this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 29 points 1 month ago (3 children)

There's people who haven't heard of GHB? Most people know it as rape date drug or something similar.

[–] Ilandar@aussie.zone 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I had a look at the other names it's known by but nah, never heard of it.

[–] goodthanks@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

The media used to refer to it as grievous bodily harm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-ZFEhBPS9E

[–] Baku@aussie.zone 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Interesting. I've heard of GHB but didn't know it was one of those. I've only heard of roofies being used. But I don't generally keep up with what's happening in the drug world

[–] NoiseColor@startrek.website 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This thing has been around for decades.

[–] Baku@aussie.zone 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I've only been around for 1.7, so there's my problem ig

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Fair enough. I would gently recommend to stay away from G. It's a dangerous and addictive drug and fairly easy to come by in big cities.

[–] NoiseColor@startrek.website 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It's a bit dangerous, mainly because of difficulties dosing, but it's not addictive at all.

[–] unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Please don't promote illicit drug use in this community

[–] NoiseColor@startrek.website 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Speaking facts is promoting?

[–] unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You could be promoting it since you don't have a reliable source to back up your claim and could be completely full of shit to justify your own habits - or not. It depends and I don't want to go researching illicit substances

[–] NoiseColor@startrek.website 1 points 1 month ago

In a post below someone shared an article about it.

But generally I don't speak in a way to add a peer reviewed scientific study below everything I say. Nobody does. Because it would be incredibly stupid and inefficient to do it, especially under some irrelevant comment in an irrelevant thread no one besides us will ever read. Incredibly stupid.

[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't think you're promoting it, but hosting web services in Australia often gets MIB knocking on your door so I get the admin's sketchiness.

It is false so say it's not addictive at all. It is pleasurable and you could form a dependency on it that could be lethal to withdraw from like all GABAergic drugs. I have personally never see that, and because if it's short halflife it would be difficult, but it's not hard to imagine someone getting a bit too into the pleasure.

That said even if someone was taking it every single time they would go drinking and they did that frequently it would still be safer than alcohol.

Still, be honest about drugs. you can fuck your life up with just about anything and nobody should use something under the false notion it's harmless/risk free.

[–] NoiseColor@startrek.website 1 points 1 month ago

Sure, but then you could say that about almost everything. It would be very hard to imagine someone getting addicted to ghb. I have never heard of that.

I think when talking about drugs we have to be truthful. Especially to kids. Exaggerating and trying to scare with some imaginary addictive properties doesn't work, because when some of them figure out it's all a lie, they will not recognize other harmful patterns of behavior that might truly get them addicted.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

You are talking out of your fucking arse why not see what actual scientists have to say?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140673607604644

The first author was the former head of the advisory council to the UK. They rank GHB as less habit forming than almost everything else scoring a 1.19 vs alcohol's 1.93 or heroin's 3. Steroids are at 0.8, for context.

[–] Salvo@aussie.zone 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I remember it being sold in the 90s as a “designer drug” called “Grievous Bodily Harm”.

Every few years, it is re-marketted as a new designer drug to be fashionable. These Drug dealers are nearly as dishonest as Real Estate Developer and Tech Bros.!

[–] Fetus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

I picked up some G the other week. My dealer described it as a renovator's delight with native AI integration.

[–] dumblederp@aussie.zone 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

I took heaps of G back in the day. Good fun. Follow the rules.

No Alcohol.
Wait at least two hours before re-dosing.
When starting creep up to work out your allowed dose, eg, try 2ml, nothing, wait two hours (use a timer), try 2.5ml, nothing, wait 2h+, try 3ml, etc. Most of the girls I was hanging with were about 2ml, most of the guys 2.5-3ml. It took me a while because I was 4ml, but I'm a big dude. Some people seemed to have some tolerance or susceptibility, maybe start with 1ml if you're a smaller stature person.
You can't take more to get higher, you'll just od, it's a very binary effect. Adding another 0.5ml to see what happens is where you get in trouble. If it's happened and you're G'd, that's your dose.
Repeat the dosage testing process with new batches.

The effect itself is like being drunk, euphoric and HORNY. I stopped taking it because I was single and it was simply frustrating.

They used to give out "Say no to G" stickers at warehouse parties. Ravers would en masse slap them on people being stretchered out by paramedics.

[–] trk@aussie.zone 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Sounds amazing. Half a ml away from an overdose to feel as if you're drunk.

[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago

Yeah so if you're taking anything potent you should dilute it first. A dose is like 1-3 g with 7 g onwards becoming extremely dangerous.

Like alcohol you it varies based on body mass/stomach content/fatigue/random biological factors. Like only someone with a deathwish would start a night of drinking by skulling half a bottle of vodka you absolutely should not be ingesting unknown fluids you got off some random (that are hopefully dyed to prevent confusion with water/make dosing someone's drink harder) at a dose you expect to be near heavy.

In a sane world you would get like 3 packs of 1 g doses or something with childproofing. Those doses would be diluted in a larger volume of fluid. We don't live in that world so it's about as predictable as random homebrew moonshine.

As always if someone is going to take drugs they should get them tested (cantest in the act will do it if you live there), have a sober friend, and be in a safe location.

[–] dumblederp@aussie.zone 3 points 1 month ago

"To feel as if you're drunk" is an unfair appraisal of what being G'd feels like. I should've said it's one of the many enjoyable intoxicants that man has discovered. Half a ml is only perspective. No one is free pouring g hoping to get the correct dose, use a 5ml graduated syringe. Have you seen the amount of fentanyl it takes to kill someone, half a ml of fent would kill lots and lots of people.

[–] goodthanks@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

I remember going to a doof in gippsland in 2010 (noise poison) and cops were searching cars on the way in (unusual for the party size) because another doof at the same site 2 weeks prior had a violent incident that was blamed on GHB. It had a bad reputation amongst people I knew at doofs.

[–] Notyou@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

Yeah, I love drugs and all, but this seems like too much math to do when I'm trying to get messed up. I can track X amount of drinks per hour easier.

[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 month 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 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 1 month ago

interactions with alcohol.

[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month 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.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 4 points 1 month ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


This March, a survey of drugs detected in Australian wastewater sparked familiar headlines: "meth up, alcohol down", "heroin's a big hit".

The annual study by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) ignites fresh debate among commentators every year, but according to its own principal advisor on drugs, Shane Neilson, it's not a perfect picture of what's happening in the illicit market.

GHB is a clear, flavourless liquid that induces euphoria and relaxation in small doses, earning a subculture of users among the rave and chemsex communities.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, attendees at a Victorian music festival early this year were well aware of the threat posed by GHB overdoses, repeating one word for the symptoms that can follow:

"I used to work in King St in Melbourne and you see people blowing out every weekend," he told Hack, referring to a night club area in the CBD.

The effort worked: Dr Caldicott and other experts agreed that GHB overdoses fell in the late 2000s as understanding of its risks grew in the community.


The original article contains 1,438 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 88%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone 2 points 1 month ago

A preemptive reminder for anyone not familiar:

It is against the community rules to promote anything that is illegal in Australia.

You are welcome to discuss the article and illicit drugs but not in a way to promote them for recreational use (exceptions can be made where there is scientific consensus).

[–] cornshark@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Why the clickbait? Just put the name of the drug in the title

[–] maculata@aussie.zone 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

“One millilitre — less than half a soy sauce fish — can be the difference between a safe dose of GHB and an overdose.”

I never use these soy sauce fish anyway, so I’m good.

Anyway, isn’t this shit the same stuff as the date rape drug and the stuff you could easily get from those sticky bead kids toys ?