LGBT Drug Treatment Blog

What is crystal meth?

Crystal meth is one street form of the drug, methamphetamine hydrochloride, which comes in clear, chunky crystals, which are then inhaled or smoked. It is also called “ice,” “crystal,” “glass” and “tina.”

Crystal meth can be easy to produce in small, clandestine labs, sometimes in a kitchen or bathroom, by mixing a cocktail of about 15 substances, mostly pseudoephedrine (a cold remedy), red phosphorous and iodine, but also including ammonia, paint thinner, ether, Drano and the lithium from batteries. Police say an investment of about $150 can yield up to $10,000 worth of the drug. But the resulting drug is often impure and the manufacturing process can be dangerous and cause fires.

Crystal meth has become the most widespread and popular form of the drug, largely because it is so easy to make that anyone can set up a lab (instructions are widespread on the World Wide Web), but also because motorcycle gangs, which are becoming dominant in organized drug trafficking, usually sell the drug.

What is crank?

“Crank” is a smelly, yellow form of “meth” that is usually snorted. Crank is usually the cheapest form of the drug. www.lakeviewhealth.com

What is lith?

“Lith” is short for the lithium taken from batteries in the manufacturing process. Lith comes in a paste form that is usually smoked. It is more expensive than crank but cheaper than the crystal form.

Who uses crystal meth?

According to mental health workers, police and research scientists, the people who use crystal meth include:

• Large numbers of rural and small town poor across North America.
• Some young people in the rave and dance scene.
• Some young people who want to lose weight.
• Gay males involved in the dance scene or who frequent bathhouses.

Addiction experts say crystal meth first became popular in poor areas of rural North America for a number of reasons. It was a cheap high and, in initial stages of use, it actually gave the energy that allowed the user to keep working. It was also considered “cool” by young people who did not have big-city connections to other street drugs.

A recent Statistics Canada survey of teenagers showed that among those who answered questions about drug use: www.steppingstonecenter.org

• 34 per cent had tried marijuana.
• 4 per cent had used ecstasy.
• 3 per cent had used crack cocaine.
• 2 per cent had used crystal meth.
• 1 per cent had used heroin.

What is a tweaker?

A “tweaker” is a term for a crystal meth user that came out of the U.S. rural Midwest and has become increasingly common as the media and the entertainment industry picked up the term.

Is there a connection between crystal meth and ecstasy?

Police say that in some areas, crystal meth is replacing ecstasy as the drug used by teenagers and young adults in the rave and dance scene.

In many areas, crystal meth is cheaper, at $10 for a “point” or about one-tenth of a gram. An ecstasy hit, or tablet, can cost twice as much, about $20.

The RCMP say that some of the drugs seized at parties or dances that were sold as ecstasy were, in fact, crystal meth. As well, the police say that some dealers give out “free samples” at parties or in the dance scene, in hopes of hooking new customers.

On the other hand, police and addiction treatment counsellors say that some “street-wise” kids are on to that and try to avoid crystal meth either directly or disguised as ecstasy.

Gay Friendly Addiction Treatment in New Jersey

Addiction treatment program and alcohol addiction programs have been available for the heterosexual community in New Jersey for well over 30 years.

These addiction treatment programs have been of high quality and either, private, not for profit, federally funded, inpatient addiction treatment or outpatient addiction treatment. There has been addiction treatment for almost any kind of drug addiction or alcohol addiction. You can find addiction treatment programs for the elderly, adolescent, men or women, but what about the GLBT population (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender). Where do those with a different sexual orientation go and feel comfortable? Where do the GLBT go where they can receive addiction treatment without being judged?

Gay Friendly Addiction Treatment

Historically, the GLBT community suffering from drug addiction or alcoholism, were expected to fit into primarily heterosexual drug rehab or alcohol rehab programs. Can you imagine being heterosexual and being asked to fit into a gay addiction treatment program, gay drug rehab or gay alcohol rehab program. Think maybe you might feel a little uncomfortable, have trouble fitting in or experience the result of internalized homophobia. What do you think your addiction treatment experience would be like? That is correct, you would never receive the greatest possible benefit from you addiction treatment experience. Because of this the possibility of relapse would be quite high.

