February 12, 2008 SEXUALITY & LIFESTYLE - ADDICTIONS I - DRUGS
Finding a sex partner to get high with and warnings about the dangers are both easily found these days simply by going online. They're as subtle as a thunderstorm. Sweat glistening on copper skin, men pose lasciviously and scantily clad, marketing their bodies like produce. Hundreds of homoerotic sites that exist online are not only an endless buffet of sex, but of drugs, namely crystal meth. So much that many men in recovery cite the Internet as one of their most powerful temptations, and triggers. Some say the Web plays a frightening role in fueling the spread of meth and, in turn, HIV in the gay community. But the Internet also plays a part in promoting safety, deglamorizing the drug and educating users about its crippling effects. At first glance, the personals sections on popular gay Web sites such as www.manhunt.net, www.bareback.com and www.gay.com, are similar to heterosexual dating sites, just racier.
Party and Play, or PNP, is Internet code for sex and any combination of crystal meth, Viagra and MDMA, also known as ecstasy. The code, if you know where to use it, has aided easy access to both crystal meth and sex partners, in part triggering the Internet's new moniker in the gay community: "bathhouse of the new millennium."
Paul Duncan, who began using meth three years after being diagnosed with AIDS, spent countless hours on sites like www.gay.com, www.bareback.com and even Yahoo Messenger looking for "tricks" (partners) and Tina, a common nickname for crystal meth.
"I liked it better," he said. "It didn't cost any money. I didn't have to go to the bar, I didn't have to go to the baths. I didn't have to go to a parking lot." Debbie Collins, manager of the HIV and STD prevention clinic at the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services, blames the Internet for the rapid growth of crystal meth over the past five years. She calls the Web the "fuel for fire" for meth use and HIV.
Upon entering www.bareback.com, a warning comes up: "This site contains highly graphic imagery and text. If it is a violation of the standards of your community or if you find graphic content personally offensive, you should leave now." In addition to racy personal ads, the site includes a calendar of sex parties. "When they're talking about partying, 90 percent of the time, they're talking about meth," said Patrick Piper, a behavioral interventions trainer who leads workshops on crystal meth and its role in the gay community. But the site also has a message urging HIV-positive men to limit sex to others with the virus.
Piper argues that there's a flip side to the Internet. Behind a computer screen, men often feel more comfortable disclosing their HIV status or insisting on protection with casual sex partners. And negotiation that might be difficult face to face is easier in the anonymous online setting. "On these sites, you can check what kind of sexual behavior you do or don't want to engage in," Piper said. Indeed, there are profiles that say "No PNP," and HIV-positive men "seeking positives."
In 1997, Michael Siever started a popular Web site for gay crystal meth users called www.tweaker.org. Though somewhat controversial, the site's primary mission is providing users with information on how the drug could be affecting their body and lifestyle. "We're trying to be different from government messages that tend to hit you over the head with the egg-in-the-frying-pan thing," Siever said. Leading into the site is an animation of a hyper-masculine man with a wicked smile and devil horns. Siever calls him the speed demon. "He represents what you feel like you will become on crystal," Siever said. "It makes the shiest wallflower the life of the party. It makes you feel omnipotent, able to do anything. Everyone becomes sexually attractive, everyone becomes this stud." But deeper inside the site is a caricature of the other side of crystal meth: a man, shaking and sweating, considerably gaunter than the speed demon.
Some protest the more controversial aspects of the site. Alison Kogut, deputy press secretary at the Office of National Drug Control Policy calls sites like www.tweaker.org harmful and dangerous. "Harm reduction accepts and allows the continued and unabated use of harmful substances and the loss of people cannot be recovered," she said. "At best, harm reduction is a halfway measure and halfhearted approach that invites deceit." But Siever said men have stopped using after reading about effects of the drug on their brains, hearts, kidneys and livers. "For every complaint, we get 20 or 30 who call and say, 'Thank God, it's wonderful, it saved my life."'
