Posted on 07/30/2005 8:19:46 AM PDT by Dane
Methamphetamine's Clutch Leaves More Gays Addicted, Infected
BY JOSEPH ROSE
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Before he met Tina, John Motter had a closet full of $3,000 suits. He was a superstar tax consultant, entrusted with some of Arthur Andersen's biggest clients.
But when Motter started using crystal methamphetamine, known as Tina in the gay community, the drug became more important than success.
The long hours at the office stopped. In the clutches of the powerful stimulant, Motter spent many of his nights at gay bathhouses and sex parties in Portland and Seattle.
Sitting in a Portland coffeehouse on a recent morning, his career over, the 43-year-old Portland resident couldn't guess how many men he might have infected with HIV.
"It's pretty disgusting, I know," Motter said.
Cheap and easy to get, crystal meth supercharges the sex drive and keeps users awake for around-the-clock partying.
But while researchers have found meth boosts libido, they also say it warps judgment, causing users to lose control and feel invulnerable. As a result, a growing number of gay meth addicts are having unprotected sex with multiple partners, increasing the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, health experts say.
Health officials are also concerned about a new, drug-resistant strain of HIV, which was recently discovered in a gay meth user in New York. He told authorities he had unprotected sex with many other men.
It is a lifestyle Motter says he knows well. Today, he is seeking redemption.
Motter is in a 12-step recovery program that encourages him to talk about his addiction. As crystal meth emerges as the party drug of choice among more gay men, Motter says he can't stay silent about his walk down the destructive path of meth, sex, crime and betrayal.
"It doesn't do any good," he said, "to keep it to myself."
Posts from people wanting to "party with Tina" in various cities are scattered across assorted gay Internet party sites as well as online community forums such as craigslist. Another code for sex parties with meth: "PNP," or party and play.
Crystal meth is popular for its purity and potency. Oregon researchers are developing a system that would document connections between all grades of meth and new cases of sexually transmitted diseases. What they have seen so far is alarming.
New cases of gonorrhea and syphilis, widely considered indicators for future HIV cases, have risen rapidly in gay men in the past four years, according to the state Department of Human Services.
Meanwhile, public health and outreach workers say they are hearing from more gay men who became infected with STDs after taking meth and having unprotected sex.
In Los Angeles, meth use has doubled among gay men in the past three years, while one-third of those testing HIV-positive at the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center last year admitted using the drug, according to a study presented at a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conference in Atlanta last month.
More than 10 percent of gay men questioned for a recent survey in San Francisco reported using meth in the past six months.
Four years ago, the CDC pledged to cut the number of new HIV diagnoses nationally to 20,000 by 2005. It's stuck at 40,000.
"We're not going to be able to meet our goals until we get meth use under control," said Grant Colfax, an HIV researcher at the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
At Steam Portland, one of three gay bathhouses in the city, fliers telling people how they can get free meth treatment are available above a bin of condoms at the front desk. General manager Kelly Farris put the fliers there after a string of problems with customers high on meth. But they're hardly touched, he said.
Staff members can tell when a new shipment of crystal meth has hit the streets from Mexico. Large groups of men who can't stand still come in and rent a single room. "We call it a tweak fest," Farris said.
He recalled a man who paid to rent a room for six hours but didn't come out for 18 hours. Farris rapped on the door and found the customer high on meth. All that remained of the mattress was the metal frame and springs, picked clean.
"He thought the mattress padding was meth," Farris said. "He had removed every thread."
Motter's fall began inside a bathhouse called Club Seattle in December 1996. The location of the dealer's room was no secret.
At the time, Motter was earning more than $70,000 and jumping from one promotion to the next at Arthur Andersen. It was the glory days of the international accounting giant.
He grew up in northern Ohio, the youngest of four boys in a small town, a Boy Scout and active in the United Methodist church. By the time he graduated near the top of his class at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Motter was openly gay.
For four years, he worked for Arthur Andersen in Washington, handling high-profile clients ranging from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to United Way.
But while he was rising in the ranks, he was also abusing alcohol and experimenting with cocaine. When the company transferred him to Seattle in 1996, he was in the mood to try something more potent.
