Montreal Gazette
Sunday, February 27, 2000

Safe raving

The drugs routinely taken at raves can be deadly. Aware of the dangers, some friends have formed a group to warn and inform their fellow partygoers
By Jen Ross
Alcohol is not sold at this Valentine's rave. Drugs are the poison of choice.
GRIP is a novel grass-roots attempt to address such dangers.
What's more, he says, raves change sites so often that police just don't have the time or the resources to keep up.
The RCMP has given GRIP quality-analysis reports for large seizures when it finds the drugs are particularly dangerous
GRIP tells them how to stay safe. ...

Beams of multicoloured lights swirl about the smoke-filled warehouse as 2,500 teens and 20-somethings dance energetically to the repetitive drumming of techno beats. Many lunge around half-naked, piercings showcased on glistening bodies, mouths aglow with illuminated plastic sticks.

Within a minute of walking though the door, you have been asked three times if you “need anything.”

Alcohol is not sold at this Valentine's rave. Drugs are the poison of choice.

As the all-night underground party phenomenon known as the rave has grown in popularity, with its electronic music and Halloween-like attire, so has the use by ravers of mind-altering drugs.

Three out of four people at raves take drugs, and they are now popping more pills per night, says longtime raver Jean-Sébastien Fallu, 26. But he isn't as troubled by the rise in consumption as he is by the decreasing quality of those drugs.

A lot of drugs now are "cut with crap” that can cause lethal reactions, he says - a decline he attributes to the Hell's Angels' becoming involved in dealing. And with ravers getting younger - he puts the average age now at 16 instead of 19 when raves first started in the early 1990s - many don't know what to expect from the drugs they're taking.

Fallu used to do drugs regularly, but he stopped three years ago after noticing the quality of Ecstasy deteriorating. That's when he and two friends from the Université du Québec à Montréal created GRIP - Groupe de Recherche et d'Intervention Psychosociale - a drug-awareness group focused on reducing harm. They don't tell people not to take drugs; they tell them how to minimize the risks if they do.

“It's more realistic,” says Fallu, GRIP's president. “I think people can relate to people like us who are part of the rave scene a lot better than they could to some police officer who comes to talk in a school. You need to tell people in their own language.”

It's 4 a.m. - the height of a party that goes on until noon - and Fallu is standing in a corner of this Laval warehouse. A purple fluorescent tube beckons people to a table stacked with a bowl of condoms, a laptop logged on to GRIP's Web site, and dozens of pamphlets about every drug on the club circuit. Many people approach it, look over the literature and turn away. Some come up asking if they can buy smart drinks there. A few come to pocket a condom. But about two-thirds of the 200 or 300 people who do stop at GRIP's kiosk for more than a glance will take pamphlets about their drugs of choice.

Like a salesman careful not to approach his customers too soon, Martin Paquette, one of the GRIP volunteers manning the kiosk, waits before handing out information about speed to two teens.

Chantal and Christine, both 16 and on speed, say they were attracted by the kiosk's bright lights. They are new to the rave scene and have seen a lot of people having bad trips. Christine says she'll read the pamphlets and spread the word to her friends.

Some of the leaflets GRIP hands out come from the Addiction Research Foundation, while others are compiled by GRIP with information from drug specialists.

The latest drugs of choice, along with the ever-popular rave hallucinogen and stimulant Ecstasy, are strawberries, peaches and roses - interchangeable street names for speed or amphetamines. Also popular are sedatives like GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate), which has been used in the manufacturing of the so-called date-rape drug, and Special K (ketamine), a barbiturate commonly used to anesthetize people and animals.

Ecstasy, speed and other amphetamines can cause liver damage after only one use. The latter two can also cause anxiety, depression or psychosis. GHB can lead to convulsions or induce a coma, especially if mixed with alcohol.

Ecstasy has claimed at least three lives at Montreal raves, police say, but the numbers could be higher, because the coroner's office does not record drug-related deaths unless they are overdoses. In one of the three known fatalities, a mixture of drugs and excessive dancing caused someone to have a heart attack. In two other cases, people's bladders exploded. Ecstasy causes dehydration, which means users must drink lots of water; however, Ecstasy tricks the body into not feeling the need to urinate.

GRIP is a novel grass-roots attempt to address such dangers.

It has volunteered at 50 raves in the last three years, but 30 of these were in the first year, and the group can manage only about one rave a month now. Its organizers and volunteers are wearing thin - ironically, just as rave promoters have started really catching on to their work. Since the summer, the group has been inundated with requests it can't meet.

Fallu says GRIP has about 30 volunteers - the number varies constantly - who work with a nine-person administrative group of university students, activists, a doctor, a drug-addiction counselor and a criminologist. The only funding it gets is indirect, from a rehab centre that does things like photocopying for the group.

GRIP has tried several other avenues for government and private funding, but because of what might be seen as a controversial mandate and what Fallu concedes is a vague description of its activities, no money has come. Next month, the Quebec Health Department will be deciding whether to grant it money for a full-time employee. If that funding does not come through, Fallu says, GRIP will be forced to disband.

A similar group in Toronto - TRIP, or the Toronto Raver Information Project (the rhyming acronyms are coincidental) - gets money from the city of Toronto, directed through a community health centre, which allows it to pay two part-time staff.

Sophie has seen GRIP at a few raves and says it is needed more than ever as the quality of drugs keeps deteriorating. It's so bad, the 19-year-old says, she hardly takes Ecstasy anymore. She has seen two friends taken to the hospital; one stayed a month after an overdose from a hallucinogen that was five times the regular dosage. But she says he was back on the rave circuit two months later, taking drugs again.

