Even after 2-year prison term, attraction is there
The stereotypic user of methamphetamine in the Midwest is a gay or bisexual man who is an educated professional and lover of the gay party/nightclub scene. Depending on when such a person is interviewed, he also may be HIV-positive. Tony Lasan, 40, from Cincinnati fits the stereotype. (Lasan’s true name is withheld to protect his privacy.)
Lasan began using club drugs about 15 years ago when he attended a gay dance party in Atlanta, which was a huge fundraising event for AIDS organizations. Two things most impressed Lasan at the party where thousands of young-to-middle-aged professional men danced for more than 12 hours. One was being dazzled by the creativity and choreographed stage shows both featuring and observed by an array of beautiful people. The second strong impression was of the drugs passed around like breath mints.
The HIV educational booths, condom distribution, and prevention messages also present at the fundraising event did not leave as lasting of an impression. High on stimulants, Lasan was able to dance for 12 hours and still have stamina for later anonymous and unprotected sexual encounters.
Once Lasan tried ecstasy, he was hooked. "I swear this is true, but on a metaphysical basis, your mind just starts to meld together and it’s an incredible oneness with this powerful experience and uplifting music," Lasan says of his first ecstasy experience. Crystal methamphetamine was equally addicting, he notes. "One of the first things people talk about when they mention crystal meth is the sex," Lasan says. "It makes sex so incredible, and it turns on every cell in your body, making it 100% more sensitive."
Orgasms are more intense, and a person’s sexual stamina is long lasting, Lasan says. He added that it feels like the orgasm is "from every cell in your body, from head to toe, and it’s just awesome, and you can go for hours, too."
Safe sex and condoms aren’t even on the radar screen during such a high, and even if someone high on crystal meth used a condom during a first sexual encounter of the night, he’s unlikely to continue to use condoms during the subsequent sexual marathon, Lasan says. "When I have marathon sex on meth, I won’t do the same [thing] over and over," he adds. "I may do things that I may not have necessarily thought were risky, but they probably ended up being that way."
High on crystal meth, a gay man may experience such heightened happiness and euphoria that he doesn’t think it’s possible that something negative can happen to him, so why be tied to the reality of condoms at that moment, Lasan points out. Plus, there’s the common perception that if your partner doesn’t ask whether you are HIV-positive, then it means you probably both are HIV-positive, he says. Lasan never asked about HIV status even in the years before he became HIV-positive, he adds.
Lasan was tested regularly, and it was six months after his last negative HIV test that he received the dreaded phone call, telling him he had the virus. During that six-month period, Lasan had spent a semiretirement vacation in Miami, partying nightly at gay bathhouses and clubs. Lasan is certain he became infected during that party period because that was the first time he regularly used GHB, which made him so uninhibited that he engaged in unprotected, receptive anal intercourse, he contends.
Viagra enters the mix
Also, a side effect of GHB and other stimulants is temporary impotence. A user might feel incredibly sexual and turned on, but he is unable to maintain an erection, a phenomenon noted in methamphetamine research. "There is a connection there when you’re doing these drugs and you can’t get it up," Lasan says. "So you can’t be the giver, you have to be the receiver — you get stimulated internally since you can’t externally." Of course, in more recent years, the party circuit has found a solution to this problem in the form of Viagra, which now is passed out readily along with stimulants, Lasan says.
A couple of years after being diagnosed as HIV positive, Lasan was arrested for possession and trafficking in ecstasy, ketamine, and crystal methamphetamine. Lasan says that he would often serve as a club drug go-between for party circuit friends. Although he was a successful and affluent entrepreneur and owner of a legitimate business, he was sent to prison for two years when he refused to cooperate with the Drug Enforcement Agency.
He is monitored regularly by an HIV physician, but so far, his blood tests have shown that he is not yet ready for antiretroviral medication. Lasan says his clinician has talked with him about safe-sex practices, and his response is to notify new partners of his HIV status and to choose safer sex practices when a partner is HIV-negative.
Despite the fact that he was forced to sell his business to pay legal fees and that he lost a couple of years of his life in prison, Lasan says he still is attracted to using the drugs within the context of gay clubs and parties, and he doesn’t consider himself an addict. "Tweakers is the term for people who do meth," Lasan says. "We cannot be bothered by doing drugs all day, and a lot of addicts will do that — like people who like needles and cross over that line."
Lasan says the difference is that his crowd of meth users consists of professionals who relegate their drug use to the weekend parties. "I’m not saying a driven professional can’t be an addict, but folks who prefer to do the drug for the drug’s sake, they’ll smoke it or shoot it or do anything to get more effect," Lasan says. "For them, the drug is the end; for me, the drug was the tool to reach the end."
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