Lonely in a new city, struggling with the recent demise of an 11-year relationship, he walked into Club Seattle.
After snorting a line of crystal meth from the room's built-in table, "I went looking to have sex with someone," Motter said.
The drug grabbed him, flooding his brain's pleasure centers and increasing his stamina. Eventually, he couldn't have sex without it. "It heightened the sense of touch and everything," Motter said.
His inhibitions hit bottom. "When you're high, anything goes," Motter said.
He moved from Friday nights at bathhouses to weekend binges at sex parties with different partners.
On April 15, 1998, Motter tested positive for HIV and hepatitis C.
He was unfazed.
In the summer of 2000, Motter drove to Tigard to visit his brother and mother.
"He was frighteningly skinny," brother Bill Motter recalled. "Through his T-shirt, I could see his ribs."
Plagued with chronic exhaustion from medication, John had left his job and was living on private disability. His family also knew he was living with HIV.
But they knew nothing about his $4,000-a-month crystal meth habit.
By then, he was injecting the drug, taking it as an aphrodisiac and an energy booster, he said. He was also becoming good at stealing identities, something a dealer had taught him.
He was acting like any other meth addict, gay or straight.
Bill Motter was about to leave for a five-month consulting job in D.C., so he asked his littler brother to house-sit. "I wanted John to just get away from Seattle, and whatever issues were there," he said.
John Motter agreed, then hooked up with a dealer and began stealing mail from his brother's neighbors.
In January 2001, Motter went to Costco with a group of friends, opened a store account under a false name and piled $2,000 in merchandise onto a cart. Jumbo-size laundry detergent. Junk food. Night-vision goggles. A $1,100 watch. "I'm sure the shopping cart screamed, `This is a meth addict,"' Motter said.
At the register, Motter pulled out a fresh book of stolen checks. He knew they belonged to a man whose wife had died. According to the accompanying letter Motter stole from the same mailbox, the checks could be used to draw $50,000 from a life insurance account.
But the Costco cashier refused the check. Motter and his friends practically ran out of the warehouse store and drove away in his brother's car. A store employee wrote down the license plate number.
The police were waiting at the house.
After being booked and released from jail, Motter found a ride back to Seattle, ignoring a court order not to leave the state.
Six months later, federal agents stormed into his apartment, guns drawn. After five days without sleep, he had just crashed. A syringe filled with meth waited by his bed for when he awoke.
Inside a federal inmate holding facility, guards caught Motter hiding a syringe. He was just waiting for a hit of meth to be smuggled in.
Motter recalled being confined to his cell, just days from his 40th birthday, sitting on his bunk, staring at his khaki scrubs and the cold walls around him. Pitiful, he thought.
"Why am I here?" he muttered out loud.
Today, Motter is trying to make amends.
After serving 13 months in prison, Motter moved to Portland and continued the recovery program he began behind bars. Four years clean, he said.
"I've been to one bathhouse," he said. "Of course, I was only there to drop off some condoms."
Still on disability, he again lives with his brother. The two men spent hours talking through the emotional devastation left by Motter's addiction.
He spends his days going to treatment and volunteering for several groups dedicated to fighting HIV. Last summer, he lent his name, face and story to an HIV awareness campaign that ran ads on buses and in magazines.
He drained his retirement savings to pay $33,000 in restitution to 50 identity-theft victims. He also sent them letters of apology.
Motter wishes he could send similar letters to the men with whom he had unprotected sex after he knew he was HIV-positive.
"I can't," he said. "I wouldn't know who to send them to."
July 29, 2005
(Joseph Rose is a staff writer for The Oregonian of Portland, Ore. He can be contacted at josephrose@news.oregonian.com.)
So, God sent AIDS to punish faires for their evil deviant perversions. That didn't work, so he sent meth. There are supposed to be, what, seven plagues. The death-of-the-first-son can't be one of them because fairies don't have sons, that's why they continue to recruit yours.
Again, is there a REAL problem here? But, if there is, it may be that the solution is like some many real and potential problems, SEAL THE FRIGGEN BORDER!!!
All this stuff is well known from the 60's....
