Jan Gerber discusses the rising use of a potent drug on TalkRADIO
Gamma hydroxybutyrate, better known as GHB, is growing in popularity but a tiny dose can have a devastating impact. The Paracelsus Recovery CEO talks to Trisha Goddard about its dangers, listen in or read the full transcript below.
To listen to the interview follow the link, click on the 14:00–14:30 time slot and skip ahead to 03:40–17:08 Uhr
Interviewer: I’m joined now by Jan Gerber, who’s founder and CEO of the Paracelsus Recovery Group. Now he’s warning that it’s a silent epidemic of GHB addiction. Nobody’s talking about it. And you have to remember, just a tiny amount can cause coma or death. Very scary indeed, and something that I want to know more about. Jan, thank you for your time this afternoon.
Jan: Hello, it’s my pleasure.
Interviewer: So, Jan, for most of us, we are going to be complete novices about this drug. What is it? What are the dangers?
Jan: I would say that there are two major danger points. One is that the effective dose to produce the euphoria and the high that people seek from the drug and the overdose are actually very close together. For most other drugs, in order to overdose, you really have to take way too much. So, there’s a lot of overdoses that just happen inadvertently, because of that. And the other big risk is that it’s a very addictive drug. Addiction or dependence, both chemically, physically as well as emotionally, psychologically can really happen just after a couple of uses within a couple of weeks.
Interviewer: Wow, that quick!
Jan: That makes it a very dangerous drug to withdraw from it. So, if somebody develops a dependence and maybe doesn’t even realize and stops taking it, one of the acute symptoms is acute suicidality. So people might seem fine now, and one minute later, they might actually seek to take their life because they fall into a complete dark hole. And that’s unique to this drug.
Interviewer: So, let me just take it here. How do people take it? It’s a liquid, isn’t it? So, you’re saying that the difference between that euphoria and possible death is what? A drop? Something that minuscule?
Jan: In essence, though, it depends on how far it’s diluted, but it kind of can literally be a few drops. And what we’ve actually heard and seen from especially the party people, the rave scene, people who go out to a party at clubs all night, they set a timer on the phone when they can take a dose, and before the timer is up, they cannot take another dose. Otherwise, the risk overdosing. So, it’s actually that close. So, you know, 10 15 minutes can make a difference of life or death.
Interviewer: Wow. Do you think that if an ambulance is called or medics arrive, do they even know about this drug?
Jan: That’s the big problem we see and that’s why we want to bring awareness to this drug, is that we believe that in a lot of emergency instances and also the post-mortems, the drug is not actually identified as a cause of the emergency or death.
Interviewer: why is that? Why is that? Does it not show up? Well, why is that?
Jan: Well, A, it’s not regularly tested for yet. So, in a regular postmortem of somebody who would be picked up in a in a nightclub, you would test for your usual drugs, cocaine and so on and ecstasy. But GHB is not regularly tested for, that’s one thing. And the other thing is that, basically, the chemical traces of it leaves the body quite quickly. So, if a post-mortem happens 24 hours later, there might be little or no proof or no traces left.
Interviewer: Now, why do people take it? I said sometimes it’s referred to as like the cheaper version of cocaine, so I’m guessing. Is it cheap? Is it widely available and why? What is the purpose? You talked about the rave scene, but what do people take it for?
Jan: I mean, the danger of it is a combination. It’s very easy to produce. It’s quite cheap to produce and technically everybody could easily do that. Whereas, you know, to produce cocaine in your home, it wouldn’t be that easy. So it’s widely available. It’s not expensive, and it creates a euphoria. From users we talk to, it’s really many times more potent than cocaine would be. So it’s a much stronger euphoria, much stronger hit. It gives strong confidence. It gives total happiness. So it’s a typical party drug and as you mentioned in the introduction as well, it came initially into the mainstream through chemsex. It was used mostly for chemsex, and also in the LGBTQ community in big cities.
Interviewer: For people who don’t understand what that means, obviously, to heighten sexual enjoyment, et cetera. So, it came in, but now it seems to have gone beyond that market. Is that what you’re saying?
Jan: Exactly. So, it significantly increases, you know, sexual pleasure. And so that’s why people started taking it for sexual activities and then people realized it generally gives a euphoria. And especially in the UK and in Holland, it’s really in the mainstream clubbing and raving.
Interviewer: Yeah. And that is derived from paint stripper or something like that?
Jan: Exactly. So, it’s a paint stripper industrial solvent. It’s basically a derivative that’s quite easily made. And again, that’s why it’s so easily available because these are kind of derivative illegal substances that are quite easy to produce.
Interviewer: Now you said that one of the things, it becomes addictive really quickly after maybe a couple of times. But do you think that many addiction centers or any addiction centers know how to treat someone? Because if you’re saying that withdrawal can be so dangerous, you surely have got to have specialized services. And if doctors and medics can’t even diagnose it, when they see someone who’s overdosed. How on earth do they go about treating it?
