IT'S 7AM ON A SUNDAY and it looks like the scene of a bus crash. Bodies lie around motionless, eyes staring blankly, others huddle foetal-like, and before them is a frenzy of flailing limbs and contorted faces barely visible amid the swirling smoke and flashing lights. But this is no accident. We're deep inside a sweaty, stifling club in the heart of Wan Chai and escape is the last thing on the minds of the scores of Chinese youths littered about. These are the ketamine kids. They like it this way.
'It's cool, I feel like I'm floating outside my body,' Dave, a tattooed 19-year-old, yells above the monotonous pounding of trance beats from speakers barely three metres away. 'I just love the feeling,' he shouts, flashing a huge smile. He had staggered to his feet from the floor where he had been sitting silently with his friends, vacantly staring at the mayhem around. 'It's really good. Believe me, yeah, try some,' he says, thrusting a folded piece of paper towards me. For as little as $50 a wrap he can afford to be generous.
Ketamine, K, or Special K, is Hong Kong's drug du jour. While ecstasy helped fuel the rave scene abroad and, over the past three years, the local Chinese scene, ketamine is the rising star. Virtually non-existent 18 months ago it has become the fastest growing substance of choice for local drug-users. Club-goers in Hong Kong have embraced it like nowhere else in the world. While it has been around for years in the West it never really took hold; little has been written about it; those outside the club scene probably know little, if anything, about it; and local law enforcement agencies were so unprepared for its popular explosion that ketamine has yet to to be included under dangerous drug legislation. Instead, it is classified as a poison, like Valium.
The drug comes through existing drug syndicates via China, though its origins are uncertain. Ketamine's success on the local dance scene puzzles many. Not least because it appears a strange choice for a club drug. While ecstasy provides energy, endorphin rushes and heightens senses like touch, ketamine is an anaesthetic, originally developed as a horse tranquilliser. It roots you to your seat, locks up your mind and deprives you of your senses. Doesn't sound like much of a night out.
The answer, according to Dave, is simple. 'It's cheap. Gets you high,' he enthuses. His friend, Lindy, a spindly, friendly schoolgirl who says she's 16, sells ecstasy and ketamine for pocket money and to finance her own nights out. She charges about $120 for an ecstasy tablet (about half the price of two years ago) and ketamine at about $100 a wrap. 'Everyone can afford it. It's cheaper than beer. Many of my friends don't like drinking [alcohol] but they like this,' says Lindy who uses both substances.
Medical professor Dominic Lee Tak-shing recognises the allure. K sells for $50 to $100 for a .2 gram packet, which can often be split by up to six people. 'So, it very quickly becomes integrated in the youth,' he says. Lee, a Chinese University academic and director of a substance abuse clinic at Prince of Wales Hospital, Sha Tin, says ketamine took off on the streets about six to eight months ago. But, he says, it is almost always used together with ecstasy, like cannabis used to be, to enhance the psychedelic and stimulant effect of ecstasy. Ketamine also produces a unique high, or out-of-body experiences, Lee adds.