The Faces of Addiction Five men and their struggles with meth
'It's a miracle I'm even alive. Mark begins many of his sentences: "When crystal meth took over my life." By the time the Long Beach man was in his 30s, he had graduated with a double major in English and journalism and nabbed a high-paying job as a real estate executive, where he ran multiple businesses and oversaw hundreds of employees. A decade later, he had hepatitis, lupus, a full-blown attack of liver disease and a mouth full of sores. He had lost 60 pounds and the ability to speak. A severe abscess almost cost him his leg. For years, Mark was a fixture on the party circuit, where he ate Ecstasy by the handful, often mixing it with the depressant GHB. Still, he kept his distance from crystal meth for a long time, even as its use swirled around him. He considered it a dirty drug, ridden with stigma and filth. He didn't want to end up like the tweakers he'd see at clubs emaciated, skin hanging off of their bodies, eyes sunken into their heads, like skeletons, he said.
But one night, in a bar bathroom, he snorted a line of crystal and stayed awake for days. "It was like watching ξThe Wizard of Oz' for the first time," he said. "Life turned from black and white to digicolor and thoughts started processing faster." Smoking crystal was a more intense experience than snorting it, and shooting up, also known as slamming, was like "soaring from zero to lust in seven seconds," he said. "When it hits you, it's like being hit with a cold wave that travels through your lungs as it moves through your capillaries," he said. "It's very violent and then the heat blast hits your head, like standing over a boiling vat of water ... I wasn't happy unless I felt that convulsion I felt as the needle went in."
But with every high, Mark's self-esteem would drop a little lower. Within seven years of using, his 6-foot frame had dropped to 149 pounds. He would spend as much as $10,000 a month on meth for himself and drug-using friends. He took up chain-smoking cigarettes to hide the chemical smell of the drug that clung to his clothes, his hair and his skin. It became harder to sit through meetings and interviews at work. Work became an afterthought, something that took away from his drug habit. The week was starting on Wednesday and ending on Thursday, he said. So in 2003, he quit his job, embarking on an 18-month drug run. He slammed his way across Long Beach at a zombie trot, driven by craving and lust, robbed of emotion. He remembers that time as a haze of dark, filthy motel rooms and anonymous sexual partners.
"I never had sex protected," he said. "It would have been an insult. There's all this bravado that goes along with crystal meth. The addiction allows us to think that if we're really masculine, if we're really men, real men never use protection. ... There's no explanation except for the fact that the drug takes us away from caring." Mark said his first moment of clarity came while sitting alone in a hotel room in a bath towel, high on heroin, ketamine and meth, when he caught a glimpse in the mirror of his emaciated body and pale, sun-starved skin, covered in abscesses. "I knew that I had seen myself for the first time and what I saw made me sad," he recalled. "I realized I was about as far away from myself as I could get."
He had sunk so low that the same night, he said, his dealer refused to sell him drugs and begged him to get clean. The next day, he called the Gay and Lesbian Center. His plea was simple, but absolute. "Hi, I want to be clean," he said to Ron Morrison, founder of three crystal meth anonymous meetings in Long Beach, who answered the phone.
Sixty days of violent withdrawal followed that phone call: vomiting, sweats, diarrhea and fatigue. "It's a miracle I'm even alive," Mark said. "It's a miracle I didn't die from a heart attack, a staph infection, dehydration ... that I wasn't shot to death in a hotel." The desire to use never goes away, but for him, it's been replaced by a deep appreciation for simple things, like redecorating and spending time with his two godchildren, whom he was formerly banned from seeing. He attends daily, sometimes twice-daily, 12-step meetings. And he's working again, as a portfolio manager for a local company.