Jan: You’re exactly right, and that’s a massive dilemma. I mean, our health care system all over the world, especially in the western world, is already overburdened, in the mental health space, with drugs, with alcohol and generally not with COVID anyways. So that’s one thing. The other thing is that really people are not aware, and that’s why we tried to bring this awareness out there. Also, specialized addiction rehab centers, who would take patients who were need to withdrawal from cocaine or heroin or other drugs, they often turn away GHB dependence individuals because of the risks. And one of the big risks is really the suicidality I mentioned. Technically, somebody who comes down from a high dose of GHB should go to a closed ward, which we know are rarely available, are very expensive and nobody really wants to go there. So, it’s really a big dilemma that there is no solution for at this moment.
Interviewer: Wow. I mean, so basically, if you’re coming down off the drug, you need to be, as you say, in close or secure wards where people can watch you the whole time. Now, you also talked about the number of people using this and you call it a silent epidemic. So, I’m guessing you’re saying there are far, far more people using this than the drug world and medics and rehab centers realize.
Jan: Exactly. And I mean, we are absolutely certain that the number of uses and also the number of complications from hospitalization emergencies or deaths are massively higher than any statistics would show. But you can’t put the finger on it exactly because nobody measures that. It’s not regularly tested for. People are not regularly interviewed for it, either. And when a user is admitted to hospital, as we all know, they don’t always tell the whole truth of why they ended up in the hospital. We had a few clients who know people who died of the drug and in the postmortem, the drug was not mentioned. And so nobody will go afterwards and say, actually, you know, it must have been GHB. They would say it was probably a heart attack and so on, because nobody wants to implicate themselves into having been using this drug, or around people who have used the drug.
Interviewer: So, you mentioned heart attacks, and I mentioned when I was introducing you, that a coma can occur. Tell us about some of the health impacts of this drug. And you know, you talked about how the difference between a few drops or how concentrated it was can be huge. But what are the results health wise?
Jan: Basically, the drug is a central nervous system depressant, but it works in a very complex way on the nervous system and actually leads to changes in the neural structure quite quickly. It can be after really just a use or two that there is lasting damage and there are two risks. One is obviously the overdose. So the central nervous system gets depressed so much that the essential functions can’t be performed anymore. That’s our breathing and our heartbeat. And so that’s where the heart attack comes in. So people can go either into a coma or their heart can just stop beating. And the other risk factor is that regular users need to maintain a certain intake of the drug because the body has built both a dependence and a tolerance to it. So, stopping the drug use can then lead to dangerous side effects. It’s in a way comparable to other drugs. But symptoms are and the effects are much more acute. So, the danger is much more acute.
Interviewer: So, your rehabilitation center, how does it differ from others when it comes to it? Well, the fact is that you do take people withdrawing from GHB. So, what is it that you do and how do you withdraw someone from this drug?
Jan: Basically, the withdrawal works similarly to any other substance. It’s basically just in small steps over a period of time. That can be a week or two. It can be longer. It depends a bit on the starting dose. Frankly speaking, if that’s medically supervised, there’s a clear withdrawal protocol in place that can be done relatively safely. And why most rehabs don’t like to admit GHB use, is really that suicidality risk.
Interviewer: Do you have to lock your clients up then?
Jan: We have the luxury that, the way we are set up, as a more highly priced rehabilitation center, that we have a much higher staff to patient ratio than the public sector would have. So we can actually, we would watch them 24 hours through all the critical periods and some time after that. Absolutely.
Interviewer: Now I mentioned also that earlier in the year, Priti Patel, the home secretary in the U.K., put this drug, GHB, into the Class B category. And I think a lot of that was as a fallout after those very prolific murders where it was used to drug people. And we’ve been talking about spiking, you know, in nightclubs. And so, this is altogether very scary and brings a whole new complexion to it. If you can’t see it and it’s a liquid, how do police find it? How do you do raids? I mean, it’s very different with marijuana or cocaine or even ecstasy. They are hard pills, but I’m guessing that even testing kits wouldn’t be out there. I mean, how do you police a drug like this?
Jan: Well, that’s an excellent question, and I mean, obviously, law enforcement is not our expertise, but my opinion is that moving this drug from the Class C to a Class B essentially makes absolutely no difference. People who would use it, would use it anyways. People who have access to it, would have access to it anyways. And as you correctly say, it’s a bit like LSD, for instance, it’s impossible to police if you can’t find it. It’s in little vials. It’s an odorless, colorless liquid. It could be hidden in water bottles and so on. So it’s impossible to police it unless there’s a very clear tip off, of course, of where this is produced. But because it doesn’t need the massive infrastructure to produce it, there won’t be massive processing centers as there are with other drugs. This can happen in very decentralized processes by small producers. They’d also know people who produce it, you know, in their group of friends. And then there’s maybe 10, 20, 30 people who produce it and use it amongst themselves. So that’s absolutely impossible to police, of course.
Interviewer: Oh my gosh, it makes it very scary. So, I guess the only way forward is education, education and making people aware of it and talking about the dangers which we’ve done today with your help. Thank you so much Jan. Something definitely to think about. Jan Gerber from the Paracelsus Recovery Group. Wow. That puts a whole even scarier complexion on this whole spiking debate.
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