Crystal: How we can stop it

Jason Riggs of the STOP AIDS Project

"A few months ago, I met this hot guy. The minute I saw him, I thought, 'I'm going home with him tonight.' And then it happened. I couldn't believe this guy would come on to me. I was ecstatic to end up at his place, and I didn't think twice when he told me he was high on speed. I couldn't say no; besides, I've done other drugs and didn't have a problem with them. We fucked for hours that night. We did things that I never thought I would do, things I hadn't even considered doing. I didn't use a condom. I just didn't care and neither did he."

"A few weeks later I did it again. It only took a few times doing crystal to undo years of safe sex, and I didn't even consider myself addicted. I was just a casual crystal user and thought I had it under control. There is no doubt in my mind that using crystal had a lot to do with my becoming HIV-positive."

This is just one of the stories that STOP AIDS Project has heard since we first began discussing crystal use in the gay community in the mid-1990s. Over and over again at our forums in 1996, gay guys would talk about the great sex and the good time they had on crystal. Several of us at STOP AIDS worried that the forums were fast becoming a commercial for crystal use.

But like every drug commercial, the warnings of side effects soon followed all the images of frolicking on the dance floor and in bed. Soon the same people who talked about how great the high was started sharing about how far they'd slipped into the grip of something they couldn't get out of, to the point where the only thing that mattered in their life was chasing that one elusive high.

People talked about being so paranoid they couldn't leave the house; about the intense depression that followed the high; and the craving to be on crystal outweighing falling in love, being with their friends or even having sex.

Many of the same people who talk about how great it was have also decided never to do it again.

Here are some reasons why:

-- Crystal is more addictive than heroin. Some people report having a full-blown addiction just six months after trying it for the first time. Others used crystal recreationally for a while but stumbled into increasingly regular use.
-- 30 percent of new HIV infections in San Francisco are related to crystal use.
-- 25 percent of syphilis cases are related to crystal use.
-- Gay men in California who use speed are 200 percent more likely to have STDs than those who don't.
-- Gay and bi men who use crystal are 300-400 percent more likely to get HIV than those who don't.
-- HIV-pos men who use crystal regularly skip their medication routines and the drug suppresses their immune systems, causing increased difficulties in treating HIV.

Crystal users who are getting HIV and STDs are not just the full-blown addicts -- it's happening to the casual users too: people we count as our friends, co-workers, roommates and boyfriends.

The truth is, we all know crystal is a problem. It not only threatens us individually, but threatens our community's health in other ways as well. Almost every gay man in San Francisco, and in many other cities, knows someone who has lost a friend, roommate or partner because of that person's crystal use. Moreover, crystal use is eroding trust and friendships, the very foundations of community.

So what do we do about it? Each one of us has a role to play.

Each of us in the community needs to ask ourself why people are drawn to the drug in the first place. What are we looking for in crystal meth, and are there other ways of finding it?

Each of us needs to change the community norms and values that make crystal use acceptable. Face it: We are a community built on sexual liberation, a live-and-let-live perspective. However, crystal is the crack of the gay community and needs to be discouraged on a communitywide level. When HIV/AIDS first emerged, our community rose up to care for one another and taught each other how to care for ourselves and our friends. Crystal use should be no different.

We need more crystal-use prevention efforts, and they need to be big. We need to harness our community's creative efforts and need our community's best advertising agencies to come up with large-scale campaigns that help anyone who's considering crystal use to make a truly informed choice.

We need more treatment slots. If you want to kick crystal out of your life or reduce your use, you should be able to get those services on demand.

We need to get strategic and pinpoint the situations where crystal is most likely to compound risk. When guys are cruising on the Internet, we need to make sure they're making informed choices about their health. Some sites, like manhunt.net, have taken a great step in this direction by adding "no pnp" to their profile screen. This helps guys who want to find a partner who's not on crystal to find one. It will help guys to stay safer.

Each of us needs to ask Internet providers, party promoters and bathhouse and sex club owners to do everything in their power not to facilitate our community tearing itself apart because of crystal addiction.

Each of us needs to ask ourselves hard questions about how we walk the tightrope between not enabling someone to continue in their addiction and not abandoning them because they are too messy for us to help.

Each of us needs to ask ourselves hard questions about crystal dealers, gay or straight. Are they our friends? If, as many gay men say they are, then how can they help us more than they hurt?

As gay and bisexual men, we benefit from the community in many ways, as a place to meet each other and enjoy places free of homophobia to work, live and play. Each of us individually has a role to play in shaping the culture of our community. Together we need to promote an ethos of shared responsibility and support among individuals, friends and partners, families, government, community and businesses.

Maybe, then, we might all find what we're looking for.

Jason Riggs is the Commucations Director of the STOP AIDS Project in San Francisco. The STOP AIDS Project works to prevent the spread of HIV among gay and bisexual men in San Francisco. If you would like more information on how to get involved, please visit www.stopaids.org.

Newshawk: http://www.napnt.org/amphetablog.html
Pubdate: March 2005
Source: Gay.com
Website: http://www.gay.com
Author: Jason Riggs