunk and
I was stumbling."

Her boyfriend later told her what happened: She began throwing up
nonstop. She passed out. She stopped breathing. He thought she was
dying.

At the hospital, Ritter put a tube down her throat and hooked her up
to a ventilator to help her breathe. She was comatose for three or
four hours, then snapped right out of it. That's how GHB works, Ritter
says.

"I just started crying," she says. "I was completely
scared."

A young man next to her had been brought in for the same thing. He
wasn't unconscious, but he vomited repeatedly. Her father was there,
dumbfounded.

"He didn't know what it was at all. They had to explain it to
him."

Her head was pounding and her throat hurt from the tube, but otherwise
she had no side-effects.

Except a lasting fear.

"This taught me like a huge lesson, just not to try anything. Just
stick with drinking alcohol. It was such a shock to me."