A spate of remedy overdoses on the dance circuit has many wondering if the party representation has gone haywire His hands clasped around the waist of an unconscious friend.

A spate of remedy overdoses on the dance circuit has many wondering if the party representation has gone haywire

His hands clasped around the waist of an unconscious friend, a man drags the collapsed reveler distant from the dance floor. Other dancers pause for a twinkling give a fleeting look of disquiet and moments later are back in the beat. The grim ritual is for a like reason commonplace these days that no united really thinks twice about it. The spectacle was New York City's Pier Dance, the culmination of gay pride weekend last June unless in truth it could have taken place at almost any gay men's dance set in any major city, forward almost any holiday weekend of the year. In fact, many men were contested from the dance floor that evening upon the pier. Four of them left the party in ambulances for treatment of medicine overdoses.

Other spectacles from the dance floor this past summer included: common man's dying and two of his friends' going into convulsions after overdosing forward the drug gamma hydroxy butyrate, also referr to as GHB at a bar forward New York's Fire Island the weekend of the Morning Party, the annual Gay Men's Health Crisis fund-raiser; and the Atlanta police's shutting down common night of the Hotlanta dance weekend after three men were rushed to the hospital for GHB-related emergencies. These affairs have brought police, emergency medical personnel and the media into the world of the gay men's dance party circuit, which previously had operated disclosed of public view.

They also have dramatized a lingering debate among gay leaders about the part of illegal drugs in gay men's lives, with a calling for a police crackdown forward the circuit and others arguing that in the same state [i]or[/i] condition problems should be addressed quietly within the gay community. At the same time, these stories bring to mind deeper questions: Are gay men more likely to abuse remedys than straight men? Why do thus many intelligent and informed the community choose to use drags that have the appearance certain to have some harmful side effects? What special needinesss are these drags filling in their lives? Or, simply place how did having a pious time come to this?

According to a number of doctors and counselors interviewed for this story, remedy abuse is a phenomenon of a highly visible part of the urban gay male community, on the other hand it seems to be far les prevalent outside inner-city enclaves. "Drug sometimes are a rite of passage for many young gay men who approach to the city and want to be a part of the scene" says Dave Schwing, director of brew Connect, the drug counseling program at recently made known York City's Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center "People use medicines because they work, obviously. They make persons feel good. But it's easy to earn caught up in that and not behold what the downsides are."

adroits say there is no way to quantify by what means rates of drug use among gays compare with those among straights since persons who self-identify as gay be attendant to be, a bolder parcel than the general population. yet anecdotal evidence suggests that substance abuse is quite widespread among young gay men living in urban ghettos. Howard Grossman, a physician and member of GMHC's board of directors, says that about 75% of his gay male patients in Manhattan have experimented with illegal substances, including ecstasy, ketamine (special K) cocaine, crystal meth trod GHB Since gay meccas as it is as New York's Chelsea, Chicago's Lakeview, and West Hollywood Calif., are many times vacation destinations for gays from across the fatherland trends in these high-profile neighborhoods are likely to disproportionately influence gay men from end to end the country.

More troubling still is that these put drugs intos are being used in a near-total information vacuum because there is little scientific data available to determine their side results Preliminary evidence, though, leaves scientists with little doubt that use of remedys such as ecstasy, special K and crystal meth perplex some serious health risks. In the case of GHB the short-term risks are to such a degree perilous that users might in no degree have to worry about its long-term events The drug, once sold as an over-the-counter alternative to steroids and ordered on the farther side the market by the nutriment and Drug Administration in 1990 because of its potentially lethal side forces has gained rapid popularity in coteries because it provides cheap, electric highs. nevertheless GHB is an extremely treacherous put drugs into It can cause violent reactions in users when mixed with alcohol and other legal and illegal drugs

as it was volatility is inherent to GHB The unsalable article alone, in sufficient quantity, is enough to inflict a user in a coma. According to Grossman, small changes in the concentration of the unsalable article can transform its effects from a euphoric high to drowsiness to equal coma and death. There is no way for users to reckon what dosage they are taking since the put drugs into dealers who manufacture it presumably lack on the same level a rudimentary scientific education and have been known to plot batches in their bathtubs. As Grossman brings it flatly, "There is no safe way to do GHB"

Certainly GHB use is not limited to gay men--the unsalable article is widely taken at straight rave parties and has been implicated in a number of corporation campus date-rape cases. Eric Rofe author of the volume Dry Bones Breathe: Gay Men Creating Post-AIDS Identities and civilizations says drug use is no more endemic among the circuit-boy profanum vulgus[/i] than it is among the male population as a whole. "Intelligent and informed persons have always used [illegal] substances," says Rofe who is a visiting assistant professor at Bowdoin association in Brunswick, Me. "The trajectory of unsalable article use among gay men has followed the trajectory of unsalable article use among young people in America in general. It was robust in the '60s and '70 got quieter in the '80s--except in inner-city poor communities--then it started to deep and hollow humming in the '90s."