AHS Views

A 24-year-old guy died in England recently after having intentionally ‘overdosed’ on a ‘party drug’ to which he was ‘addicted.’ Why are all those words in quotes? Because there was actually no ‘party drug’, and no ‘overdose.’ What he actually did was take gamma butyrolactone (GBL) – a solvent used as paint stripper and to remove things like superglue. It is also used as a ‘recreational intoxicant.’ He’d been addicted to it for years. His mother said he could not get addiction help because the doctors he saw didn’t know enough about it. He eventually left a suicide note, and then took so much of it that it killed him.

He started using this chemical to get high when he went to university. By his third year, he was so ‘crippled’ by the addiction that he left school and went home.

His mom could do little to help him. At first, she was not aware that he was taking this chemical, or any drugs. He was suffering from anxiety, paranoia and was sometimes manic and psychotic. His mom took him to a doctor and the doctor prescribed antidepressants. Unbelievable – not that the guy was depressed, who wouldn’t be under those circumstances – but that a doctor would give someone such a dangerous drug with so many disastrous side effects (including wanting to kill yourself) without, apparently, even checking into his physical health, whether he was taking drugs, and so on.

According to the story, his brother and sister tried to take care of him while he was trying to stop taking GBL. With no help from doctors or drug rehab specialists.

Obviously, a regular family doctor isn’t going to have much information on something like this. You would need a specialist in drug rehab – they’ve seen just about everything. And he would have had to go into a residential drug addiction treatment program to get help.

It is amazing that people will take something like this to get high. It is so obviously poison. How could anyone use something that dissolves superglue as a recreational drug. But hundreds of thousands of kids use these chemicals.

Parents need to be aware of this possibility. The tendency, of course, would be to completely discount it – most parents wouldn’t even consider it as something their kid might do because it is really so crazy. Who would think their kid would do it?

But, they do.

One of the signs of substance abuse is change in behavior. If that happens to your child, look at the possibility of drug abuse – including glue sniffing, sniffing or injecting things like GBL and other solvents, and so on.

Even if kids do manage to live through it, the damage to the brain from these chemicals can be so severe that it might be impossible to reverse.

Stay in touch with your kids – get to know them, be aware of whether or not they are going through changes and dig in to find out what’s going on. If there’s any hint of drugs of any sort, contact a good drug rehab program immediately.

A recent news article in the UK discussed some new street drugs that are causing serious illness in teenagers. The drugs are called “Diablo” and “Eric 3″. Never heard of them? That’s because they’re pretty new, and not even illegal yet. Seems ridiculous that your kid could end up in the hospital or needing addiction help for a drug you’ve never even heard of, but it’s happening.

With all the existing drugs out there, I know it seems unreal and unnecessary to invent drugs that endanger our kids’ lives. And if anything does happen as a result of taking these drugs, nothing can even be done about it from a legal standpoint as they are not yet illegal.

A similar thing happened with a drug called “Meow Meow”. It was still legal until a number of deaths caused the UK government to quickly make it illegal. Once Meow Meow was out of the picture, Diablo and Eric 3 appeared.

It’s somewhat frightening to know that there are people out there putting together these chemical combinations that could be deadly and making them available to our kids. We not only have to worry about them becoming addicted or overdosing, we also have to worry about them being poisoned.

Really, the only way to fight something like that is by educating your kids. Also, if your kids have already taken drugs, and do tend to take them – even if they’re not serious about them and only take them when they’re at a party or something – it’s a good idea to get them into a drug rehab program so they can get down to the bottom of why they are taking drugs at all.

Taking NO drugs is the only really safe solution to the possibility of your kids taking something that could make them sick, or worse.