this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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More emergencies than heroin, more arrests than cocaine. Why haven't you heard of this drug? (www.abc.net.au)
submitted 5 months ago by Baku@aussie.zone to c/australia@aussie.zone
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[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This article is scaremongering nonsense. GHB is a very safe drug by almost all metrics. It's endogenous so no allergies, it doesn't damage organs, it is not particularly habit forming, it is relatively short acting, it doesn't cause confusion about the world/erratic behaviour/psychosis. The one real risk is that it's a respiratory depressant and that it's LD 50 is only a few tens of times a standard dose rather than the millions of like LSD, putting it in the same category as alcohol there.

In a regulated market deaths would be a rarity, as it stands it's mostly people polydrug using who get hurt.

Fucking media in this country I swear, we need proper regulation and education if we want to save lives.

[–] WaterWaiver@aussie.zone 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

The one real risk is that it’s a respiratory depressant and that it’s LD 50 is only a few tens of times a standard dose

The article claims it's much closer than that:

Experts and festival-goers agreed on the likely cause of GHB's disproportionate overdose burden.

"As little as 1 millilitre difference can tip you from what you're looking for to what you're not looking for," Daniel Fatovich, chief investigator of EDNA, told Hack.

I tried to find some stuff to back this up. The "therapeutic index" is probably what I'm after (ratio of effective dose to dangerous dose), despite this technically not being a therapeutic use.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8843350/ - The narrow therapeutic index of GHB renders its use hazardous with poisoning or toxicity not uncommon with small titration of doses.

Thats... annoyingly nonspecific. A number for the T.I. would be a good educational tool.

This paper claims its around 5:1 to 8:1:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4462042/ - Mortality rates after abuse of GHB are high, because there is only a narrow safety margin between a recreational dose and a fatal dose, which is only 5:1 to 8:1 [4-8]. Accordingly, accidental poisoning after recreational use of GHB is not uncommon as evidenced by admissions to hospital emergency departments for treatment [9, 10] and during forensic medical investigations of drug intoxication deaths [11-14].

Someone else in the comments here mentioned that the recreational dosage for different individuals varies, if that's true then it could make this worse.

polydrug using who get hurt [...] education if we want to save lives

Agreed. Most people don't understand what's in pills they have bought or the interactions with alcohol.

[–] unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone 2 points 5 months ago

interactions with alcohol.

[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 months ago

dose is about 0.5 g for "a standard drink" type level. Usual recreational doses are 2-4 mg. About the same number of doses as alcohol for getting drunk.

Unconsciousness starts becoming likely around 7 g. severely depressed breathing around 10 g. Death gets dramatically more likely (although it's easy enough to keep someone alive with care). It's all in roughly the same ballpark as alcohol, just alcohol tends to make you upchuck the stuff that would fuck you.

Black market random dilutions are dangerous especially when mixed with alcohol. The real danger is dosing too much 1,4 butanediol which is a prodrug and so has a delayed effect. Obviously if people are given something different to what the expect that almost always massively increases risk.