Thought this might help cement the harsh reality for those skeptics who still say, "what crisis?"
And to those who are so quick to dismiss them for engaging in risky behavior, perhaps we should shut down all HIV clinics everywhere, because by god, people who have sex and catch HIV should have known better, let them die!
The human compassion shown here is pathetic....
Something needs to be done besides washing our hands of the problem. I admit, some of the stuff in here makes my stomach turn. But should we let them do this to themselves, or offer a way out? To stop this fucked up mess?
AIDS in Maine 2005: What a meth
Issue Date: March 18 - 24, 2005
http://www.portlandphoenix.com/features/top/ts_multi/documents/04538523.asp
Most gay men don’t want HIV or AIDS. Most gay men don’t use crystal meth.
In an effort to assuage the majority, who practice safe sex, that is my disclaimer. It’s a necessary preface to a report about the decisions of a growing handful people in the gay community who are putting the entire culture at risk.
The truth is, some gay men in Maine, in fact some very young men, are abusing crystal meth and becoming HIV-positive because of the risky sex that they have while using the drug. Worse, some of them are deliberately seeking to become "seeded," or "charged," or "pozed" by others who are HIV-positive, and health-care workers are beginning to take notice. What frightens them is that, most often, the use of the drug, risky sex, and the desire to become infected with HIV are generally not mutually exclusive.
You can see why responsible members of the gay community might be worried.
"When I have sex, I have safe sex. I worry that articles about the convergence of crystal-meth use and HIV infection could give the impression that ALL gay men are out of control sex monsters. That story line serves the conservative base in this country, giving them something to point to and say, ‘See, they’re not deserving of marriage rights or benefits, the majority of them are sick and twisted and into extreme unprotected sex with multiple partners.’ "
That was one of the responses that I received from a profile that I put on Manhunt.net, the premier hook-up Web site for gay men, seeking anyone who would speak frankly about attending sex parties in Maine, the use of crystal meth at those parties, the practice of unsafe sex at the fetes, and, most disturbing, parties that are held specifically for those who wish to either infect others or become infected with HIV.
The concepts are nothing new, really. Documentaries have been made, like the critically acclaimed and condemned The Gift, which tracked thousands of men in California and beyond who were regulars at such gatherings and who even set up Web sites soliciting attendees. Again, thousands of online users were reported as seeking the "charge."
Two years ago, a firestorm ignited when Rolling Stone published a salacious story about so-called "bug chasers," which prompted some Boston doctors to claim that they had been misquoted regarding the enormity of that problem.
That was then.
Small or large, most agree now that there is a problem, particularly when a litany of reports in recent months proves that young men are having riskier sex now than they were during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and that cases of syphilis, rare forms of chlamydia (LGV), and even untreatable HIV are popping up — right here in Maine. (See "All Methed Up," by David Bernstein, at
www.bostonphoenix.com, for more on the meth scene in Boston.)
"Sometimes I really think that we’re at fault. If you look at the advertisements [for HIV drugs] in the magazines, everyone is really healthy," says Sally Putnam, Nurse Coordinator for the AIDS Consultation Program at Maine Medical Center, of the malaise of some in the gay community when it comes to safe sex and the environments in which some people are having sex. "I really wish some people could come sit in here for a day and observe all the wasting, all the fat bellies. If we had those photos out there, maybe things would be a little different."
Putnam is not a casual observer. She sees just about everyone in the Portland area who has been diagnosed with HIV, and from those people she is able to glean a certain amount of information about what’s happening on the outside. And she is disturbed because what she sees is a complicated, multi-faceted problem that in many ways dwarfs the issues that once surrounded the spread of AIDS.
First, there’s that 800-pound gorilla called crystal meth, which has been around for a very long time, but has just recently snuck its way into Maine’s gay community.
"I’d say in terms of new diagnoses, most of the people who come in are doing something, and it’s usually crystal meth," says Putnam. "It’s scary dealing with addition, and meth is very, very addictive. A lot of people become addicted to the crystal and then addicted to the sex. It’s so complicated and very disturbing, because I’ve been doing this for 15 years and I really haven’t seen anything quite like this."