Today, the approach to treating the GLBT population has begun to change. You can find drug rehab or alcohol treatment programs such as Lakeview Freedom Rings that has designed addiction treatment for the GLBT population within the structure of a state of the art addiciton treatment program. Addiction treatment programs such as this, have begun to emerge, but on a limited basis.

What is the Clinical Structure Within the Addiction Treatment Program?

The gay friendly addiction treatment component is a program within a program. While the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender certainly have their own set of specific issues, people are people and addicts are addicts. Any quality gay addiction treatment component will have its own addiction therapist trained in meeting the recovery needs of the GLBT population, the staff at the addiction treatment center will receive sensitivity training and education to reduce and sometimes eliminate any homophobic attitudes and the GLBT patients will participate in clinical services with the rest of the population outside of their component.

NJ Gay Friendly Addiction Treatment Services

Unfortunately there are not many addiction treatment centers in New Jersey with “true” gay friendly addiction treatment or gay friendly alcohol treatment components within the confines of the drug rehab or alcohol rehab. When looking for a New Jersey Gay Drug Rehab or Gay Alcohol Rehab you might want to call 1-800-511-9225, a gay friendly addiction treatment helpline or go to …………………………….. www.gay-rehab.com

Indicators of Sexual Addiction  The sex addict uses sex as a quick fix, or as a form of medication for anxiety, pain, loneliness, stress, or sleep. Sex addicts often refer to sex as their “pain reliever” or “tension reliever.” Other indicators that sexual behavior may be out of control include: 

• an obsession with sex that dominates one’s life, including sexual fantasies that interfere with work performance 
• excessive time devoted to planning sexual activity that it interferes with other activities strong feelings of shame about one’s sexual behavior 
• feelings of powerlessness or inability to stop despite predictable adverse consequences 
• inability to make a commitment to a loving relationship and/or extreme dependence upon a relationship as a basis for feelings of self-worth 
• little or no genuine emotional satisfaction or attachment gained from sexual encounters 

Compulsive or addictive sexual behavior may take various forms, including what many regard as “normal” heterosexual behavior. The type of sexual activity and even the frequency or number of partners are not of great significance in diagnosing this problem. Some individuals have a naturally stronger sex drive than others, and the range of human sexual activity is so broad that it is difficult to define “normal” sexual behavior. What is significant is a pattern of self-destructive or high risk sexual behavior that is unfulfilling, a person is unable to stop, and their life becomes unmanageable as a result.  The first major study of sexual addiction was published by Patrick Carnes in 1991.(4) It was based on questionnaires filled out by 752 males and 180 females diagnosed as sex addicts, most of them admitted for treatment in the in-patient Sexual Dependency Unit of a hospital in Minnesota. The others had at least three years of participation in one of the 12-step programs for recovery from sexual addition. Of the sex addicts in this survey, 63% were heterosexual, 18% homosexual, 11% bisexual, and 8% were unsure of their sexual preference.  The sexual addicts who responded to Carnes’ questionnaire were typically unable to form close friendships. Their feelings of shame and unworthiness made them unable to accept real intimacy. They were certain they would be rejected if others only knew what they were “really” like, so they found myriad obsessive ways to turn away a potential friend or loving partner. Despite a large number of superficial sexual contacts, they suffered from loneliness, and many developed a sense of leading two lives–one sexual, the other centered around their occupation or other “normal” activity.  In Carnes’ survey, 97% responded that their sexual activity led to loss of self-esteem. Other reported emotional costs were strong feelings of guilt or shame, 96%; strong feelings of isolation and loneliness, 94%; feelings of extreme hopelessness or despair, 91%; acting against personal values and beliefs, 90%; feeling like two people, 88%; emotional exhaustion, 83%; strong fears about own future, 82%; and emotional instability, 78%.  Carnes found that 42% of sex addicts in his sample also had a problem with either alcoholism or drug addiction and 38% had eating disorders.   

Gay drug Addiction
 

Gay drug addiction has become an increasing concern because of the close relationship between gay drug addiction and HIV/AIDS. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), over the last few years over 50% of the new HIV and AIDS cases have come up from intravenous drug use. This figure does not specifically apply to gay intravenous drug users, but all drug users; however, homosexual males are the highest HIV positive group. Gay drug addiction is a very dangerous category because although overall cases of HIV have gone down the number of injecting drug users transmitting HIV has risen. While intravenous drug use is one of the more risky categories, all gay drug addiction has risks because drugs and alcohol lower inhibitions and lead to poor choices and unsafe actions

Depression, sex addiction linked in gay men, report says
Gay health experts call for honest dialogue around touchy subjects 

By RYAN LEE
Friday, September 15, 2006 

Mental health issues were long viewed as binary — someone either was, or wasn’t, depressed. But in recent years, mental health experts have paid more attention to the various gradations of depression, and some gay health advocates say it’s time people recognized how even moderate levels of depression can significantly impact a person’s behavior. 

