Yes, drugs are huge at raves for straight people, too. That much should be acknowledged.

But there is a HUGE crystal epidemic in the gay community, and we can't not pay attention to it just because straights do it, too. Gays are very prone to taking drugs for a bevy of emotional issues, and, like Lee, I think it's fucking stupid. Isn't anyone else sick of guys who can't stay hard because they're all tweaked out???

In the interest of full disclosure, I smoke pot, but everyone knows that pot is not a dangerous "drug." I've done cocaine four times in my entire life (most recently at one of the trade shows), and I've done crystal all of six times, and only enjoyed it once. I just don't need drugs to enhance my life or my sex life.

To answer Lee's question, though, there is a famous slogan that goes "Drugs are for people who can't handle reality." And I think that's very true of the gay community. We are a community of "damaged goods" who think poorly of themselves and who look for escape everywhere they can find it -- in anonymous sex in bath houses, in tweaked-out sexcapades without condoms, in raves and circuit parties where no one cares what your name is, in losing themselves in submissive/dominant roles, and in obsessing over their muscles at the gym. I think underneath all the great bodies and the supposedly happy, well-adjusted gays of today lies a very unhappy, sad community of people who have yet to come to terms with their own lack of self-worth. People only do "cool" things or things that are perceived as being "cool" because they feel uncool.

That's my take on it, for what it's worth.