Here's another interesting article talking about race and culture in drug epidemics (not sure how to fully paste article, so here are excerpts with a link to full thing):
The waiting room of
Gay Men of African Descent, a service agency near Downtown Brooklyn, is almost always quiet and empty. Artful photographs of naked men under tinted lights hang on the walls without an audience. Magazines for people who are H.I.V. positive sit untouched in a swirl on a carved African pedestal.
The office, in the basement of a nondescript building, is the kind of place that you would find only if you were looking for it. The men who ring the buzzer to enter do not linger; they head straight for the receptionist, who greets them by name and sends them back to their appointments.
Mostly they come seeking counseling. They are gay and bisexual black men who flocked to the city in search of sexual freedom and found darker things with it — H.I.V., homelessness, social isolation. And many carry a deeper shame. “When people started to talk about their sexual lives,” said Chris Johnson, a therapist at GMAD since 2006, “they would introduce that crystal meth became a part of that sexual experience.”
Beginning five or six years ago, Mr. Johnson started hearing in therapy sessions about 24-, 36- and 48-hour sex binges fueled by meth, which can intensify sexual desire while delaying orgasm for hours. Mr. Johnson recalled his concern for an addicted client working in fashion who used a phone sex line to find “partner after partner after partner after partner,” and for a former member of the military who liked to “party and play,” lingo for attending meth-rich sex parties. There have been many others. “I’m thinking, ‘Wow, this is becoming a big problem,’ ” Mr. Johnson said.
They are men like J., a closeted gay black man from the Caribbean living in Brooklyn, who has been smoking meth for a few years and is ambivalent about stopping. For him, being high is a single-minded pursuit of his deepest desires. He thrills in the chase and in the catch, in the craving and satisfaction. We spoke in the conference room of GMAD, where J. has been going since he found he had contracted H.I.V., five or six years ago. He asked to be identified only by his first initial.
When he is high, he said, he will see men on the street or train and hope to have sex with them. “Whatever is on your mind, that is what your desire is going to be,” he said. “When you get that desire, you’re just going to be looking and looking.”
But more than lust is driving him, and he sees that. “Sometimes I feel hopeless and all of that stuff,” he said. “Lonely. Loneliness will make you want to do it.” And disappointment and boredom, too, he said.
Meth is not new to New York, nor is it new to the gay sex scene, but its use is a relatively new phenomenon among black and Hispanic men who have sex with men. Ten or 12 years ago, meth, or Tina, as it is known on the street,
was popular among an affluent, white gay and bisexual set; those men were the urban faces of a drug often associated with the rural poor. In New York, using meth was more glamorous then, more stylish, more of a diversion and less of an escape.
J. doesn’t remember all of the details of the first time he used crystal meth, but it was about three years ago, two years after he became H.I.V. positive. He regularly came across men using meth. “It’s very popular in N.Y.C. in the black community,” he said. “I like to try stuff. I see other people doing it. Why not do it? I’m going to do it too.” That first time, he invited three or four men to his apartment. “It’s a party,” he said. “We smoke and freak.”
J., who is handsome and muscular, said he had become popular on the scene, a prize, never paying for drugs. But meth began to affect his mood. He would lose his temper at his parties, screaming and cursing, jealous that other men were more handsome. He became paranoid. He lost his friends. “I think people are going to kill me, and all that stuff,” he said.
He did not always use a condom, but that did not concern him much, he said. “Most of these people who are using are positive, too,” he said. “I guess they feel some type of way about themselves. They feel hopeless.”
In a program they call Crystal Clear, Dr. Ruggiero and other clinicians push participants to talk about race, sexual identity and internalized homophobia. They ask participants to stop having sex for 90 days. Some must get rid of their computers, so they won’t cruise the Internet.
“I think you have to build something for yourself if your goal is to stay sober,” Dr. Ruggiero said. “Sometimes the message of ‘Don’t use drugs’ can feel so depriving. A lot of the guys who I worked with who have been so successful, we helped them stop using drugs and rebuild other parts of their lives.”
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I thought the one in OP was ok, it needed more facts. I know a lot of HIV drug addicts. So I combined all info and wrote a quick informational piece as a small assignment due in my health class tonight.