People are just plain stupid. And they generally don't want to learn anything bad about what pleases them.
Clearly stated in ancient writings...
...all we like sheep have gone astray...
...ignorance is bliss....
...etc...etc...
Homosexual Agenda Ping.
This is a harrowing story. Important that the real story of the "gay life" - which has always been also the "high life" - gets told in all the shameful and tragic details. Maybe young teenagers will think twice before embarking on it. Morality stories used to be in school reading books for kids - stories of those who chose to lie, steal and the like were told, with the subsequent bad endings.
Kids need to hear the truth about homosexuality, not the lies and propaganda of GLSEN.
I wonder if Motter is repentent about his homosexuality as well, or just the drug use and promiscuity? The article isn't clear; the writer is connected with the Oregonian which is a standard liberal barf alert rag.
Freepmail me if you want on/off this pinglist.
A few weeks ago, I smelled a horrible sulfury acidic smell coming from outside. I live in a forest area, a short ways from hundreds of acres of BLM land, quite a nice neighborhood - mostly all 5 acre parcels, all owner occupied.
The smell was quite bad outside. I called the local cop shop (it was about 9 at night) and when I described it, the lady cop said someone must be cooking meth not too far away. They use the sulfur from match heads in some way.
Blah, blah, blah, Mr. Colfax.
Meth is does not cause HIV. Homosexual sex does.
Why not work on getting that under control?
Exactly.
Gee, the fag had HIV. Shock.
Meth has become the diversion of choice when discussing the overwhelming appearance of HIV in the homosexual community.
Even the super-strain of HIV is laid at the door of meth and not at the door of massive promiscuity which allows the bug to alter itself after so many environments and anti-HIV drugs it gets to withstand.
Meth was used extensively in the drug cultures of the late 60's and the 70's. Oddly enough, meth users didn't contract HIV. /sarcasm
Yeah, only the meth "warps their judgment." Otherwise, there is nothing particularly odd about a man wanting to have anal sex with as many men as he can. It is perfectly natural behavior and only a mental case with Homophobia would see the harm in it.
It's like the wonderful Fr. John Corapi (himself a former cocaine addict) says, "The author of addictions...is the devil."
4 years -- what a pity.
One of the biggest problems with meth is that making it does not require much in the way of space or money. A lot of rental properties are used as meth labs. The equipment and chemicals can be easily moved to another place. This makes it difficult for law enforcement to find and break up the meth labs. Meth labs are also extremely dangerous to the makers and the neighbors cause of instability of some of the chemicals used in the manufacturing.
The combination of easy manufacturing and availability and transport make for the ingredients of a growth industry. An industry that is poisoning much of our Country. If I remember correctly the rural Midwest is the center of the meth trade. God bless all our police officers and keep them safe in His hands.
The problem with that logic is in the ego. It is common among people, especially the young, to feel invincible, to believe themselves strong enough to do something addictive and be able to keep it under control.
Yes, if people don't do it, they won't have a problem with it. The problem is that many people do it "just a few times" while partying and are then hooked, blind to the potency of its addictiveness.
How many times have I seen this phrase? Could it just be that drugs don't work against HIV and even if they did it wouldn't make any difference?
This article points out the dirty little secret of the gay community: they are big drug users. That and the constant bacterial and common viral infections that they get as a result of their peculiar sex habits and overuse of antibiotics is the reason they die young. The infections and drug use cause a slow but certain destruction of their immune system and they simply die from some infection that you or I would simply fight off. That's the real AIDS. It is real. It is a problem. It is not caused by HIV.
So why don't the gays face up to this fact? Well the answer is that many of them have but many more still want to believe that their drug & sex based lifestyle can be healthy and fun. Sorry guys it just ain't so. HIV isn't your problem, it's the drugs and those constant infections you keep getting in your rear end. Pick a new lifestyle, give up the drugs or plan on dying young.
Just saw this thread and started reading through it, and I was beginning to think that the item that stuck out at me as being outrageous in the article was going to be ignored: i.e.- the bath houses. THANK YOU! If I ran a place where people were poisoning themselves and spreading a deadly disease, how long would I stay in business? This is just stupid beyond any sensibility...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.