A new report compiled by the Medius Institute for Gay Men’s Health — a small, New York-based organization founded in June 2005 — suggests that since gay men have higher rates of depression than the general population, they inevitably also are more likely to engage in high-risk behavior associated with depression, including unsafe sex and drug use. 

“It would be an oversimplification to say that depression ‘causes’ the risky behavior,” according to the report, “Living on the Edge: Gay Men, Depression & Risk-Taking,” written by Spencer Cox, Medius founder and executive director. 

“Instead, it appears that in gay men, multiple epidemics — such as depression, drug abuse, violence, childhood sexual abuse and HIV — interact to increase risk for one another,” Cox wrote. 

Depression — along with milder mood disorders like dysthymia — should not be viewed as the latest “crisis-of-the-month” for gay men, but rather as “a background risk modulator” that subconsciously influences a range of behaviors, Cox said. 

The Medius report consisted of Cox searching several medical databases for already-existing studies on depression among gay men and other populations, as well as interviews with mental health and sex researchers and service providers. 

Cox estimated that he reviewed and analyzed about 300 different studies, from such varying sources as the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and National Institutes of Health, to the Gay Urban Men’s Health  Study. 

Among the previous findings Cox highlighted in his overview was the fact that gay men were more likely than heterosexual men and lesbians to experience depression, and that depression in younger gay men was associated with increases in risk-taking behavior, such as not wearing a condom. 

“What makes the gay experience [with depression] unique is the high levels of depression — roughly one-in-five gay men experience depressive symptoms,” said Cox, noting that the rate for the general population is less than half of that. “So, it’s like everything is louder for us, everything is bigger when we’re talking about depression and mental illness in gay men.” 

The result of that amplification, according to Cox, is a culture where scores of gay men engage in drug use and high-risk sexual behavior to cope with unseen depression, oblivious to the toll their self-destructive habits are taking on their well being. 

“The normalization of a lot of those things makes it very hard to see what’s happening — everybody you know is doing a bump of cocaine on the dance floor, so go ahead,” Cox said. “I do think it’s very hard for people to say, ‘I’m very confused and I need help.’ 

“We need to make it OK to say, ‘You need help, get help,’” he added.

For help call Recovery Connection at 1-800-511-9225, an addiction treatment helpline. 

Behavior associated with drug abuse is now the single largest factor in the spread of HIV infection in the United States. HIV is the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which causes Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, or AIDS. AIDS is a condition characterized by a defect in the body’s natural immunity to diseases, and individuals who suffer from it are at risk for severe illnesses that are usually not a threat to anyone whose immune system is working properly. Although many individuals who have AIDS or carry HIV may live for many years with treatment, there is no known cure or vaccine. 

Using or sharing unsterile needles, cotton swabs, rinse water, and cookers, such as when injecting heroin, cocaine, or other drugs, leaves a drug abuser vulnerable to contracting or transmitting HIV. Another way people may be at risk for contracting HIV is simply by using drugs of abuse, regardless of whether a needle and syringe are involved. Research sponsored by NIDA and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has shown that drug and alcohol use can interfere with judgment about sexual (and other) behavior and thereby affect the likelihood of engaging in unplanned and unprotected sex. This increases the risk for contracting HIV from infected sex partners. 

Infection Rates 

Since the epidemic began, injection drug use has directly and indirectly accounted for more than one-third (36 percent) of AIDS cases in the United States, and an estimated 28 percent of diagnosed AIDS cases among adults and adolescents were related to injection drug use in 2002. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analysis of HIV surveillance data, of the 859,000 cumulative AIDS cases reported through December 2002, a total of 209,920 (25 percent) were among injection drug users (IDUs).* 

From 1998 to 2002, an estimated 240,268 AIDS diagnoses were due directly to injection drug use, with males accounting for roughly 72 percent of these cases. Over this same period, there has been a gradual decline in the number of new AIDS diagnoses associated with injection drug use for both males and females. 

