SYDNEY'S KILLER DRUGS ON THE DANCEFLOOR

THE head of one Australia's largest emergency departments said his
ward was more like a private social and meteorological barometer.

He can tell if it is going to be a busy night just by the weather. He
can also detect whether a dance festival is in town.

And while he is no meteorologist, Dr Gordian Fulde knows just what
time of the year it is if his emergency department at St Vincent's
Hospital is full of young drunk people mid-week.

"I know that if it is stinking hot, if there is a band or dance
festival on and it's near summer that the silly season has started and
I am going to have a hell of a night," he said.

"I know when the Christmas party season is upon us because my Tuesday
nights are like Saturdays: I have really drunk people who have done stupid
things in my emergency department in the middle of the week."

From today, St Vincent's emergency director Dr Fulde will write a
weekly column for The Daily Telegraph

The trauma surgery veteran will traverse drug and alcohol issues and
other health-related trends he discovers, safety messages and an
insight of an emergency department.

Dr Fulde has been the eyes and ears of Sydney's streets as he has
worked often gruelling 12-hour shifts for the past 26 years.

Read His New City Hearbeat Column Below...

WHAT blew us away was the amount of people who came in after taking
the drug GHB or Fantasy, which is very unusual. We had half a dozen
very sick young women in resuscitation who had taken it.

They were all ladies in their 20s. One girl had the level of
consciousness of a dead person and we had to intubate her.

Since the Dianne Brimble case - the woman who was found dead in a
cruise ship cabin after taking GHB - girls have seemed to stay away
from it. Yet these women who ended up in emergency all chose to take
it.

It was quite an amazing and alarming weekend. It was very hot and
there was a dance festival on at Moore Park. We got some very heavy
duty fallout from that.

My secret hope is that Saturday night's scenario was a one-off and it
was a result of someone who managed to get into the dance festival and
sell it.

There was obviously someone in there selling caps of this stuff and it
was cheap, about $20 a cap. It was really scary stuff.

We had dozens and dozens of people come through emergency all Saturday
and they had all been at the dance festival. What was really alarming
was that all of them bought their drugs inside the festival. I am
amazed that drugs were so freely available in the venue.

Nearly all these people had started drinking before they got to the
festival. Some had kicked off about 10am drinking and then kept going
all day before they took drugs.

What was new to me and what stood out was there were people there at
the festival who were selling packets of ecstasy containing four to
five pills. I don't know if it's a new marketing system, but they sell
them cheaply rather than $30-$40 a pill. What happens is the person
who buys them takes them all and they end up in emergency with us.

These were normal people. They had normal jobs, some were
professionals and worked in offices, others worked in stores. They
were your everyday 9-5 people with all levels of income.

What is great about St Vincent's Hospital is its location.

People who take drugs in crowded places and fall down will be picked
up and taken here.

But if the hospital was a really long distance away and they had to
wait then they would probably die. That's what is really
frightening.

Some of these people we saw were extremely sick.

We also treated a man who is a regular user of cocaine and who
attended the festival. He had taken cocaine and suffered a mini
stroke, with his left side partially paralysed.

He had also been drinking vodka and energy drinks.

It was a deadly mixture and the message I want to get out there to
people is if they didn't drink too much and then didn't take drugs,
too many of them, or mix their drugs then they wouldn't end up with us
in emergency.

Some of these people stopped breathing. We put them on life support.