HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/drugs/new.view.from.on.high

Text File | 1996-05-06 | 6KB | 148 lines

Newsgroups: alt.drugs,talk.politics.drugs
From: [e-mail] (Darrell Fuhriman)
Subject: Article in Newsweek last
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1993 07:53:18 GMT

Wow!  The media finally did an objective treatment of drug use.
I guess change really is coming....

The article is very objective and deals with the facts.  (What a
novel idea!)

Anyway, here it is.  Errors are mine etc etc.  Reproduced without
a bit of permission.

THE NEW VIEW FROM ON HIGH
TRENDS: A wave of new drugs flood the clubs

Most Americans reacted to the death of River Phoenix in October
with at least a sigh of sympathy.  Among a certain set, though,
it sparked a grim curiosity.  Early press reports of the
actor's death by overdose mentioned GHB, an obscure and
dangerous steroid substitute occasionally gulped down by West
Coast thrill seekers.  Never mind that according to a Los
Angles coroner's report GHB was not found in the actor's
body.  And never mind, too , that it's scarcely available
outside a few Los Angeles nightspots.  The hunt was on.  "I'd
never heard of GHB before.  No one in New York had," Said a
Manahattan drug user last week.  "This month it's the only
drug."

Even drug abuse is subject to the whims of fashion.  It's not
that the old standards have quit the scene.  Phoenix's death
was apparently caused by a mixture of morphine, cocaine and
other drugs.  But members of his generation, mainly middle class
and well educated, have turned to other more exotic highs to
fuel their nights.  Whether it's Ectstasy at raves or DMT to
launch the mind travel of self-styled "psychonauts," there's an
alphabet soup of designer drugs to choose from.  "It's a
different culture of use," says Carlo McCormick, and editor of
the New York trendsheet Paper  a student of drug culture.
"These drugs are serving the same function that has existed for
20 years.  They're just specific to a new generation."

And they're in plentiful supply.  Alexander Shulgin, a
pharmacologist at the University of California, Berkely, has
researched 179 potential intoxicants in one psychdelic family
alone, the phenethylamines.  Forced to lay a game of catch-up,
last week the Drug Enforcement Administration hastily added one
of them, 2C-B, to its schedule of controlled substances.  But
an informal survey last week by Miami club personality Julian
Bain found the 2C-B, sold under the street name Nexus, has
already become the number-three drug of choice in South Beach.

Of all the drugs in the designer pharmacoepia, the most popular
nationwide is MDMA, or Ectasy.  It's been 10 years since "X"
hit the bars, including some in Dallas where it could be bought
with a credit card.  Considered by many the ultimate "dance
drugs," X is often described as less disturbingly "trippy" that
LSD and more serene than cocaine, which are considered cruder
drugs.  The white pills of MDMA give feelings of empathy and
togetherness coupled with an up-all-night amphetamine rush.
Despite nine MDMA laboratory busts in 1992, the Department of
Health and Human Services reported 236 emergency room visits
involving the drug that year.

Designer-drug use tends to follow regional and demographic
trends.  With all the high-tech choices, getting high can now
mean getting fairly specific.  The New York City nightclub
Bump! isn't named after the goofy disco dance, says staffer
Marc Berkley  It's a tounge-in-cheek reference to a dose of
ketamine (street name: Special K), a surgical anesthetic snorted
by much of the club's mainly gay clientele in an attempt to
magnify dance floor sensations like lights, music and rhythm.
The club has a 100-foot twisting slide lined with flashing
lights.  It's called the "K-Hole," the slang term for the
episodes of numbed confusion that ketamine can induce.

HEAD RUSH:  San Fransisco's small but devoted DMT scene is a
far more serious set.  The orange powder causes a violent head
rush that devotee Terence McKenna, author of "True
Hallucinations," says can be used as an "epistemological tool"
to understand the world.  McKenna's trancelike public readings
attract hundreds of fans.  But if anyone's actually smoked the
stuff, he's far from the crowd -- anathema to the herd
mentality bred by MDMA and ketamine.  DMT has a nasty side
effect: total physical collapse.  "You're supposed to have
someone there to take the pipe out of your hand," says Lon
Clark, 27, a rave lighting designer who's seen it smoked.

In the clubs, advocates of the designer drugs claim
psychological benefits including everything from enhanced
self-image to emotional insight.  Scientists, however, know
little about the drug's effects.  Dr. George Ricaurte or Johns
Hopkins recently found signs of damage to the nerves that
release the neuro-transmitter serotonin in former MDMA users.
But Rick Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association
for Psychedelic Studies, A North Carolina group that promotes
MDMA testing worldwide, disputes whether such effects are
lasting or significant.  Dr. Charles Grob of UC, Irvine, plans
to test MDMA for possible medical applications like pain
management for the terminally ill.  Step one, set to begin at
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, Calif., this month,
will seek to determine the drugs toxic effects on the body.
That's information from which young club-goers could profit.

BOX:

"Club Pharmacopeia"

Special K (Katamine)
Cost: $40-50 per half gram
Effect: Apparent weightlessness, disorientation
Who uses: Mainly New York Gays

Ecstasy (MDMA)
Cost $20-30 per pill
Effect: Introspection, euphoria
Who Uses: Ravers nationwide; British ravers and Soccer fans

GHB
Cost: $20 per ounce
Effect: Alcohol like drowsiness
Who Uses: Body Builders, West Coast club goers

DMT
Cost: $200 per gram
Effect: Extreme perceptual alteration; "out-of-body" hallucination
Who Uses: Serious "psychonauts"

Nexus (2C-B)
Cost: $25-35 per capsule
Effect: Giddiness, visual effects
Who Uses: Denziens of dance clubs in California and Florida

D Meth (methamphetamine)
Cost: $60-120 a gram
Effect: Long lasting manic energy
Who Uses: Formerly bikers/blue collar, now West Coast ravers

--
Darrell Fuhriman
"Hi mom!"