A Gay Man Speaks Out: Partying, Club Drugs,
and HIV
The context in which gay men become initially
HIV infected is very complex and hasn't really
been properly studied.
Many clinicians and researchers say that a
lot of infections in gay men occur,
because of depression, anxiety, and sense
of inevitability.
Now I think there is some enormous truth in
that,
but also I have known gay men, more gay men
becoming infected with HIV, while partying.
They weren't unhappy, they
were partying.
They were having a great time.
They were on acid in San Francisco, they were
on ketamine in Los
Angeles, they were crystal meth in London.
They weren't having a bad time, they weren't
depressed, they were partying.
And because the drugs made them unconscious,
in that context, they didn't think about the
next minute, the next day, let alone
the next year or the next decade.
But somewhere before that happened, somewhere
in their mind becoming HIV infected wasn't
problematic.
It wasn't as if they went into the party mode
thinking we need to be careful because if
we get out of our faces
this is going to happen.
It will happen if you haven't made plans before
how you are going to protect yourself.
So I
feel the clearest answer I can give anxiety,
depression, partying, wanting to join a club
that everyone else is a member of
because once you are HIV infected the other
shoe is dropped.
Nothing worse can happen to you.
The worst that can happen, has happened
to you.
You have become HIV positive.
Okay, you can get syphilis, this and whatever
else, hepatitis.
HIV is the big one, the big H, the
big A, AIDS.
So the worst that can happen to you has happened.
You can relax, both shoes are on the floor,
you have dropped the other shoe.
Inevitability syndrome I call it, because
nothing else can happen to you, the worst
has already happened and I feel like a lot
of the gay men
getting infected now are very relaxed about
it, because they haven't had to worry about
becoming HIV positive, because hey they
became HIV positive so what's there to worry
about?
I can understand that, but what it says about
them and our communities, our gay
communities is that, is that all there is?
Is that all there is to it?
That becoming HIV positive is the zenos, the
nadir of our lives?
I don't think that we have created communities
worth living in.
We went straight from sexual liberation in
the sixties to the AIDS wards of the
late seventies and eighties.
We had a very short time of liberation, but
in that time of liberation we discovered drugs,
we discovered the type
of sex a human being can not sustain over
a long period and what is forgotten and if
you study the data in America, which is where
the best data comes
from in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
and Chicago.
HIV, the HIV epidemic is parallel to the explosion
of recreational drugs.
They happened at
the same time together and in a way this sort
of floored each other.
You couldn't tease out one from the other,
because I don't know a single man, gay man,
who became HIV positive in those cities or
at that time who wasn't also a very heavy
drug user.
I recommend everyone who is watching this
to read Larry Kramer's
book: Faggots.
Which is where it puts it very well, which
is where he got crucified and also Randy Shilts:
And the Band Played On and if you can bear
to watch A Long Time Companion.
These tell a story of how it began and because
we have no sense of history, we are a very
young community.
We need to know where
we came from, because there's the answer to
where it went wrong.
When I ran the Embassy in Heaven [a gay club
in London] the gay men I knew who become HIV
infected then later
developed AIDS and died was very heavy into
certain drugs: cocaine, the biggest of all
was poppers.
In fact, I, my charity, went to court in this
country with the
pharmaceutical society and got amyl nitrate
banned, but unfortunately because the pharmaceutical
society did not get the whole family of poppers
banned, which is the alkyl
nitrate family.
You could still butyl and N-s-butyl nitrate.
These drugs are described by the co-discover
of HIV, Dr. Robert Gallo, as the primary cause
of
AIDS and HIV positive gay men.
They deplete glutathion, they cause T-cell
depletion.
The classical science of AIDS progression.
So then we worked with the
medicines control agency, the Utter Department
of Health and worked with them over many years
in a multimillion pound case to get Butyl
and N-s-butyl banned and
unfortunately lost the case and they were
not banned.
The case was lost in an interesting technicality
by saying well if you are going to ban these
drugs you may as well
ban anything that has an impacted on the human
body such as tea and coffee.
A very convoluted argument, technically they
were correct, but these drugs are not taken
by
the general population.
Gay men are exposed to very specific drugs.
Poppers are almost unique to gay men.
I'm not saying it's the cause of AIDS, but
as Robert Gallo
says it's the major cause of the progression.
So cocaine, poppers, and ecstasy is a disinhibitor.
The biggest killer today I would say apart
from poppers is
crystal meth.
Anyone taking crystal meth I hope you made
your will, because you aren't going to survive.
You are going to get seriously ill and you
are going to die.
Talk about depression and anxiety, crystal
meth.
Talk about suicidal tendency, crystal meth.
So, you can't tease out the strands of recreational
drug abuse or misuse
from HIV, they go together.
You can't remove one strand from the other.
It's almost the same strand.
So, I would say if you look at where we came
from, it's a sign to
where we are going.
We are re-creating the same conditions that
create the AIDS epidemic the HIV epidemic
in the first place, except twenty five years
later.
We haven't learned
a thing.
Stop the drugs and stop the unsafe sex, if
you want to live.
If you don't want to live, continue.
However, don't expect sympathy, empathy, or
funding or maybe even clinical
care soon.
You take full responsibility, caveat emptor.
