A clinician describes treating a patient who overdosed on GHB after his partner died the same way. The emergency department dismissed him as a frequent flyer. There is no established care pathway for chemsex-related overdoses, leaving patients without psychosocial support.
And the patient that I saw was somebody who was presenting in the context of a GHB overdose. And I found that the A&E doctors were quite dismissive of, of that person. They were like, oh, he's a frequent flyer. He comes here all the time. Quite a lot of shame associated with him and his presentation. But because I was interested in psychiatry, I took a bit of a, a longer history from him. And actually I found out from him that him and his partner had been involved in chemsex together, and his partner had actually died relatively recently of a GHB overdose. They'd woken up in bed together and his partner had died. And obviously, that's an incredibly traumatic story to hear from somebody. And to me, it felt like that was still driving some of his behavior and that he hadn't been offered adequate support. And I thought if it was any other addiction presenting to an emergency department in the same way, there was an established pathway for it where we could help people. And I felt like that didn't really exist for chemsex.