Though his addiction cost him years of his life and alienated many old friends, it has given him a sense of compassion toward others, he said. "It's leveling the playing field in life," he said. "I feel like we're all one symbiotic organism on the planet." Mark, now five months sober, keeps a picture of himself from his using days in the kitchen. His eyes are dilated and his clothes hang off a starved, stick-thin body. When asked whether he's afraid of relapse, Mark is quiet for several moments. Finally, he speaks: "All I can tell you about is the next 20 seconds. But I know what being clean feels like now." 'The guilt alone just rushes over me'
Sean has a "romance" with needles. "I pull back and see the blood come into the register," he said. "I've become in love with the ritual." Sometimes, he spends hours searching through collapsed veins and callused skin for a place to inject. "And when I get it, it's not even good," said Sean, a Los Angeles resident whose name has been changed to protect his identity. "I'm so irate already." The rare times he's been sober, he has vivid dreams about injecting meth, and when he starts using again, he wishes he hadn't. But he can't stop. Sean, a straight man, was diagnosed with HIV in January after having unprotected sex with a man while high on crystal meth.
The drug, he said, stimulates the sex drive so dramatically, that "you don't care (if the sex) is with a man or a woman." 'It's like a warm, hot rush that starts at the top of your head and moves to the bottom of your feet and straight to the crotch," he said. "Just smelling it, you get a sensation in your crotch." But recently, sex has become secondary to shooting up, he said. Sean has been using since 1994 and even though he's lost his wife, his job and the custody of his children, he can't stop.
He recently traded his long hair and goatee for a shorter, floppy style because he's a fugitive. But half a lifetime of drug use is evident all over his body. Glassy blue eyes are set deep into a long, oblong face. Crooked, yellow teeth line his mouth and he clicks a tongue piercing back and forth as he talks. Scars stretch the length of his forearm and run down his palm. He shakes his head at his reflection in a Starbucks window as he somberly recounts his losing battle with the drug. "The guilt alone just rushes over me," he said, staring at his face. "I can't believe I'm doing this." His use skyrocketed, after his wife, now clean after her own struggle with crystal meth, left him seven years ago. After that, he began shooting up six or seven times a day.
He bought a 9 mm pistol and a Harley. He started carrying knives. He thought people were watching him through the windows and climbing on the roof. He heard imaginary helicopters outside his door. In the past 10 years, he's been arrested 20 times. Once, he stayed awake for 29 days. Lately, he's been feeling sharp pains in his kidney, his eyesight is deteriorating and the drug is wreaking havoc on his teeth. "My teeth are rotting from the inside out," he said. "I'll be eating a soft turkey sandwich, and my teeth will fall out." Sean is articulate, but deadpan when he speaks, acknowledging that he's never met his potential and that he never learned to love himself. "I think, what is it going to take?" he said. "What is it going to take to get me to stop? ... But I'd rather be high for that second than risk what's going to happen that day."
'Mental obsession for the drug': When Michael Adams moved to Los Angeles in 1979, he landed right in the middle of a thriving gay civil rights movement in full political swing. At first, life was great. He built bars, restaurants and homes for a general contractor and played clarinet in a band. He marched on Washington and attended some of the first gay pride parades. But in 1982, his friends started getting sick from a mysterious disease. Two years later, Adams himself was diagnosed with HIV and given two years to live. "I lived in the middle of this holocaust," he said. "People were dying left and right." He moved to San Francisco, where he was intravenously introduced to crystal meth. "It was a sexual thing, immediately," he said, chuckling sadly as he remembered. By then, he was working for a high-end painting company, restoring Victorian homes. Within six months, he was jobless and living on the street.
"I was homeless on and off for 20 years," Adams said. "I'd have periods where I pulled myself together and put it away, but ultimately, the mental obsession for the drug would kick in and I would succumb to that and go out and get it." During that time, he feasted on unprotected, promiscuous sex, and contracted syphilis, chlamydia and herpes. Now, when asked how long he's been sober, Adams quickly, and proudly, says: "Two years, two months and 21 days, but who's counting." He's since picked himself back up. He's singing in the Gay Man's Chorus of Los Angeles and his T-cell count is the highest it has been since he was diagnosed with HIV. For the first time in his life, he's taking his medications as prescribed. Adams attributes much of his recovery to the 12 steps. "The 12 steps work absolutely for the disease of addiction. I did that drug for the first time and it made me feel good. Ultimately, what I'm looking for is to feel good about myself. And I think there are ways to do that ... without spreading AIDS." 'People were dying around me'
Ron Morrison wanted to die, and he did everything he could to make it happen. It turned out life had other plans for him. Depression that Morrison had been struggling with all his life intensified as soon as he was diagnosed with HIV in his mid-20s. But instead of cutting back on his crystal meth use, the Long Beach man escalated his habit and refused his prescribed medications. "I thought maybe by increasing the usage, I would enjoy my high and it would all end quickly," the 48-year-old recalled. "People were dying around me and I thought that the drug culture, the whole thing, was depressing." Five years ago, that almost happened when he found himself in a three-month stay in the hospital with endocarditis, a heart disease, contracted from intravenous needles. By then, he had been addicted to meth for 30 years. "I gave away all my belongings and thought I wasn't going to get out of the hospital," he said. "I quit my job."
