[PART THREE] Crystal Meth Uncensored

The following is the third installment of Susan Kingston's remarks from her talk at the Center on Halsted June 27 titled: "Crystal Meth Uncensored - What the DEA and the Gay Media Won't Tell You."

Click here for the 1st installment
Click here for the 2nd installment
Click here for the 4th installment
Click here for the 5th and final
Click here for her full remarks, all in one place. 

Nothing derails judgment faster than curiosity with a hard-on

Despite what our hysterical Chicken Little media tells us, only about 10% have used in the last year. Out of ten guys, we can assume that 2-3 used it only once and said that’s it. Another 2-3 probably only used it anywhere from 2 to 6 times without any problems in their lives. That leaves about 4-6 men who we might call “regular users,” of whom half, about 2-3 guys, use meth problematically or have significant dependency. So the media has it right for about 2-3% of the gay community.

So what does this mean ? On a population level, this is not huge, folks. It is not an epidemic, catastrophe, tidal wave, apocalypse or any other hyperbole that predicts the collapse of the gay world. You all survived that dreadful whistles-on-the-dance-floor era; you will make it through this.

Am I saying this is something we should just ignore? Of course not. I just don’t want you to hit irrational, nonsensical panic. And I don’t want you to respond robotically and simply parrot the responses of other cities. More about this later.

This isn’t also to say that meth isn’t a big deal to those 4 to 6 men who are using it regularly. Crystal may not be having an extensive, widespread impact across the population, but it has the potential to be acutely devastating to those few guys who get sucked in.

About men who use

So how do guys get sucked in? How does addiction really develop? It doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen only to guys who don’t have their shit together. It happens more like this.

You probably get your first bump from a sexual partner. You’ve heard of crystal, know about its magical powers and are seduced by this reputation and the hot, hard body in front of you. Nothing derails judgment faster than curiosity with a hard-on. It’s powerful to have a need! You try it, find it to be the singularly most erotic, sensual, mind-blowing sexual euphoria you have ever felt. It’s like having sex with God, according to one of my former clients.

So it’s only natural to maybe, perhaps, want to have sex with God again the next weekend. Last weekend was so incredible and the crash wasn’t so bad, so you can easily score a bump on Thursday, get high and have great sex through Saturday, crash on Sunday and be back to work on Monday. It’s all under control.

Another weekend arrives and you find yourself wanting to have sex again, and that of course, means having it on speed. It seems like it’s you who’s making the choice to want sex, but what you don’t recognize is the early stages of craving-reward and the lines between wanting sex and wanting speed becoming blurred. You think you’re in control, but clearly your brain’s chemical patterns are already being reprogrammed.

Also by now you’ve clearly discovered that although crystal may be causing you to miss a day of work here or there, you’ve lost some weight and look great! And you love feeling confident, experimenting sexually, and rebelling against stifling sexual rules. Ahhh…the freedom! And your house gets cleaned! You just need to remember to drink more water next time you’re high.

So here you are in the early phase of crystal use. You use it occasionally and enjoy it. You haven’t missed that much work. You haven’t spent thousands of dollars you don’t have. You haven’t had unsafe sex. How are you going to respond to a group of people telling you that meth=death when clearly you know that it doesn’t because you are still alive and, in fact, still have all of your teeth?

At this point, you are facing two roads. You can be one of those men who can use crystal fairly regularly and keep his life and body in some sense of order. Your life and health aren’t perfect, but you don’t seem to utterly succumb to crystal. Or, you’re put on the other road, that of escalating dependence, paranoia and isolation, deteriorating relationships and physical health, and almost inevitable HIV infection. What decides which road you take is completely unknown to us.

That’s how it happens. I’m emphasizing this point to show that no one sets out to become a drug addict. Every guy thinks he can control his use better than the other guys he sees. He keeps setting these “I’ll never do this” limits which he eventually crosses and re-lowers. So while the reasons and motivations for using may be conscious for men, the process of addiction is not. Men may not FEEL addicted, but their brains sure do. Men don’t willing walk into addiction as much as they stumble into it. And we can’t blame them for that. Addiction is just as much about the way the brain gets re-wired as it is about underlying motivations for using.

When we think of crystal addiction, we most often think of it like this: Good, HIV- negative Gay meets Speed. Speed makes Good, HIV-negative Gay do bad things. The now Bad Gay gets HIV. All judgment about good and bad aside, this is not the only trajectory. It denies the fact that a significant number of men start using crystal after they’re HIV-positive. When’s the last time you saw a poster or a billboard urging HIV+ guys not to start meth? It’s generally about scaring HIV- men with the threat of getting HIV, right? So again, we see that our approach to crystal meth is far too narrow in focus.

Come back to LifeLube soon for the next installment.

Susan Kingston bio
Susan Kingston is an Educator Consultant with the Drug Use and HIV Prevention Team at Public Health – Seattle & King County and the former Director of Prevention at Stonewall Recovery Services. For ten years, she has worked primarily with gay and bisexual methamphetamine users as both a drug use and harm reduction counselor and as the coordinator of the region’s largest HIV prevention program targeting methamphetamine users. Currently she consults on several research, community intervention and treatment expansion projects related to methamphetamine in the Seattle area and guides lgbt substance use programming at Public Health. She is also a consultant to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on efforts regarding prevention of global methamphetamine abuse.