It’s easy to understand the addiction. I tried crystal meth just once while visiting, get this, Ogunquit. I had been out to dinner and was just about to sleep off my last glass of port when a friend begged me to go out. He had something that would pep me up. The second the meth hit my nostril, I was a rock star and, by the time I made it to the only club in town that was open, I wanted to hump everything in sight. As the night whirred on at the speed of sound, I eventually did hook up, and proceeded to go at it for about five hours (anyone who knows me intimately is quite aware that this is way out of character).
Nonetheless, the action ended, but the high didn’t. I didn’t want to eat, couldn’t sleep, and, by the time I started to crash, I simply wanted someone to drive a stake through my heart. I was anxious, bitterly depressed, and sweating profusely for almost a week.
I’m not the person health officials are concerned with, though. I used a condom, and it was a solitary experience. No, those who create the most caution more similarly reflect the sexual appetite of, say, the anonymous guy in New York City who now has HIV and claims to have used meth while having unsafe sex with hundreds of men, day after day and week after week. Just about every news source in the world, including the New York Times reported that his case was odd and scary — he’s the one who got the strain of AIDS that skips right over the HIV stage (usually 10 years) and, within two to 10 months, he had full-blown AIDS. What worries health-care officials is the simple math: crystal meth + unsafe sex x "hundreds of men" = well, let’s just say that the number could balloon.
Sure enough, like AIDS, crystal meth is killing gay men, because, unlike AIDS, crystal meth is actually a catalyst for gay men to have unprotected, risky, and rough sex with multiple partners for hours and even days on end.
And, unlike AIDS, some gay men who have traditionally rallied to support their comrades in times of trouble are turning a blind eye to what is quickly eroding a community that, to a large part, was bolstered by its reaction to fighting AIDS.
"Yes, it’s a public-health crisis, disaster perhaps, and there’s no simple solution because it’s not something that can be easily stopped. It requires everyone to chip in and be as conscientious and kind and supportive as they can be," says Jon Vincent, the coordinator of the new Club Drug Initiative, a collaboration between Fenway Community Health, AIDS Action Committee, and a number of other local organizations in Boston.
"It’s heartbreaking for me to see people who have come together and done such great work at mitigating public-health disasters [like AIDS] now sort of fall off and contribute to [the spread of] something as dangerous as crystal meth."
Meth has been around for a long time — and not just since the heady club explosion of the early ’90s when it emerged in places like New York City and Miami — but now health officials in the Boston area are using words like "epidemic" and "rampant" to describe this upper that has been linked to everything from acute, long-term depression to heart attack to an anecdotal spike in HIV transmission.
Crystal meth, which is made from a mélange of toxic ingredients including lantern fuel and drain cleaner, is marked by an inexpensive but lengthy high with a crash so severe that guys will take more to avoid it.
Some say that at the same time that meth takes its toll on individual lives, the uniquely addictive upper has the potential for taking down entire pieces of gay culture.
"Sometimes it seems to me that crystal meth can be as big an epidemic for the gay community as HIV," says Vincent. "It’s really on that level because, in my opinion, it seems specifically tailored in a sense to the gay man. It boosts up your feeling of self-esteem and other stuff that you might be lacking that may have made you feel oppressed by society up to that point.
"It’s a very ritualized drug; it’s part of the culture. People are getting high, and having sex without rubbers. I think it is being very, very destructive to the gay community because it’s so unlike any other drug and that’s really unfortunate. Yes, I think it has the potential to unravel part of the gay community. It’s an epidemic in line with HIV in terms of being pointedly destructive to our community."
Health officials in Maine, including Noel Bonam, the manager for the Health and Human Services Department for the city of Portland, and Jed Barnum, the Men’s Health Coordinator at the Frannie Peabody Center, are worried, too.
"I’d say we’re afraid," says Bonam. "It’s not as huge [a problem] as in Boston or New York City, but we see it trending this way. I can’t say a percentage, but there is definitely an increase in use. It’s definitely here and we’re seeing it more and more."