Morrison wasn't expecting to survive the infection. But when he finally did, he felt he'd been given another chance at life. But for several more years, he couldn't escape the clutches of the stimulant. It's totally different than any drug," he said. "It does something to your mind. It pops into your mind and you've gotta have it." Now clean, he relies on own experience to help others battling addiction. "I realized God had another plan for me and there was definitely a reason for me being here," he said.
About a year after getting sober, he opted to start his own crystal meth anonymous meetings. Now, he runs three meetings, volunteers at an AIDS food bank, at the Gay and Lesbian Center and at an HIV testing site. "Today, my life is totally about honesty," Morrison said.
'I'm tired of living this way.' It's Jimmy Smith's third time at the Redgate Memorial Recovery Center and his tenth time in treatment in 12 years. He thinks it's different this time. Smith never had trouble scoring meth in Long Beach. He knows what tweakers look like. He tells stories of spotting a meth user searching through the trash in Belmont Shore, and then having unsafe sex with him in a nearby garage. He recalls shooting up with a man who heard voices and talked about things that didn't exist. He didn't know whether he was schizophrenic or just really high. The drug desensitized him and sex was rough and usually unsafe. Smith, 39, said that now, he's learning to have respect for himself, to stop being self-destructive. He's learning to be a better person. He attributes his crystal meth addiction to loneliness and low self-esteem. "I never felt completely whole," he said. "I never accepted myself completely as a gay man. For me, it was about not wanting to feel and being afraid of my homosexuality." "I'm tired of living this way. It's so unproductive."
(More in depth story coverage on this article can be found from its main source at http://www.presstelegram.com/ This article was written by By Jenny Marder, Staff Writer PRESS TELEGRAM.)
QUITTING (This comes from TWEAKER.ORG)
Crystal meth can leave you with memories of what life is, or was, like when you are, or were, high. Sometimes it can feel like just about everything gets you thinking about crystal. These memories and the thoughts they kick in can be called triggers. Triggers lead to cravings, an intense feeling of needing or wanting to use. Quitting crystal has a lot to do with learning how you're going to deal with triggers and cravings. These reactions, these triggers and cravings, are completely natural, all but automatic and definitely inevitable. But rest assured that you can and will learn new ways to deal with triggers and to reduce cravings.
Say you use on a regular basis and have decided you want to quit. Why not check out this list of ideas and tips. Don't be overwhelmed by this entire list, check it out from time to time instead of all at once. Some of these ideas just might help you reach your goal. At risk of oversimplifying, what you're going to do is what feels right for you, making changes where and when you can.
Small goals are much easier to reach. Try to be realistic about what you can do. Don't think about it in terms of "forever," instead think minutes, hours or days. Not using for a day is whole lot easier than not using for a month, right? The cold turkey approach might seem impossible and definitely isn't for everyone.
How about cutting back in steps, until you reach your goal of not using at all? Use twice a week instead of every day or twice a month instead of every weekend. At the same time, or separately, you can cut down how much you use, right? Use a quarter instead of a half or use an eighth instead of a quarter. Remember, you can always put more in but you can't take any out after it's in. Tapering down the amount you use each time can help with withdrawal!
Get ready for withdrawal. Symptoms can include mood swings, irregular sleep patterns, depression, anxiety, intense boredom and irritability. Trust us, these experiences are very common and will pass with time. These symptoms can and will also make you want to use again; anticipate them and make a plan for how you'll cope.
