Why GHB is spilling into London’s mainstream nightlife

The invitation to an illegal rave in a London forest came with the usual instructions: arrive after midnight, bring your own booze, plenty of water and, above all, keep quiet. “The police exist,” it warned. “We exist quietly alongside their existence.” Then came an order: “No GHB. None. Not in any form, concentration, or intention. This is absolute. We will not accept it, shelter it, or acknowledge its existence.”

For decades, GHB — or “G”, the salty-tasting drug sometimes known as “liquid ecstasy” — has been largely associated with gay clubs and chemsex (sex under the influence of drugs). But the drug is spilling into London’s wider nightlife, leaving a new generation reckoning with one of the least forgiving yet fastest-acting euphoria-inducing mind-alterants on the dancefloor.

There are reasons GHB might be having its moment. It is cheap and short-lasting, and consumers describe a high somewhere between the joyous drunkenness of alcohol and the rapturousness of MDMA. But without, they claim, sacrificing the following day. They also prize it as a powerful aphrodisiac and sexual performance aid. Meanwhile, ketamine has acquired a grim reputation for bladder damage, and generally does not help one make love like an Adonis, nor rediscover their gift of the gab.

“Who wants to be incontinent?” says Professor Fiona Measham, chair in criminology at the University of Liverpool and chair of harm reduction charity The Loop. GHB, she suggests, may be filling the gap. “We’ve definitely seen it moving from gay to straight worlds.”

Ignacio Labayen de Inza, who runs the London chemsex support organisation Controlling Chemsex , agrees. “It’s not just a gay thing,” he says. “Now there are people who are using it in straight clubs. It’s much cheaper than drinking alcohol.” But there is a catch. A recreational dose of GHB can amount to just a few millilitres, or even less for its close chemical relative GBL, a more potent drug that the body converts into GHB. The margin for error is notoriously narrow. The “effective dose” and overdose dose “are so close together that it’s very easy to accidentally overdose,” says Measham. Or, as drugs expert Simon Doherty reports, “the optimum dose, which will give you the best threesome of your life, is not far away from the dose that will give you the last threesome of your life.”

It helps explain why parties have banned the drug, from the London forest rave to festivals and clubs in Europe like Draaimolen and Berghain, as just a small difference in dose can torpedo someone from ecstasy to blackout chaos. “Sometimes you become like an animal,” says Labayen de Inza. “You don’t even know your name.” The dark side to GHB , he warns, is just an errant sip away. Another sip of “the most dangerous club drug” can even be fatal. Yet for GHB’s devotees, the peril can seem almost inseparable from the appeal.

London has long been one of the world’s capitals of GHB use, even while overall use remains niche. Its pre-pandemic rise among straight people was attributed to how it has “no sugar, no calories and no hangover”.