Among racial and ethnic groups, as of December 2002, 43 percent of cumulative AIDS cases reported among adult and adolescent Hispanic males were directly or indirectly related to injection drug use, as were 42 percent among African American males. The percentages were greater among females, however. Fifty-eight percent of cumulative AIDS cases reported among adult and adolescent Hispanic females were directly or indirectly related to injection drug use, as were 57 percent of cases reported among White females and 51 percent among African American females. By comparison, only 18 percent of the cumulative AIDS cases reported through 2002 among White males were directly or indirectly related to injection drug use. 

The gradual decline over the period from 1998 to 2002 in the number of new AIDS diagnoses among IDUs contrasts with the steady to slightly increasing numbers of new AIDS diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM). However, the greater contrast is with the number of new AIDS diagnoses due to heterosexual contact, which has increased steadily from 1998 to 2002 for both adult and adolescent males (18 percent) and females (16 percent). 

Drug rehabilitation drug rehab or just rehab, is an umbrella term for the processes of medical and/or psychotherapeutic treatment, for dependency on psychoactive substances such as alcohol, prescription drugs, and so-called street drugs such as cocaine, heroin or amphetamines. The generally stated intent of drug rehab is to enable the patient to cease his substance abuse, for the sake of avoiding the psychological, legal, financial, social, and physical consequences that can be caused especially by extreme abuse.
Drug rehabilitation tends to address a stated two-fold nature of drug dependency: physical and psychological dependency. Physical dependency involves a detoxification process to cope with withdrawal symptoms from regular use of a drug. With regular use of many drugs, legal or otherwise, the brain gradually adapts to the presence of the drug so that normal functioning can occur. This is how physical tolerance develops to drugs such as heroin, amphetamines, cocaine, nicotine or alcohol. It is also why more of the drug is needed to get the same effect with regular use. The abrupt cessation of taking a drug can lead to withdrawal symptoms where the body may take weeks or months (depending on the drug involved) to return to normal.
Psychological dependency is addressed in many drug rehab programs by attempting to teach the patient new methods of interacting in a drug-free environment. In particular, patients are generally encouraged or required not to associate with friends who still use the addictive substance. Twelve-step programs encourage addicts not only to stop using alcohol or other drugs, but to examine and change habits related to their addictions. Many drug rehab programs emphasize that recovery is a permanent process without a culmination. For legal drugs such as alcohol complete abstention–rather than attempts at moderation, which may lead to relapse–is also emphasized (”One drink is too many; one hundred drinks is not enough.”) Whether moderation is achievable by persons with a history of drug abuse remains a controversial point but is generally considered unsustainable.
There are various types of addiction treatment programs that offer help in drug rehab, including: residential treatment (in-patient), out-patient, local support groups, extended care centers, and sober houses.
Pharmacotherapy’s, to a greater or lesser extent, have come to play a part in drug rehab. Certain opiate medications such as methadone and more recently buprenorphine are widely used and show significant efficacy in the treatment of dependence on other opiates such as heroin, morphine or oxycodone. Methadone and buprenorphine are maintenance therapies used with intent of stabilizing an abnormal opiate system and used for long durations of time though both may be used to withdraw patients from narcotics over short term periods as well. Some antidepressants also show use in moderating drug use, particularly to nicotine, and it has become common for researchers to reexamine already approved drugs for new uses in drug rehabilitation.
Drug rehab is sometimes part of the criminal justice system. People convicted of minor drug offenses may be sentenced to rehabilitation instead of prison, and those convicted of driving while intoxicated are sometimes required to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. There have been lawsuits filed, and won, regarding the requirement of attending Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step meetings as being inconsistent with the United States’ Constitutional mandate of separation of church and state.
There are psychotherapists who question the entire validity of the “diseased person” model upon which the drug rehabilitation “industry” is based. Instead, they state that the individual person is entirely capable of rejecting previous behaviors. Further, they contend that the use of the disease model of addiction simply perpetuates the addict’s feelings of worthlessness, powerlessness, and inevitably causes inner conflicts that would be easily resolved if the addict were to approach addiction as simply behavior that is no longer productive, the same as childhood tantrums. Drug rehabilitation does not utilize any of these ideas, inasmuch as they intrinsically contradict the assumption that the addict is a sick person in need of help.