At this point in the game avoidance is a virtue. As best you can, without necessarily moving to another city, avoid anything and any place that might trigger you and lead to craving and, possibly, using. Oops, have to remember to avoid anyone who might trigger you as well. With time you'll learn what triggers you and you might be surprised. Triggers can be objects like paraphernalia or sex toys, places like parks or bathhouses or sex clubs or your favorite street cruise, sexual activity or emotional situations.
Get out your trash bags! Find it all then get rid of the drugs and paraphernalia. This means all the product you have lying around or tucked away along with all the empty baggies, spoons, needles, mirrors, straws, pipes, rails, torches... and check those stash spots and clean them out: backpacks or overnighter kits, car glove boxes, your friends' houses! You get the picture, any and all the stuff you use to get high or use when you're high has got to go.
Sex sex sex! If porn is a trigger, throw away, give away or sell those magazines, videos and DVDs. Think about getting rid of sex toys that you collected while using.
Change your old school landline and your guy-on-the-go mobile phone numbers! Try to make it more difficult for your dealer and using buddies to get a hold of you. And while you're at it, make it hard for you to reach them. Toss out those scraps of paper, business or trick cards, cocktail napkins or whatever you scribbled those drug-related phone numbers on!
Declare war on boredom! Bust out that calendar and a pen and, if you can, schedule your day thoroughly. Making appointments with friends or family might help make the scheduling seem less rigid and hateful.
Let's get physical! Exercise can produce endorphins and stimulates your immune system, relieves boredom improves energy and might help you get back to a regular sleep pattern.
Emergency! Paging Doctor Jones! Quitting can be hard on your body. Check in with your doctor or local clinic. Get a thorough head-to-toe check up to make sure you don't have anything going on you might not have noticed while you were using.
Try alternative therapies during withdrawal. Some herbal remedies and supplements can reduce cravings and help balance your moods. Acupuncture and massage can be useful too but be aware of how you might react to needles and/or being touched by another person.
Support yourself. You don't have to do this alone. 12-Step groups work for some folks while Harm Reduction groups work for others. Meeting with and learning from other guys who are dealing with their speed use will help you feel less alone with the hurdles. Formal groups not your thing? Try to spend more time with the people you know already as long as they're the ones who don't use.
See a counselor. If you're having a difficult go of it you may need additional support. There are a lot of different treatment programs out there and making a decision about which one to choose, let alone deciding to check them out at all, can be very stressful. It's a good idea to talk with a counselor about your options.
INTERNET OPTIONS: http://www.xtwkrs.org/
A national info-chat website about recovery from crystal meth addiction.
Check out their website: xtwkrs.org or http://www.tweaker.org/ for further information.
WITHIN OUR OWN COMMUNITY we have several members who have chosen to share of their own personal experiences. More often than not many who have dealt with addictions out of fears of rejection by others choose to remain quiet. It is sad that today people make judgements against those who have fallen. There is no shame in acknowledging ones weaknesses. In fact, there is much strength that comes from within when a man is able to stand tall and proud of who he is, what he did and how he overcame it all. I wish to THANK Kelly for sharing with us all in his personal blogs within our community. His sharing not only strengthens him but empowers others to rediscover who they are and rebuild their spirits. THANK YOU KELLY! Jim Thurman
Great article - great articles on crystal should be re-run ever 3 months so as to get in front of someone who needs it at that time.
I had to move and I knew it. Lived in LA for 8 years and I knew if I stayed 1 more I would be dead. That was 10 years ago.
Just moving does not fix your addiction, you have to fight to stay away and it is easier to do that if all of your old connections, friends, sex partners, and dealers are 1200 miles away. You have to fight the urge to fine another dealer, partner, friend that uses.
All I can say is your love for yourself has to be so much greater than you love for crystal. You can do this; you have the strength in you. Dig deep to find it. It is there
article says a lot. no shame in admitting weakness. i am an addict in recovery. i am thankful for much. i am stronger now. will not go there again.
hardrider
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