“I think GRIP is doing great work. I think they do have an impact on some people,” she says on the dance floor, clad in a long red-and-white-striped dress with a red-pepper knapsack on her back. “But unfortunately, many people ignore them. They just want to get the highest high they can and they don't care how they get there.”

Across the room, Iannick, 22, is rocking on an inflatable chair, twirling purple-and-red glowsticks in his hands. A regular on the rave scene, he has taken half a “peach” tonight and will take another half before the night is done. He has also taken Ecstasy and some energizers, so-called “B3 vitamins.”

“I know a lot of people have tripped really bad,” he says. “I've seen people in convulsions. I know there have been overdoses, too. ... I'm not scared because I know how to control myself.”

Iannick has a bottle of water between his knees and he says he makes sure to go to the bathroom every hour, even if he doesn't feel he needs to. He has heard about the bladder explosions and says word of mouth is a powerful tool.

But word of mouth can also be misinterpreted. A sparkle-covered, sequin-decked Christelle, 18, has taken two speed tablets and is adamant that she knows how to take care of herself. “I go to the bathroom every hour just to be sure.” But it's Ecstasy, not speed, that can cause bladder explosions.

Because confusion occurs and many people won't come to GRIP, the group has a new approach of going to those who need it most. Tonight, four GRIP volunteers armed with walkie-talkies are on patrol, looking for people in distress and handing out water.

The walking brigade brings some people to the first-aid office under a glowing red cross and arrow - a comforting sign being seen at more and more raves. Martin Leblanc, who is in charge of Red Cross operations here this night, has worked at five raves and says the Red Cross has been at 10 or so in the past two years. The Red Cross treated 12 people at the Valentine's rave, for everything from back pain to a diabetic teenager who was hospitalized for a combination of low blood sugar and illicit drug interactions.

When the Red Cross is not present, as was the case at a massive New Year's rave where the walking brigade was first deployed, GRIP patrols have to call 911 when they run into serious cases.

While ambulances are sometimes called out to raves, police cars are almost unseen. Montreal police are candid about not doing much to tackle the use of drugs at these parties.

“We respond to complaints and no one complains about the drugs at raves,” explains Gérald Marsolais, a drug investigator for Montreal Urban Community police. “It's like steroids. People willingly take them, so no one complains or gives us insider information, so we don't investigate it.”

What's more, he says, raves change sites so often that police just don't have the time or the resources to keep up.

However, the RCMP does crack down on manufacturing and peddling. In mid-January, the Montreal RCMP and Customs Canada seized 13,000 units of Ecstasy.

The RCMP has given GRIP quality-analysis reports for large seizures when it finds the drugs are particularly dangerous - for example, when Ecstasy pills are found to contain potent PCP. But Fallu says he wishes GRIP could warn people what's inside the drugs they are about to consume.

On-site drug testing was Fallu's main goal when he created GRIP, but he came to see it was not legally feasible - and that information was also needed.

On-site testing is legal in various European countries, and a San Francisco-based rave group called Dancesafe is doing it. In Canada, however, GRIP members could be arrested for possession for even turning drugs in to police for testing.

RCMP drug-prevention co-ordinator Jocelyn Chagnon said he is in the midst of talking to officers and lawyers to try to make an exception to that law for GRIP. Testing on-site, however, is still another story.

Gerry St. Onge, an investigator with the Montreal RCMP drug section, says that although he would support allowing GRIP to turn in drugs, on-site testing is going too far.

“It's like, if the tests showed the drug was OK, you'd be saying, `OK, kids, this stock's good, you can go ahead and use it now.' I'm totally against that.”

The role of police is to prevent criminal activity, not to facilitate it, he says.

But Fallu says the Netherlands has had an open on-site drug-testing policy for almost a decade and drug consumption has decreased as a result.

“Think about it,” he explains. “If you test the drugs and find out they're OK, the least that happens is the people take the drugs they were going to take anyway. But if the tests show they're cut with heroin or PCP, they're not going to take them.”

Fallu acknowledges he personally stopped taking drugs when quality became uncertain; so in his case, knowing the content could actually increase consumption slightly. But he figures he is among a small minority of people on the rave scene. The users GRIP is targeting, he says, are those who don't listen to general warnings and would be taking drugs anyway.

Dr. Benoit Trottier, an addictions specialist at Hôpital St. Luc, has been a member of GRIP's administrative committee for two years and is a firm advocate of on-site testing. Beyond laws, he says, cost is the main obstacle. Testing mechanisms are not available in Canada, and those sold in the U.S. cost around $50 per test. Fallu doubts many ravers would be willing to shell out that kind of money after they've already paid $15 to $35 to get into a rave and at least that much again for the drugs themselves. And with no funding of its own, GRIP cannot subsidize the cost of the testing units.

In the next few weeks, however, GRIP will be testing the quality of GHB, thanks to a $2,000 grant from the Comité Femmes et Securité, a local group of police, health professionals and sexual-abuse counselors. The Comité is interested in GHB because altered forms of it are often used as a date-rape drug. To get around possession laws, GRIP will find people who have taken GHB and will test their urine for foreign substances like PCPs, opiates, amphetamines and tranquilizers.

GRIP's testing efforts are unique in Canada.

The possibility that GRIP might disband for lack of funding is a disappointing prospect for Ray Junior, promoter for the Valentine's rave. He asks GRIP to come to every rave he puts on.

“It's too bad, because I really think they make a difference,” he says. “A lot of people who come to raves are innocent. They take drugs because their friends are taking them and they don't know stuff. GRIP tells them how to stay safe. ... It would be a shame to lose that.”