And, more and more, says Bonam, meth use is leading to a spike in HIV and other STDs. He says that the number of people contracting syphilis in Maine is up; his office saw two cases of LGV, a rare form of chlamydia that has been re-emerging in the gay community in the past month; and , most worrisome, the number of HIV cases related to crystal use is increasing, says Bonam.
One local health official who wished to remain anonymous said that, just recently, an individual was diagnosed with a drug-resistant, highly aggressive strain of HIV that was very similar to that which was reportedly contracted by that anonymous man in New York City last month.
And, the Portland patient "was definitely using meth," reported the source.
Bonam, who is currently working with focus groups in Portland to evaluate the proliferation of dangerous drugs and their connection to STDs in the gay community, told the Phoenix that he doesn’t believe that meth use is peaking in Portland — yet.
"I have to admit that I haven’t seen a lot [of meth use] socially or anecdotally, it really isn’t a hometown drug like pot or cocaine," he says. "But it will make its way here. I’ve been working with the Bureau of Health for about a year now and we’ve had discussions with all the AIDS service organizations in the state — my perspective is when it does hit the state, we’ll be prepared for it unlike the rest of the US. What we’re hearing now is that a lot of young people are using it and people are traveling to Boston and New York City, doing it, and coming back."
That said, some people aren’t traveling far at all for their sex or their drugs.
According to Putnam, sex parties organized around crystal meth and Viagra, which causes the epic erection that is often lost in the meth rush, are becoming more prevalent in Portland. She says that the people who frequent the parties aren’t the ones who are coming in to be tested: They already know they are at risk and don’t care.
"We know that there are a lot of people being infected this way by tracking Web sites," she says.
But most stunning of all, "There are a lot of people out there who want to get HIV; they want people to ‘poz’ them; and the phenomenon is pretty big," she says. Putnam says that she and her colleagues are anecdotally aware of at least three large groups, although no one knows how large, in Southern Maine who get together a few times a week for such sex parties.
Knowing that I probably wouldn’t be welcome at any of these parties, I turned to Manhunt.net, one of the sites that may be used as a portal for organizing such gatherings. I asked for information about these parties.
Anecdotal information started to fill my in-box. One guy told me he really gets into bare backing (unprotected anal sex) and, just recently, he was at a party where he overheard a couple of guys who were trying to get HIV so that they could increase their financial aid for college. Of course, this is email and the Internet, where anonymity reigns and verification is difficult.
Another respondent, identifying himself as a 43-year-old gay retired local police officer who’s been to a number of sex parties, had this to say about crystal meth: "It is a cancer growing on the community as a whole. It is changing . . . the outward perception of the gay community in Portland and Southern Maine." He added his thoughts on who is using and why. "Teenagers who believe that it intensifies the moment. These are the same guys, late teens to mid-twenties, who are not that concerned about becoming infected OR infecting others. Their belief is that, ‘I’ll just have to take some pills for the rest of my life. It’s worth the extra intensity of bare backing, seeding, etc.’ "
Although a disturbing, and perhaps overblown, topic, the concept of "seeding" someone with HIV is fascinating and I wanted to know more.
He responded: "The parties were, umm, different. I saw all kinds of things. Bare backing was/is the norm. Most parties would provide lube [and LOTS of it] and porn. While I have bare backed on most occasions, I have noticed an awful lot of the ‘Abercrombie Strain’ at these sex parties. In no time at all, the clothes (usually expensive ones at that) are flying off the well muscled and perfectly tanned torsos of little Johnny and the rest of the old football gang from school. No protection, other than pulling out and shooting their loads on each other," the officer said with an obvious amount of hyperbole, adding more about the so-called "Abercrombie strain" which is apparently as much a way of life as it is a reference to HIV.
"It’s a club. It’s a status thing, It’s fucking insanity! It starts with someone finding a poz subject, and then passing him around the group. Then, the youngsters break-off onto their own and go back to their normal humping-and-fucking-and-sucking routines."
