Its converted by taking OH- ions out of your body (stomach, blood, proteins), which is a basic ion, so taking them away gives acidosis over time and possible tissue damage from ripping the OH- out.
No it doesn't *sigh*, There are at least three threads out there where I've detailed that it doesn't take just an OH- ion, it also takes an H+ ion as well (in other words a whole molecule of water per molecule of GBL) This means that there is no ion imbalance caused by taking GBL. As for the mechanism, it's converted via plasma pseudoesterases which mean that for a given dose of GBL it's nearly all (90%+) converted to GHB within 10 mins. As GBL crosses the gut wall a hell of a lot faster, due to being a lot less polar than GHB and is then converted to GHB, This means that GBL produces higher peak plasma levels of GHB for a equal dose of both compounds (hence the faster onset, more side effects and more noticable withdrawl syndrome).
The acidosis is something that I had a lot of correspondance with raybeez about (he had a very large intake at one point) and it seems like acidosis does occur at very high dosage levels of GBL from there being more CO2 in the plasma (which is due to respiratory depression associated with very high doses). The thing is, if you were taking GHB at those doses you'd get acidosis as well from an identical respiratory depression.
Now there are some people out there who believe GHB is perfectly safe and GBL is highly toxic. That everything above has been explained in fine detail (with research to back it) seems to count for nothing and when pressed on they subject become very abusive; I hope one doesn't start that shit again here, but if so I'll collect together all the threads discussing it, which contain all the refs that both myself and raybeez have dug up. They always seem to keep refering back to one book, who's author's name I forget (a Dr somebody or other) saying 'he's a doctor so he must be right' - the fact that the research papers are written by doctors and professors seems to pass them by.
Anyway, if anybody is interested they can try searching this forum and OD and find those threads, but no doubt one of the aforementioned GHB zealots had chance to start, so I'll end up having to give links to those threads anyway!
