DEADHEADS ARE GRATEFUL FOR CONCERT MEDICAL TEAM

ROCK & ROLL DOCS

San Jose Mercury News March 6, 1995
By BRAD KAVE (eMail), Staff Writer
DEADHEADS ARE GRATEFUL FOR
CONCERT MEDICAL TEAM
Joel, 23, a T-shirt designer from North Dakota, doesn't know how he ended up on the floor of the Oakland Coliseum, naked, staring up at five security officers at a recent Grateful Dead show.
He knows he took too much LSD. And he knows he tried to convince the officers that a rock show was the right place to take off your clothes and celebrate.
He thought they were hauling him off to jail. Instead he found himself lying on an inflatable mattress surrounded by tie-dyed sheets -- in a room called ''the space station'' -- being soothed by professional psychologists and doctors while his favorite rock band played just outside the door.
''I owe my life to these guys,'' he said the next day, clothed in drawstring pants and a tie-dyed shirt. ''That might have been the worst night of my life.''
These are the kinds of things Dr. George ''Skip'' Gay and his 600 fellow medical volunteers hear after many of the 250 concerts they staff each year.
They call themselves ''Rock Medicine,'' and since 1973, they have given free medical care and much more to concert goers in the Bay Area and Sacramento.
They are like a ''M(*)A(*)S(*)H'' unit for those who are tripping -- and for those who trip and fall on their way to the shows.
At heavy metal concerts, where teen-age fans slam bodies and heads, the Rock Medicine docs treat broken noses and worse. At Grateful Dead shows, they encounter a variety of pharmaceutical cases. Rock Medicine has made a national reputation among police and emergency room doctors by efficiently and gently handling bad trippers. Its techniques have been written up in medical journals.
Sometimes they joke that they are an HMO for ''Deadheads'' -- providing otherwise unaffordable medical care for ''Tourheads,'' the gypsy-like fans who follow the Grateful Dead from city to city.
They stitch and swab cuts and pay for cabs for some of those stranded in parking lots after shows. They provide antibiotics for sore throats and accompany a gangrene victim to the hospital for surgery. They treat grandparents and babies for chest pains and flu, as well as those who have too many drinks or overdose on drugs.
''We try to be non-judgmental,'' says Rock Medicine administrator Glen Raswyck, the group's only paid worker.
''Our philosophy,'' he said, ''is to take care of the individual right now and return him to his family and friends and do away with the necessity of either hospitalizing him or getting him involved with the law.''

Cut her finger
During the Grateful Dead's recent three-night Mardi Gras run, 40-year-old fan and artist Donnis Newman stopped in to have her finger bandaged.
''I sliced the tip of my finger while I was cutting an orange at home,'' she said, sitting with her hand on a medical table surrounded by oxygen tanks, a heart defibrillator and a battered surgical lamp.
''I could have gone to the hospital (before the concert),'' she said, ''but I figured I'd go to *Rock*Med. *I totally trust those guys, and I'd never used them for anything before but earplugs and aspirin. I've always felt great knowing they were here.''
Wearing a brown Tibetan prayer hat and a badge identifying him as ''The Eye Guy,'' San Francisco ophthalmologist Dr. Daniel Shainholz, 33, cleaned and bandaged her wound.
''This is the ideal of medicine,'' Shainholz said. ''You don't worry about paperwork: Are they insured? Are they an HMO patient?''
''It seems to the outside world being a physician isn't in congress with being a Deadhead,'' added Shainholz, who says he's a fan. ''Here I can have a professional relationship with people and I don't have to pretend I don't have any interest in popular music.''

*Rock*Med* doctors feel they can let their hair down at the concerts.

'At Your Cervix'
The badge on Sonoma obstetrician Don Solomon, 51, reads ''At Your Cervix.'' When Vallejo emergency medical technician Eric Elliot, 33, puts a stethoscope to a patient's chest, there is a Deadhead logo on it.
At the recent weekend Dead shows, the doctors treated 37 people Friday, 35 Saturday and 45 Sunday, among the more than 15,000 attending each night. In 12 hours that Sunday, doctors saw cuts on bare feet, bruises, a broken arm, a split skull, exhaustion, a feverish baby and several bad LSD trips. They wouldn't give an exact breakdown of what they treated because of concerns for patient confidentiality, Raswyck said.
*Rock*Med* was started by Gay, 53, along with other members of the Haight- Ashbury Free Clinic who were approached by the late promoter Bill Graham. About 98 percent of the shows they work are produced by the Bill Graham Presents organization. The promoter pays a fee to help fund *Rock*Med's* $120,000 yearly budget. More money is raised through donations.
The Northern California doctors say they have tried to spread the service to other states but have had trouble finding physicians willing to volunteer their time for the shows.
Other promoters hire a few paramedics and have ambulances posted nearby to take sick or injured fans to the hospital. Police in some cities handle bad trips with handcuffs and jail. But a profusion of fans in drunk tanks or emergency rooms can damage a promoter's business.

