4 PARTYGOERS SWALLOW LYE, HOSPITALIZED.

Byline: Jaxon Van Derbeken Daily News Staff Writer

Authorities said an all-night bout of beer drinking and use of laughing gas ended when four people at the ``rave'' party drank caustic lye from a jug, thinking they were taking an illegal steroid known commonly as G.

A 20-year-old from Agoura, a 19-year-old from Woodland Hills, a 16-year-old from Ventura County and a Berkeley teen were taken to hospitals at 5 a.m. Thursday after they were overcome by the drugs and the caustic chemical at a party outside a restaurant in the 400 block of Fairfax Avenue in Hollywood, police said.

``They all will recover, which is good for us. Maybe we can figure out who did this,'' said Detective Mike McDonagh of the Los Angeles Police Department's Hollywood Division.

Authorities suspect that several others among the hundreds of people at the ``rave,'' or underground, party drank the lye that was passed out at the all-night gathering, said LAPD Lt. Bernie Larralde.

``They were at what they were calling a tailgate party, drinking beer and inhaling nitrous oxide,'' Larralde said. ``Somebody supposedly came by and gave them what they thought was GHB,'' or Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid.

But the gallon milk jug contained a nearly pure solution of lye, not GHB, a steroid that was outlawed in 1990, but used experimentally as a treatment for insomnia, Larralde said.

``They thought it was G, but it was not. What they were getting was almost 100 percent lye dissolved in water - and they drank this.''

Authorities said that three of the victims were found passed out in front of a pizza restaurant and a fourth was found incoherent but conscious in a nearby bank parking lot.

Police said a worker at the restaurant spotted the victims as they collapsed and that paramedics were called about 5 a.m.

Three of the victims were taken with respiratory failure to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the fourth, taken to a Kaiser Permanente hospital, was conscious, but incoherent, officials said.