The risk of HIV and AIDS grows when urban gay men use crystal meth and cruise the Internet to arrange quick sex hook-ups, writes Michael Spector in The New Yorker.

Jeffrey Klausner, who is the director of the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Prevention and Control Services of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, told me. “It was in the spring of ’99, and we were starting to see a small increase in the number of syphilis cases in gay men: ten in 1998, and by the next spring there were already another ten.

I asked this one guy how many sexual partners he had had in the past two months, which is something we always ask. And he said fourteen. And then I asked him how many he had had in the past year. And he said fourteen. “That was a little odd,” Klausner continued. “I said, ‘Well, what happened two months ago?’ The man replied, ‘I got online.’ ”

...“It turned out that crystal methamphetamine and the Internet were the perfect complements for high-risk sex,” Klausner said. “Crystal washes away your inhibitions. Makes you feel good and want sex. And the Internet is there to respond to your whims. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s always available.” Klausner and others embarked on studies that concentrated on the use of the Internet, on attitudes about AIDS, and on the role of methamphetamine in gay life. The results were hard to misinterpret: the Internet has turned out to be a higher-risk environment than any bar or bathhouse—men who meet online are more likely to use the drug, more likely to be infected with H.I.V., and less likely to use condoms.

Spector also reports:

In one recent study, twenty-five per cent of those men who reported methamphetamine use in the previous month were infected with H.I.V. The drug appears to double the risk of infection (because it erases inhibitions but also, it seems, because of physiological changes that make the virus easier to transmit), and the risk climbs the more one uses it. Over the past several years, nearly every indicator of risky sexual activity has risen in the gay community.

Perhaps for the first time since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, the number of men who say they use condoms regularly is below fifty per cent; after many years of decline, the number of new H.I.V. diagnoses among gay men increased every year between 2000 and 2003, while remaining stable in the rest of the population.

This Gay.com page offers resources for fighting crystal meth addiction and sex addiction. Gay.com introduces the resource links with these words:

Social pressure, loneliness, low self-esteem, stress and other factors can weigh heavy on anyone, and cause some serious psychological breakdowns, substance problems or unhealthy sexual behaviors. GLBT people seem especially vulnerable, and often the community itself can seem cold, competitive and less-than-welcoming.

If you feel that you're losing control, or just need someone to talk to, here's a list of helpful links, resource directories and national hotlines to help you stay the radiant, beautiful GLBT person you are. We want our community to stay healthy, be happy and have fun!

The last sentence badly needs re-writing. It should say, "We want our community to be focused on committed, loving, long-term, monogamous relationships."

But I guess that would be too judgemental.

OTHER ROSENBLOG POSTS ON AIDS

"AIDS And The Self."
"Behavior, Not Condoms, Key In India AIDS Prevention."

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 17, 2005 01:38 PM