This is quite a long rant, but very informative if you're wondering what GBH is all about.

GBH is actually a substance called gammahydroxybutyrate (GHB), a chemical compound that can be synthesised from ingredients available on the internet (not that I’d know where to find that sort of information).  It was used as an anaesthetic agent in years gone by but due to unpredictable effects and nasty side effects it’s use was discontinued, until now.  Ravers around the world have discovered the pleasant high one can achieve if they get the dose right, (much like the “horse tranquilliser” Ketamine – also known as special K – which I use to sedate children so they’ll lie still while I do procedures on them at work ).  However what most people don’t realise is a basic concept of pharmacology (and life in general), which basically goes – If some fucker made this shit in his garage you probably shouldn’t put it in your mouth.  Seriously though I have heard all sorts of idiotic rationales why people think it’s OK to put a liquid chemical in their drink at 6am on a Sunday morning and try to dance away the day as if they were just having a cup of tea and a lamington.  What none of these drug fucked idiots understand are the basic concepts of pharmacological potency, efficay and therapeutic index.  Potency is the amount of drug required to produce an effect and efficacy is the maximum effect that a drug can produce.  The therapeutic index is the ratio of the toxic dose to the therapeutic dose.  Drugs that are very potent require a small dose to achieve a large effect.  Drugs with high efficacy can produce substantial clinical effects.  Drugs with a low therapeutic index have a narrow margin between the dose that does good things and the dose that kills you.  GBH has all of these characteristics.

Common street names
Blue nitro Cherry fX bombs Cherry meth Easy lay Everclear Firewater Gamma G Georgia homeboy G.H. revitalizer Gib Goops Great hormones at bedtime Grievous bodily harm G-riffick Growth hormone booster Insom-X Invigorate Lemon fXdrops Liquid ecstasy Liquid X Liquid E Longevity Natural sleep-500

Now imagine you’re a budding home pharmaceutical manufacturer, if you’ve decided to enter this arena chances are you’ve graduated through a series of drug-experiments on yourself and come out the other side with a false belief that you know something about what it takes to make good drugs.  Take it from me unless you are a biochemist, pharmacist, paramedic, nurse or doctor as well, you don’t know shit about drugs.  Now thanks to the internet you get the recipe for GBH, do some basic maths and figure you can make a small fortune selling it a rave this weekend. You carefully measure the quantities, whip up a batch, try a little taste and feel alright.  You sell a bunch of vials and everyone’s happy (except for the parents of the 2 or 3 kids who OD’d anyway because they were greedy little pigs and took too much).  So you figure next weekend you’ll double the quantities, sell more and make more cash, but you can’t find the second page of the instructions you printed out because you’re too stoned, and your flatmate knocked the bong over on the one page you have got, but you’re pretty sure you remember the proportions.  Little do you realise that even though you may have got the ingredients, temperatures and cooking times right, in your maths while you were figuring out quantities you missed a decimal point and the batch you make is now 10 times as potent (ie you need one tenth of the amount to get the same effect).  Suffice to say that the morons who bought from you last week will think they will be getting the same product they got last time, without realising that they will be ingesting 10 times the amount of active drug! Imagine “accidentally” taking 10 ecstasy tablets instead of one, or smoking 10 bongs instead of one!  Admittedly the same mistake can happen when making pills or powder, but there is only so much drug that can fit into one pill with all the filler that goes into them, and pills and powders are usually made with uppers so taking too much isn’t going to put you to sleep and stop you breathing, whereas with liquid drugs made from putting powder into liquid it is much easier to make mistakes and overdo the concentrations.  Also because you can buy the ingredients online any fuckwit with a credit card can do this at home.  So instead of everyone having fun, you end up with a bunch of kids requiring endotracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation in Emergency Departments across town.  (This is what happened at the Two Tribes Rave in Melbourne when a bad batch went around).  ie The therapeutic index was narrowed drastically which makes it a lot harder to gauge the dose required to keep you on the dancefloor but out of hospital.

