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.)
Most likely battery acid,as in car battery.That is what I have heard meth cookers use.
Meth is the plague out here in the sticks...
My best friends daughter started college in the fall of 2004. She was young, blonde and beautiful. Full scholarship and sorority girl. By the end of Fall semester she had dropped out of college, and moved in with a 30 year old man.
She works for him as a stripper in his club.
Turns out the guy she moved in with was a full time "adult" club owner / part time crank supplier to a lot of college kids.
I can't imagine what it is like to hear about your daughter stripping and hooked on meth.
If it was My daughter this guy would have been found dead in some alley.Shot to death.
you're right about the effect on small town America. Here in lil old Kansas meth has become problem number one in rural towns. We just had a case in my county where meth dealer gunned down the local sherrif.
The sherrif was an older fellow who was out making his rounds. He stopped off at this particular trailer to advise them to move cars, fence in their dogs or something.
(Out here, the law will usually stop by and tell you to do something before they go through the hassle of writing tickets. it is kinda like
"Ya'll need to get a tag on that truck..This is justa warnin'... but ya need to get into the courthouse 'fore I hafta issue you a ticket.By the way, how's your brother Earl doing?"
Anyhow the local gray haired sherrif was up to something similar when he walked up to a trailer and knocked on the door. He was gunned down immediately by three inbred meth makers who thought he was there to bust their lab.
So now we have a dead sherrif who has been looking out for his county for 30 years, and we also have three toothless hillbillys who will be fed at taxpayer expense until they get the needle. All this so some dirtbag can get high
sorry for double post, it's all George Bush's fault.
Seems that if AIDS doesn't get you, meth will. This is a self limiting process.
Cat pee. If you're ever in the woods and smell a strong odor of cat pee, turn around and run like hell.
Funny thing is, I don't think any components of meth are illegal. So much for legalizing it makes everything all better and the problem goes away.
I think you're barking up the wrong tree.
Naturally there are fewer homosexual meth useres because homosexuals are a tiny percentage of the population.
BUT - out of all homosexuals, a higher percentage are drug users in general and meth in particular than the rest of the population.
A higher proportion of meth is coming in from Mexico than is being manufactured here.
I was on a grand jury for two months a couple of years ago. They told us all about meth manufacture and the stuff that's used. Matches are a biggie. I can't remember all the other stuff, it's like a toxic mess that no sane person would ever get near.
I didn't know that.You are right about the chemicals.Except for the sudafed everything else is Deadly if ingested.
ANother legacy of NAFTA.
Lifestyle choices have consequences (but only if you are christian, "non-ethnic" and straight)
But hey if you're gay no problemo! Someone else will take care of the problem!!
====================
Amen!!
I suspect my brother and his wife are on this drug. I allowed them to come visit me last week, when my husband was out of town and only me and my mother were here with those two.
When they first got here they both acted nervous, then my brother just went ballistic on me over some small insignificant thing. Then he threatened to kill me. This is a guy who would have never hurt a soul in the past.
I ended up calling the police and having them put him in jail. Then I had to physically remove his crazy wife (kick her ass) to get her out of my house. I called the police on her and they took her too.
After calling some folks back where they live and I used to live I have began to put two and two together. They have been stealing, going through huge amounts of money without paying their rent, etc.
My mother is crushed over this, and we are trying to figure out how to get help for him. Turns out he was in violation of probation and so I contacted his probation officer and we got him a year in jail.
I live in rural Tennessee, and just about everybody I know has a friend or family member who knows people affected by this stuff.
Not all rural southernors are rednecks, my husband and I are college educated, he is an air force retiree and I have a respectable career.
And it is not just a gay problem, the people I know of (including my brother) are married and have been raised with good values.
I am so upset by this and am hoping any freepers who have been through this can give me some advice on how to help my brother. He was fine until he met this woman and it has been downhill ever since. I'm not blaming her, he is an adult, but Mom and I want to try to get him away from her and her crazy drug-addled brother.
I'm shocked to find out that a segment of our society whose behavior puts them at risk are more at risk due to meth. Too bad they can't just be left alone to die of the disease of their choice.
If you don't already, get a Doc to keep a watch on your ticker. I've known some folks who,ve had timing problems.
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