Services are free
*Rock*Med* provides all its services free and doesn't limit treatment to what occurred at the concert. ''My attitude is for the $25 it costs for antibiotics, give it to them,'' Raswyck said.
Deadheads open up to the rock docs, telling them things they might be reluctant to share in an emergency room. That ranges from what drugs they took to how they got hurt.
Eric Buxton, 40, a printer from Long Island, N.Y., is one of them. A ''taper'' who records 30 Dead shows a year, he was first in line for all three of the weekend shows because he camped in a sleeping bag outside the Oakland Coliseum.
He recalls on a past tour he took a large gouge out of his forehead in a hotel hallway, where he was surreptitiously recharging his tape recorder batteries in an outlet behind a vending machine. He didn't want to miss a note by going to an emergency room, so he made his way to the show at Shoreline Amphitheater.
''They took care of me and got me back out there,'' Buxton said of the rock docs.
Eighty-four volunteers worked the Dead show on the recent Sunday night, including nurses, paramedics and emergency medical technicians. They wandered the Coliseum and parking lots with portable radios; like walking ambulances, they can be dispatched quickly to medical problems.
At Dead shows the latest worry is nitrous oxide gas, which is consumed by fans in the parking lots and sold in balloons. The gas is sometimes bought from commercial rather than medical dealers, who sell it in canisters that once held toxic gases.
Even if the gas is from a clean container, it can cause a user to pass out cold and hard.

LSD problems
LSD is also a problem. On this night, someone is selling mushrooms laced with the drug and claiming it is gentler psilocybin. It's a bad trip.
''AARRGGHHH,'' yells one man who is brought into the clinic by security guards, writhing.
''What's his name?'' asks a nurse.
''Just put down AARRGGHH,'' says a doctor. Bare-chested, the man is thrashing wildly, and it takes four people to hold him.
The doctors say that taking those on bad trips away from all the stimuli of the show is calming and cuts down delusions. In extreme cases, the docs use calming drugs.
''I like to respond to everything they say with something that brings them back to the peaceful environment around us,'' said Dr. David Relman, 38, a Stanford University professor and microbiologist. ''I keep reminding them of where they are. I try to provide a slice of reality.''
It works on the screaming man. He is gone in time for the encore.

COMING DOWN FROM A BAD TRIP As in many hospitals, rock patients are given handouts with information about their condition. ''Rock Medicine'' has a special one -- on bright purple paper -- that is placed in the pockets of patients coming off LSD. Here are some excerpts.
Welcome back! You have experienced what we call an Intense Psychedelic Reaction. Your behavior included:
( ) Yelling incoherently and not responding to simple questions.
( ) Experiencing extreme fear or anxiety.
( ) Walking and/or running around without clothes.
( ) Violently refusing assistance, running away from security and/or medical staff, trying to hit other patrons and/or security and/or medical staff.
( ) Other: We treated you by:
( ) Keeping you in a safe place and talking to you in a calm, reassuring manner.
( ) Restraining you with the arms, legs and body weight of our staff.
( ) Restraining you with padded ties.
( ) Injecting you with low doses of Ativan, which helps reduce anxiety, and Haldol, which helps slow down hallucinations. . . .
We do not administer these medications unless the situation is so volatile that there is danger of physical harm.
If your trip was particularly long and active, you may find you feel tired, sore and have some bruises. Your physical exertion is the equivalent of a workout lasting for some hours.
. . . While we can't say we hope you enjoyed your stay with us, we do hope it was more agreeable than the probable alternatives -- involvement with local law enforcement authorities (police, jail, court costs) or emergency medical system (ambulance, hospital, psychiatric holds, medical bills).
If you would like to support our efforts, we encourage you to send us a tax-deductible donation.
Source: Rock Medicine

CAPTION: PHOTO: PATRICK TEHAN -- MERCURY NEWS A concertgoer high on drugs is attended to by medical volunteers Michael O'Connell, left, and Paul Sohn. [950306 FR 10A color]
PHOTO: Photographs by PATRICK TEHAN -- MERCURY NEWS A Grateful Dead symbol, left, appears on a stethoscope. [950306 FR 1A 2; color]
PHOTO: Photographs by PATRICK TEHAN -- MERCURY NEWS Below, a concertgoer high on drugs is led to a treatment area. [950306 FR 1A 3; color]
KEYWORDS: MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL MUSIC SHOW END OF DOCUMENT.
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS Copyright 1995,

[ P r e v i o u s P a g e ] [ Haight Ashbury Free Clinics] [Table of Contents] [ * * * * * * ]