Now here’s the good stuff – What happens when you take too much GBH.  It basically puts you into a fluctuating delirium. Meaning that your conscious state swings from being unconscious, (in a coma) and not breathing (ie minutes from death or permanent brain damage and at risk for inhaling the vomit that you will probably emit as you drank too much water/red bull/beer… well you will inhale it if you are lucky enough to still be breathing) through to being agitated, violent and at risk for falling and hurting yourself and others, and unable to speak coherently or do anything purposeful.  Loss of control of bodily functions is common (ie you shit yourself and piss yourself all over your $300 fluoro rave pants).  How long you stop breathing for depends on how much you took, and most people have no freakin idea how much they've ingested.  Depending on what other cocktail of shite you have ingested (especially other central nervous system depressants including alcohol, benzodiazepines eg valium, and the heroin and  ketamine mixed in the pills you took earlier) you may need even less GBH on board to experience an overdose.  Without medical attention people having a GBH overdose are at risk of imminent death from respiratory arrest (stopping breathing due to being oversedated), aspiration (inhaling vomit into your lungs), and usually need to have a tube put into their windpipe to protect their airway and be connected to a ventilator that will breathe for them for a few hours while the drug wears off.  Classically these idiots come in to ED via ambulance with their freaked out mates in tow who say “her drink got spiked”.  Admittedly this does happen, but very rarely, and when we wake the “victim” up in a few hours and ask them what they took, they always admit “I just took some G”.

If you see someone who you think may overdosing on GBH they need URGENT medical attention.  I have treated GBH overdose patients with profound hypothermia because they have been taken out to a car outside a rave and left in the backseat where and they lie unconscious for a couple of hours before any of their idiot friends think to call an ambulance, which puts them at even greater risk of death.

IF YOU SEE SOMEONE YOU THINK MAY BE OVERDOSING ON GBH – GET HELP IMMEDIATELY.

If you are at a venue, summon first aid or security.
If you are not at a venue or place where non-drug affected people can give assistance, CALL AN AMBULANCE.

DO NOT BE AFRAID THAT POLICE WILL BECOME INVOLVED BECAUSE IT IS A DRUG OVERDOSE.  VENUE, AMBULANCE AND HOSPITAL STAFF DO NOT NOTIFY POLICE OF DRUG OVERDOSES, THEY ARE ONLY CONCERNED WITH THE WELFARE OF THE PATIENT.

DON’T LISTEN TO THE PERSON’S FRIENDS (who will most likely be drug affected and not thinking straight) IF THEY SAY THE PERSON IS OK.  BEING UNCONCIOUS IS NOT OK! GET HELP EVEN IF THEY DON’T WANT IT. Especially as the effects of GBH can hit suddenly, and someone who is conscious but staggering one minute may be unconscious and not breathing the next.  Not calling an ambulance could cost someone their life, so don’t hesitate.

THE BOTTOM LINE IS GBH IS AN UNPREDICTABLE (possibly the most unpredictable illicit drug you can take) AND DANGEROUS DRUG.  IT’S EFFECTS CAN VARY WIDELY BETWEEN BATCHES, OR EVEN IN THE SAME BATCH BETWEEN DIFFERENT PEOPLE.  THE SAFEST THING TO DO IS NOT TO TAKE IT AT ALL.

Don’t get me wrong, I love an all night party as much as the next freak in fluoro yellow flares with glo-sticks stuck up their butt, but this Rant stems from me treating too bloody many teenagers who’ve OD’d on GBH and just go out and take it again the next week after they spent the previous weekend in Intensive Care.  Do yourself a favour, if you want to get smashed and have a good time go buy a couple of bottles of red wine, roll a few joints and check out my top 3 Ironic Movies.

By the way I will usually credit photos I've posted but I don't give a shit whose photos I've used in this section, you are a bunch of drug fucked losers and you are doing everyone a favour by showing us all what morons you look like while you're trashed so thanks for that, now fuck off, straighten out, get a life, and if you think you own one of the photos and you want it removed have your lawyer get in touch with me...

Yes that means you Pinky. Seriously... have a look at yourself.