HIGHER (via Tom Morin):

HIGHER RISK: Crystal meth, the Internet, and dangerous choices about AIDS. (MICHAEL SPECTER, 2005-05-23, The New Yorker)

Tina is crystal methamphetamine, a chemical stimulant that affects the central nervous system. It is hardly a new drug, and it has many other names: biker’s coffee, crank, speed. It has also been called redneck cocaine, because it is available on the street, in bars, and on the Internet for less than the price of a good bottle of wine. Methamphetamine is a mood elevator, and is known to induce bursts of euphoria, increase alertness, and reduce fatigue. In slightly less concentrated forms, the drug has been used by truckers trying to drive through the night, by laborers struggling to finish an extra shift, and by many people seeking simply to lose weight. Crystal first gained popularity in the gay community of San Francisco in the nineteen-nineties, where it became the preferred fuel for all-night parties and a necessity for sexual marathons. Its reputation quickly spread. Crystal methamphetamine is highly addictive, but its allure is not hard to understand; the drug removes inhibitions, bolsters confidence, supercharges the libido, and heightens the intensity of sex. “The difference between sex with crystal and sex without it is like the difference between Technicolor and black-and-white,” one man told me at Tina’s Café. “Once you have sex with crystal, it’s hard to imagine having it any other way.” The first thing people on methamphetamine lose is their common sense; suddenly, anything goes, including unprotected anal sex with many different partners in a single night—which is among the most efficient ways to spread H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases. In recent surveys, more than ten per cent of gay men in San Francisco and Los Angeles report having used the drug in the past six months; in New York, the figure is even higher.

After years of living in constant fear of aids, many gay men have chosen to resume sexual practices that are almost guaranteed to make them sick. In New York City, the rate of syphilis has increased by more than four hundred per cent in the past five years. Gay men account for virtually the entire rise. Between 1998 and 2000, fifteen per cent of the syphilis cases in Chicago could be attributed to gay men. Since 2001, that number has grown to sixty per cent. Look at the statistics closely and you will almost certainly find the drug. In one recent study, twenty-five per cent of those men who reported methamphetamine use in the previous month were infected with H.I.V. The drug appears to double the risk of infection (because it erases inhibitions but also, it seems, because of physiological changes that make the virus easier to transmit), and the risk climbs the more one uses it. Over the past several years, nearly every indicator of risky sexual activity has risen in the gay community. Perhaps for the first time since the beginning of the aids epidemic, the number of men who say they use condoms regularly is below fifty per cent; after many years of decline, the number of new H.I.V. diagnoses among gay men increased every year between 2000 and 2003, while remaining stable in the rest of the population.

In San Francisco, I spoke with several men about the thrills and the dangers of crystal methamphetamine. Their stories, often eerily similar, tend not to end happily. “I used to have the house and the Mercedes and the big job,” a lawyer named Larry told me at Tina’s Café. “Then I fell into crystal. Oh, my God, it was great. I felt young and powerful and wonderful. And the sex. I was having the type of sex I could have only fantasized about before.” He sat for a moment and sipped from a can of Diet Coke. “Crystal destroyed my life,” he said. “I sold everything I could put my hands on. What I didn’t sell, I lost: my house, my career. The more I used it, the more I needed it. At one point, I broke into my own house to try and steal furniture. Crystal tells your brain to go back and get more, more, more. The logical side of your mind is saying, ‘I can’t keep doing this,’ but you are still on your way to the dealer’s house.” Larry has been off methamphetamine for three years, but he says the struggle begins anew every day. “Crystal motivates everything. The sex. The desire. Everything.” He shook his head. “I wish I had never heard of it, but I can’t say it wasn’t great.”

It's a bizarre notion that gay men lose their common sense after taking drugs.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 20, 2005 7:04 PM