It's just coming up to 07:00. The gay cliches that live beneath me are home from the Mardi Gras party and have woken me up with that stupid fucking Madonna song that is really an Abba song. I don't think that I have sufficient synapses firing for a smooth segueway into this, from today's paper, about the meth plague in Sydney.
Sometimes I get bored with being so accurate an observer of the social climate. I can't imagine how many people I've tried to alert to the meth problem, it's a social catastrophe substantially worse than heroin and it's much closer than simply on the horizon at this stage.
As for fags and meth...? This disaster will make HIV look like a pleasant afternoon in a shaded garden.
Sydney Morning Herald:
ONE in five psychotic patients admitted to an inner-city hospital is believed to have used the party drug "ice" and experts fear the drug could become the most destructive to hit Australia
Police dealing with violent addicts of crystal methamphetamine say the craze is sucking up already stretched resources in Sydney's Kings Cross.
And researchers have found it is as popular as ecstasy and has already spread beyond the city's drug epicentre into suburban homes.
"The kind of people using this drug are probably your friends and people you went to school with - it's a very normal drug. These are average people who go out and have a good time on Saturday night," said University of NSW research fellow Rebecca McKetin.
Alarm bells about the drug were sounded last week when the International Narcotics Control Board said it was concerned it was becoming a "major drug pandemic".
Sydney has 18,000 regular ice users, statistics from the UNSW's National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre reveal. Two-thirds of users are dependent on the drug and a quarter of them have reported symptoms of psychosis.
When 33-year-old Ngoc Qui "David" Khuu shot a policewoman at Wetherill Park police station a week ago, police alleged he had been smoking the drug.
When 37-year-old financier Brendan McMahon killed 17 rabbits and a guinea pig last year, he said he was in a drug-induced psychosis caused by ice.
A forensic psychiatrist's report said the drug gave McMahon confidence in business dealings but he ended up having hallucinations and "communicating" with rabbits.
Beaver Hudson, a psychiatric nurse consultant at St Vincent's Emergency Department in Darlinghurst, said he believed ice had become a major cause of psychosis in the past two years.
In Kings Cross, problems tended to escalate at traditional party times, including Christmas and Mardi Gras weekend. About 12 people each week admitted to the department were suffering from the effects of ice, he estimated, and many ice addicts required five or six staff to restrain them until they were put under sedation.
"They are becoming an increasing burden on the emergency department," Mr Hudson said. "The potential for violence is phenomenal. These people are so violent that it requires the most robust intervention from burly security guards."
Police resources in the area were also being stretched because two officers were required to stay at the hospital for several hours after admitting a sufferer under Section 24 of the Mental Health Act.
"We need people on the road, not babysitting people who by their 
own hand have made themselves ill," Kings Cross police superintendent Mark Murdoch said.
Crystal methamphetamine, commonly known as ice, is the most pure form of speed. At first it creates a euphoria that lasts about 12 hours, often stripping sexual inhibitions.
Used enough, the effects transform into paranoia, delusions and hallucinations.
Drug experts say ice has been taken up by heavy drug users since the supply of heroin fell dramatically about five years ago. It's known as "poor man's cocaine".
Severe sufferers were often brought in a police paddy wagon to hospital where they were put under psychiatric observation. At St Vincent's there are two custom-made rooms - M1 and M2 - with reinforced walls and beds with no sharp edges to reduce the risk of self-harm. Sufferers may have gone without sleep for up to eight days.
"When you try to approach them they can just explode because they are so fearful we are going to do something to them, that we are going to do some bizarre experiment on them," Mr Hudson said.
george michael is in trouble again. couldn't happen to a more deserving ponce! After all the shit he has given Boy George for being 'too gay' over the years I'd be happy to see his career destroyed. There is, IMO, absolutely no excuse for public sex of this kind in this day and age. As Boy so wisely observed-- 'can't he use a computer'?
why do banks take 48 hours to process a payment TO a credit card while they can deduct money instantaneously?
can anybody explain the difference between an incursion and an invasion? if a tank rolled into my neighborhood i think the semantics would become secondary.
who made that hotel what it was! Pretty soon the only people staying there will be rich boring tourists or Britney Spears.
I am My Own Wife is headed my way in the original production. This review from the .au press has a major spoiler- be careful.
Still depressed at the idea that CBGBs will be gone forever. An example of what happens when one becomes a parody of one's self.
Second Life is an overwhelmingly expansive and conceptually dense virtual world allegedly taking the world by storm. It's worth a look. I suspect that I'm a bit too old to grasp the paradigm.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006 in Carrie's World, Commentary, Cultural History, Current Affairs, Dee Dee, Dumb People, George O'Dowd, Heroes & Icons, Hotel Chelsea, In the Blogosphere, nobody can hear you scream., mailbag, Manhattanophilia, Paranoia, Trash Celebrities | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)