NEW YORK CITY: Police Report Three GHB-Related Deaths In One Day

According to the NYPD, three apparently GHB-related deaths took place in downtown Manhattan on Sunday. The New York Post reports:

The handsome scion of a Manhattan hotel conglomerate was found dead of a suspected drug overdose in his posh Union Square pad, law-enforcement sources said Monday. Charlie Denihan — a 29-year-old Ivy League grad whose father runs the Denihan Hospitality Group — was discovered by a roommate around 7:30 p.m. Sunday inside their apartment at 15 Union Square West, sources said. Cops found crystal meth, cocaine and the club drug GHB in the home, sources said. No criminality or foul play is suspected, they said. But Denihan’s death was the third suspected drug fatality in the 13th Precinct within four hours Sunday — and GHB was found at each scene, sources said. The other two victims were men who’d been partying at a bar and then went back to the West 19th Street home of one of them, where the drug was found, sources said. Their bodies were discovered around 3:30 p.m.

NYPD chemists are testing both batches of GHB to see if they may have come from the same source. No news outlets are yet saying that the dead men were gay, but GHB has long been a popular party drug in some gay circles. (Tipped by JMG reader Kent)

GHB Wreaking Havoc On Fire Island

Having been out of town the last few weekends, I'm only just now hearing the tragic news of this year's Fire Island Pines Party, during which 16 partygoers overdosed on GHB. And August 18th, a 31 year-old man died of a GHB overdose in his Pines rental home, allegedly after his physician roommate recommended he be allowed to "sleep it off".

Calling the number of overdoses "unprecedented", Dr. Ed Schulhafer of the Pines Care Center, said, " [T]here is a strong likelihood that the GHB being distributed in the community is particularly toxic and dangerous. We circulate this information to encourage all Pines and Grove residents to stay away from any GHB. Of course it is better not to take any illegal drugs as there are no known ways to reverse their side effects. But all the overdoses we have seen in the last four weeks have included GHB."

You may recall that the famous Fire Island Morning Party, a huge annual fund-raiser for Gay Men's Health Crisis for 16 years, was cancelled in 1999 after a GHB-related death forced GMHC to withdraw their involvement. I imagine that the Pines Party may go the same way.

Just seven weeks ago, leaving the Pier Dance, my friends and I all marveled that we'd seen no overdoses, something that had been an all-too common sight at circuit parties in years past. It seemed to us at the time that gay men were finally dropping GHB from their party menu, but since none of us attend these events more than once or twice a year, we were only hopeful. I guess we have our answer.