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.)
"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."
You are correct, without a doubt. I have been there with booze and I have come back. It has zero potency now because I leave it in the bottle. Meth is much stronger of course but the same principle applies -- if you let it.
Indeed. Some of them are living in complete denial of the growing number of ex-gays, and that is truly sad. They have bought the lie that they are born that way.
Thanks for the kind words!
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