For seven years methamphetamine helped Ron Conner believe he was the talented, sexy, bold man he had always dreamed of being. The 37-year-old graphic artist would have sacrificed everything to hold onto that glamorous vision of himself -- and, ultimately, he nearly did.
"I lost my house, two cars, my checking and savings accounts, my piano, my boyfriend," he said.
"I had sex with guys I knew were [HIV] positive, who said they were positive, and I just didn't care," he added.
Although Conner, who is sober and working again, did not end up HIV-positive, such is not the case for many gay meth users.
Health officials and AIDS activists nationwide are alarmed at the increasing correlation between new HIV diagnoses and methamphetamine use among gay men. The drug's ability to heighten arousal and erase inhibitions is proving a deadly combination -- leading to sexual behavior that increases the chances of infection with HIV and syphilis.
Methamphetamine has been in the gay party mix on the West Coast since at least the mid-1990s. But, more recently, the trend has pushed east, galvanizing health officials and gay activists in Houston, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami and New York. Meanwhile, other circumstances have conspired to make the flare in use by gay men particularly harmful to public health.
The Internet has made it easy to arrange liaisons and score drugs from the safety of home, while erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra allow for encounters to last for hours and even days. Meanwhile, activists said, improved HIV treatment regimes have lulled some gay men, particularly those who did not experience the AIDS epidemic at its worst, into lax attitudes toward condom use.
"We've had Ecstasy, pot, acid -- but this is the crack of the gay community," said Jason Riggs, spokesman for San Francisco's STOP AIDS Project, which recently launched a campaign aimed at casual users and those tempted to try the drug.
Scientifically linking meth use to the spread of disease is difficult because multiple factors come into play. But studies in several cities show that a growing number of HIV-positive men report recent meth use.
One recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study based on San Francisco data showed that use of both meth and Viagra was connected to a marked increase in unsafe sex. Others have shown that gay men who use meth are up to three times as likely to test positive for HIV as those who do not.
