POWERFUL BLUE POTION IS PUTTING USERS IN HOSPITAL

Al Abramowitz was told the potion called Blue Nitro would boost his
sex drive, so he downed two capfuls. The next thing he knew, he was
throwing up on himself after having passed out in his car.

"If I had taken more of this, I would have choked to death on my own
vomit," Abramowitz, an epidemiologist, said Wednesday.

The potion has been linked to numerous overdoses in the past month,
San Francisco police said Wednesday. They will ask shop owners to stop
selling it.

Popular in the gay community and at all-night rave parties where drugs
are taken, Blue Nitro is being blamed for sending users to the
emergency room, some of them comatose, police said. "People have no
idea they're drinking paint thinner or floor stripper," said
narcotics Lt. Kitt Krenshaw.

Blue Nitro is made from gamma butyrolactone, a solvent added to paint
thinners, along with potassium, riboflavin and wintergreen oil. When
ingested, the liquid metabolizes into gamma hydroxybutyrate, or GHB, a
powerful synthetic central nervous system depressant that is one of
the so-called "date rape drugs."

Symptoms can be especially dangerous when taken with drugs or alcohol,
health officials said. Among the side effects are vomiting, increased
blood pressure, amnesia, seizures, delirium, loss of consciousness,
coma and sometimes death. There have been 26 GHB overdose deaths
nationwide since 1995, with six in California.

"It's a public health threat," said Jo Ellen Dyer, a pharmacist with
the California Poison Control System, which reported 151 GHB
poisonings in the last six months of 1998. Of those, at least eight
were linked to Blue Nitro.

Dyer said the makers have marketed Blue Nitro with false claims,
including these boasts: "deep rejuvenating sleep," "prosexual,"
"combat aging," "combat addiction," "lose weight" and "improve
athletic performance."

Rick Alvarez's West Palm Beach, Fla., company sells Blue Nitro, also
known as "Vitality." He told the San Francisco Examiner earlier this
week that Blue Nitro has no negative side effects when taken properly,
"but if you abuse it, there is a dark side."

Krenshaw said the product is illegal in California under the
Controlled Substances Act of 1996.