He adds that he has also had contact with many HIV-positive men who seek "prey."
"And the curious thing I have noticed as of late is that the ‘prey’ . . . are usually bi-sexual married men. How fair is this?
"I have, on three occasions, met some real, honest-to-goodness-right-out-of-the-County kids who have told me, and this is the scary part, that they came all the way to Southern Maine in order to get ‘seeded,’ the term I hear more and more these days. These young men are going around with the belief that all will be well as long as they take their meds after becoming infected."
It’s important to remember that those are the observations of only one individual and, like crystal use and seeding sex parties, no real empirical data exists to qualify or disqualify his remarks. There are, however, similar accounts.
Another man, who identified as 45 and "highly educated" said that, as an HIV-positive man, he is often solicited on the Internet to "seed" others.
"Just tonight on [manhunt.net] someone was begging me to fuck him without a condom. I have had others who don’t know their status and don’t care to know and want unprotected sex — some guys, typically younger, just want to be infected so they can relax about it," he said, adding that he doesn’t now, nor has he ever, used street or party drugs.
"I feel that many people use drugs freely at parties. I have several friends who became infected during a ‘drug period’ in their lives and now blame that phase of their life [for their HIV status]."
Juan Mendez, 46, from Ellsworth, and who goes by the moniker POZbttmpussy on Manhunt.net, says he used crystal meth for 15 years.
"The effects of it can get you so hot and horny that you will do anything to get laid. Whether it was in a back seat of a car or in a parking lot day or night, or just hanging in the bath house where it was non-stop action. I love the stuff way too much, and that is why I moved here. I really don’t know anyone around here who is using it. And if I did know anyone who was using, I would not try to associate myself with them ’cause I really don’t want to get back into habits that caused me to lose my job and my home and personal belongings," said Mendez, who admitted to once spending three weeks at a bath house for nonstop sex during one of his highs in San Francisco in the ’80s. Even so, he says that he is actually shocked by the attitude towards unsafe sex in Maine.
"[The boys] keep hitting me up to have unsafe sex with them so they can get infected. I don’t know what is wrong with the world today. I would hate to pass it on to someone else. People that are 19 to 35 have been asking me to infect them, and I REFUSE TO!!!"
In all, fewer than 20 people agreed to email about their experiences with drugs and sex parties, but a number of people cautiously acknowledged that the parties exist, that men, generally young guys, are looking to become infected, and that crystal meth is at the heart of it all.
Putnam says that the images of people living healthy lives with HIV, and reports of the efficacy of life-extending drugs, may contribute to carelessness surrounding HIV, but that’s not all.
"Yes, it’s the images," she says, "but it’s about more than that. It’s not about these people wanting to just have more sex. Some people are tired of trying to be careful and tired of just being vigilant . . . they just want to let go. The really sad thing is that it just creates a bunch of other issues. Once they stop worrying about their safety, they stop worrying about the safety of others and it just balloons. Getting HIV is certainly not the answer to any problem."
There is no simple answer to any of this behavior, says Vincent, but he does caution that readers should not assume that the phenomenon is anything but fringe.
"It would be hard for me to say why these particular people might want to become positive, but the anecdotal evidence does seem to indicate that a very small minority of gay and bisexual men wants to become infected with HIV. It might be because they want to belong. It might be because they view this as an opportunity to get what they feel is a painful but inevitable experience over with," he says. "There is a lack of vision involved in this plan, though. HIV is a permanent, devastating illness that is likely to affect these guys for the rest of their lives."
He reiterates that, like other times throughout their history, it will be gay men who are called upon to stem the tide.
"I hope as members of the community that we can help educate these people and offer them a more optimistic view of their personal futures. It is our obligation to do this. Their health contributes to the health of the larger community, and, in turn, a healthy community promotes the health of its individual members," says Vincent. "I believe this is the future we should all be working towards and I think if we engage each other in informed, constructive and compassionate ways around the issues of HIV infection and substance abuse that we will get there."
What’s the alternative?
