AIDS in Maine 2005: What a meth Now, the bad news you’d rather not hear

PART TWO OF TWO (Part one can be found by clicking here)

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.