DEATHS BY MIX-IT-YOURSELF DRUG RISING

WASHINGTON (AP) - Michael Tiedemann was pretty prompt for a
15-year-old, so when his blaring alarm clock and a friend's phone call
didn't rouse him for school, his stepfather got a bad feeling.

Opening the bedroom door, he found Michael dead.

Just lying there in bed, a kind of white froth at his lips and nose
the only clue to why he died.

An easy-to-get or mix-it-yourself drug - a growing craze for teens and
young adults - killed Michael, described by his parents as an
honor-roll student who loved karate and wanted to become a doctor.

The drug GHB is luring even people who insist they'd never touch
''real drugs'' like cocaine, who say it provides that relaxed,
uninhibited feeling of a few drinks but faster, cheaper and without
the telltale alcohol smell.

But GHB, usually sold as a colorless and odorless liquid but sometimes
as a powder, is dangerous. It causes sudden comas and seizures.
Originally developed as a surgical anesthetic, it depresses breathing.

Hospitals from Maryland to Colorado are reporting GHB poisonings
suddenly rising in the past year. Nobody really keeps count, but the
government estimates at least 32 people have died and 3,500 others
have needed treatment for overdoses since 1990.

Add Michael to that list. The coroner determined he vomited while in a
deep, GHB-induced sleep - and consequently, unable to awaken or turn
over as he could during normal sleep, suffocated.

His parents told Michael's story in hopes others will heed GHB's
dangers, but they contend even Michael's classmates in Fort Pierce,
Fla., still use the drug.

''They just don't think it will happen to them,'' says his mother,
Debbie Alumbaugh. ''If we can get this through to the kids, and one
more child does not die, then our child will not have died for nothing.''

Some teens say they were never warned. ''You tell us about marijuana
and alcohol every day. You should have told us about GHB,'' a Michigan
teen-ager told school officials there last spring after a 15-year-old
classmate also died from GHB.

Body builders first abused GHB in the early '90s. Then, easy to slip
into drinks, it became a date-rape drug.

Today, it's the latest trend, touted as a party drug or even a sex
enhancer.

''It is something that just doesn't seem to go away,'' says John
Taylor of the Food and Drug Administration, which banned the drug's
sale nationwide in 1991.

Just this year, the FDA has seized or ordered destroyed thousands of
vials of GHB sold under such names as Invigorate, Longevity and Blue
Nitro, shut down companies that sold GHB-mixing kits on the Internet,
and begun prosecuting distributors.

But the FDA can crack down only on makers or distributors. Twenty
states make GHB possession by an individual illegal, and Congress is
debating a similar federal law. But enforcement varies widely -
Florida is one of those states, but Michael Tiedemann's parents
complain the police never could ferret out who gave him GHB.

GHB is hard to stop, because people can mix up quarts at a kitchen
sink. Recipes abound on the Internet. All it takes are some common
chemicals - the main ingredient is a paint thinner.

One Internet recipe recommends storing GHB in glass in the
refrigerator, a very dangerous recommendation because it's so easy to
confuse with water. A Tennessee woman died in June after apparently
unknowingly drinking GHB from a water bottle in a friend's car.

But experts say most people willingly use GHB, hunting a quick high.
It's de rigeur on some nightclub scenes, where GHB's potency is made
far worse by alcohol.

''It's very easy to overdose,'' warns Dr. Sandra Frazier of the
University of Alabama, Birmingham, whose emergency room in a single
week treated six people in their 20s for GHB poisonings at area nightclubs.

Indeed, because one GHB batch can differ greatly from the next, a dose
that gave you a mild buzz one day could kill you the next, Frazier
warns.

If you know a friend has used GHB, don't leave them alone, she adds -
you may need to dial 911.

And remember GHB has lots of names. Aside from ''cherry meth,''
''liquid ecstasy,'' and ''Georgia homeboy,'' it's also touted by its
main ingredient, GBL or gamma butyrolactone - a paint-thinning
chemical that turns into GHB inside the body.