XPost: la.general, alt.politics.media, alt.business   
   XPost: rec.arts.tv.comedy.colbert-report   
   From: more.democrat.nambla.degenerates@disney.com   
      
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   Los Angeles LGBTQ activist and Democratic donor Ed Buck’s arrest   
   on Sept. 17 offers a lens into both the widespread use of   
   crystal meth in a segment of the gay male community, and   
   arrangements in which older men with more money and status use   
   meth to ply sexual favors from younger men—sometimes ending very   
   badly for the younger men.   
      
   Buck, 65, was charged on Sept. 17 with one count each of battery   
   causing serious injury, administering methamphetamine, and   
   maintaining a drug house after a 37-year-old man overdosed, but   
   survived, at Buck’s apartment on Sept. 11.   
      
   This follows the 2017 meth overdose deaths of two African-   
   American men—Gemmel Moore, 26, and Timothy Dean, 55—in Buck’s   
   West Hollywood apartment.   
      
   Prosecutors say Buck lured the men to his home with offers of   
   drugs, money, and shelter. In exchange he manipulated them into   
   joining in sexual fetishes that include “supplying and   
   personally administering dangerously large doses of narcotics to   
   his victims,” they wrote in court papers.   
      
   “I feel vindicated for all the people who said [Buck’s arrest]   
   was never going to happen,” said Jasmyne Cannick, an LGBTQ   
   advocate and spokeswoman for Moore’s mother. “I feel really good   
   for all the young men he took advantage of because they didn’t   
   feel like anyone took them seriously, like their lives weren’t   
   important enough for anyone to really care about.”   
      
   Ft. Lauderdale-based substance abuse expert and certified sex   
   therapist David Fawcett, Ph.D., says, “Meth use among gay men in   
   New York City has risen 400 percent.” Author of “Lust, Men and   
   Meth: A Gay Man’s Guide to Sex and Recovery,” Fawcett says   
   estimates run as high as 1 in 4 gay men in major urban areas in   
   the U.S. who are semi-regularly using meth. “It’s at epidemic   
   levels in the gay community,” he says.   
      
   As for the inter-generational drugs-for-sex exchange, Fawcett   
   says in the just-out documentary “Crystal City” “Meth is a great   
   equalizer.” He explains, “The older guys with money provide the   
   meth and the younger guys provide sex.”   
      
   Why does this wildly addictive, potentially deadly drug—its   
   lethal effects can include stroke, heart attack, liver and   
   kidney failure, and even rotted teeth—hold such strong appeal   
   for a large minority of gay men in particular?   
      
   Meth’s best known effects are pleasure and dissociation, as it   
   works on the brain’s limbic system, the reward circuitry.   
   Combined with sex, as it frequently is by its gay male users,   
   meth explodes physical and emotional pleasure through the   
   roof—and kicks good judgment to the curb.   
      
   Meth is well known to make men hypersexual even as it shatters   
   any personal standards they may have had for protecting   
   themselves and their partners against HIV. But if pleasure alone   
   were meth’s main appeal, then surely the three-quarters of gay   
   men who do not use the drug would also be drawn to it—along with   
   the rest of the human race.   
      
   A bigger attraction is the chance to escape the isolation and   
   loneliness that are rampant in the gay community. “Meth is a   
   really effective way to numb what in the literature is called   
   ‘minority stress,” says Fawcett. “People who have experienced a   
   lot of stigma based on who they are, experience a lot of mental   
   health and addiction issues.”   
      
   Those who combine meth and sex face the highest rate of relapse,   
   “typically about 90 percent,” says Fawcett.   
      
   Fawcett told me in an interview about Crystal City that both   
   straight and gay men connect meth use to porn and sex addiction   
   because both operate similarly in the brain. “We approach it as   
   an intimacy disorder, an intensity disorder, an increasing need   
   for intensity,” he said, describing the practice called Seeking   
   Integrity through which he and fellow therapist Rob Weiss work   
   with gay men.   
      
   Twelve-step abstinence-based recovery programs have proved to be   
   the most successful approach to addressing meth addiction. A key   
   to their success is the supportive community they provide. “Any   
   recovery solution must have a communal aspect,” said Fawcett.   
      
   The LGBTQ community certainly has the creativity, connections to   
   government funders, and other resources to be able to direct   
   attention to the growing meth epidemic among urban gay men.   
      
   We need one that addresses depression and HIV stigma, two major   
   drivers of risky behavior—and huge reasons so many gay men feel   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)