Pills, Powder, Poppers, HIV and You
Pills, Powder, Poppers, HIV and You
“It was wild: At first I wasn’t even sure I was going out, then when I got there my friends introduced me to this cute 26-year-old DJ who danced with me for an hour. When he asked if I wanted to go home with him to party, I thought he meant sex, but he meant sex and Crystal and K and more Crystal and more sex. I got home some time Sunday, tweaked, tired and with a satisfying dull ache in my butthole.”
Getting High and Don’t Know Where It’s Getting You?
Tanqueray and tonics in Cincinnati. Long Island Iced Teas. Poppers in Provincetown, K in Key West or Crystal in California. Gay men, like all people, are no strangers to using drugs when we get together to party. What that may mean for you if you choose to join in — whether you end up speedy or “Xstatic,” calm or crashing, panicking in a K-hole or pleasantly out-of-it on a bump or a few beers — depends on a number of different factors. Some factors are biological: like how much you weigh, how big a dose of the drug you took, how you took it, and how much difference there is with that particular drug between a dose that helps you feel good and a dose that makes you sick.
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Some are circumstantial: like what other drugs (prescription or not) you’re on, how much baby laxative may have been mixed into the powder you just paid $25 for, or even who you’re with and where.
Some factors might be called psychobiological: in other words, how your mental and physical states combine. If you’re in a bout of depression, for example, you’re more likely to want to use cocaine. You’re also more likely to feel like the world is ending when you’re coming down from a three-day binge. This depression may last days or even longer.
What’s your plan?
“It’s not that I plan it. You do a bump, you feel like anything could happen. A few hours later, you do another.”
Talk to people about partying and hooking up with other men, and they describe what one researcher calls the “SUDS”: Seemingly Unimportant Decisions. Say you decide to go out after all, meet a friend and go off to another club, and then decide to do that bump of K. Somehow, next thing you know, it’s later than you thought, or you’re going home with someone hot, or it’s 4:00 in the morning before a workday and you’re still on the phone-sex lines. Talk to people about those extra-long nights or two-day parties, and chances are good that there was a drug — either alcohol or some less legal pills, powder or poppers — in the picture. Talk to people about having sex — especially sex without condoms — and chances that there was a drug involved get even better.
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Drugs, Sex and HIV
The best studies out there on gay men’s sexual behavior have found that use of cocaine, poppers and Crystal has a significant link to unsafe sex. That doesn’t mean drugs cause unsafe sex — some people want to have that kind of sex in the first place, and use drugs to make it easier. But the fact remains: anal sex without a condom is the main way a gay man gets HIV, and it usually happens while you’re high. In addition to thinking about what a drug may do to your body, give some serious thought to what you want someone else to do or not do to it. That’s hard enough for most of us when we’re stone cold sober, and it gets harder when you’re under the influence, so try to think safer sex through before you snort, sniff or swallow.
“I do coke because then I don’t have to think. One line and I can talk to guys who’d never give me the time of day. It’s like magic.”
Magic has tricks to it. So does getting beyond the illusion that drugs only make you feel good, and figuring out what drug use really means for you and what it may cost you. You can think through the buzz. “Seemingly unimportant decisions” may lead to really important ones, particularly if they’re about going home with someone when you’re high, or mixing drugs without knowing the risks. Your social surroundings also make those risks easier or harder to control. Doing poppers just before he’s getting ready to stick it in you, with or without a condom, is different from doing poppers on the dance floor. Deciding to do a third bump of K when you’ve already had five drinks is more likely to land you in a K hole. If you know you’re so high on coke that you can’t even get a hard-on, maybe going home alone is better than ending up as the bottom with some top who won’t care about condoms if you don’t.
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GMHC does not encourage or condone the use of any of these drugs. But if you are going to use, here are twelve things to think about:
1. What goes up must come down.
Before doing any drug, give some serious attention to how you’re going to feel afterwards as well as when you’re high. Both are part of the “drug experience.”
2. Know your own mind.
What works for others may not work for you. If you’ve had anxiety attacks, a drug like K may seriously upset or disorient you. If you’re prone to paranoia (like everyone’s out to get you), Crystal may play into your fears. If you feel depressed now, you’re really going to be bad coming down from coke. And so on.
3. Take a body check.
Look yourself over, all over, before you start the party. Any cuts or sores that could let in HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases will be harder to feel once you’re wasted.
4. Avoid mixing your medicines.
Mixing drugs is self-prescription, with lots of complicated cross-reactions and unknowns. It’s much safer not to mix drugs with each other, or with alcohol. If you’re on prescription medications, don’t take any party drug, including alcohol, without a doctor’s advice (yes, your doctor can tell you about what the effects might be of taking a little extra, less-than-legal medicine).
5. Think twice before the second round.
Have you really waited long enough to know how high you’re going to feel from the first one?
6. Avoid shooting.
Except in the case of poppers, swallowing drugs is usually the safest, since it lets them work their way into your system gradually. Snorting is riskier, and shooting or smoking drugs rushes them to the brain, which can make them more addictive and put you at greater risk of overdose (not to mention HIV, hepatitis and other complications of needle use.) If you do use needles, get a clean, sterile one, and don’t share. (See HIV/AIDS Basics )
7. Treat yourself right.
Think about how you act toward others, or how you let others treat you, when you’re high. Do you even know? Do you have a friend or lover who can tell you honestly?
8. Consider another way.
How do you hope to feel on the drug? Are there any other times or ways you can get that feeling without getting high? Pursue those with the same focus it takes to find drugs.
9. Stay flexible.
Leave yourself the option of staying home, or of doing the party without doing the drugs if it doesn’t feel right. Real friends will understand.
10. Missing something?
If you’re on HIV medications, especially protease inhibitors, you’re not likely to stay on schedule if you’re tripping for eight hours. Missing doses makes the virus stronger.
11. Remember HIV.
Doing drugs brings down barriers. Plan ahead and don’t let a latex barrier — a condom that can save your life or someone else’s — get lost in the process.
12. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
If you’re in trouble on a drug, find a friend or a friendly face. If you have questions about the ways you are combining drugs, alcohol, and sex, you can make changes. You don’t need to be an alcoholic or a drug or sex addict to get the information you need. By talking about the sex you are having, what it means to you, and what it may cost you, it is possible to make partying — and sex — safer.
In addition to knowing what system of the body a drug works on, there’s another important system to consider: the legal system. Alcohol is the only party drug approved for use in humans outside a hospital or laboratory, and most other drugs are illegal. This means you may be adding risk of arrest to the other risks you take when you use them. It also means that these drugs are often coming out of somebody’s homemade laboratory — meaning that there is no quality control over how they are cut or the different doses in each pill or bag of powder. Finally, manufacturers of legal drugs do not and are not required to test for bad interactions between their products and illegal drugs, which means you are taking a big risk when you mix party drugs together or take them with other, prescribed medications
Call 1-800-99-DETOX for a drug detox program near you.
