Why Is It Still Considered 'Cool' To Do Drugs In The Gay Community?

[Bill]

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.

The same thing could be said about most people in modern society.

There's a lot of unhappiness, fakeness, and desperate identity-seeking behaviors everywhere we look.

Gay men are at greater risk all the time than the equivalent "normal" person - and people who feel themselves endangered often act out their fears.

Soldiers, for example, do much the same things, for the same reasons.

[gaybucks_chip]

I imagine you were drinking - drinking is a drug, one proven to be dozens of times more dangerous and addictive than all the other illegal drugs combined.

I would like to see a citation on this if it is, in fact, "proven."

There is no question that alcohol used in excess has severe side effects, including death, but I have a very hard time swallowing that alcohol is "dozens of times more dangerous and addictive than all the other illegal drugs combined, especially when one considers the very damaging (and highly addictive) effects of crystal meth and its brethren, the very low therapeutic ratio of GHB, the long-term synaptic and serotonin pathway damage of E, and the usually permanent damage to the dopamine pathways caused by opiate addictions.

[Squirt]

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.

This is common in the African American community and hispanic communities as well.

The difference with the Gay community is that our members are made up of all races, and all members of our community have less rights then heterosexuals. Another thing to keep in mind is that when an African American child is born, he is not rejected by his parent, or family, or ridiculed because of his minority status, many members of the Gay community are and this rips at the soul of any human being, the fabric of who we are.

One can't help but to question ones worth when it's acceptable for people to lobby against their having equal rights.

Imagine the uproar if there was a lobby pushing to make it illegal for African Americans to adopt children, or marry, or have health coverage for their partners.

Coming together for equality is something that lifts the spirit and helps empower those who feel worthless. I see a day coming soon where we have found our soul again and come forward stronger then ever as a force nobody can deny is worthy of equality.

[Dzinerbear]

Everyone is a bar is doing drugs -- alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, coke, E, K, GHB, meth, pills, poppers. Some are just more acceptable than others.

Michael

[Bill]

I would like to see a citation on this if it is, in fact, "proven."

There is no question that alcohol used in excess has severe side effects, including death, but I have a very hard time swallowing that alcohol is "dozens of times more dangerous and addictive than all the other illegal drugs combined, especially when one considers the very damaging (and highly addictive) effects of crystal meth and its brethren, the very low therapeutic ratio of GHB, the long-term synaptic and serotonin pathway damage of E, and the usually permanent damage to the dopamine pathways caused by opiate addictions.

I wrote a big post with cites - but vbulletin says I can't post urls yet. It won't even let me post a partial url it blocks the post.

Here's the post with the cites removed.

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The problem with presenting an "authoritative" single citation is that in general this type of information is only assembled on the internet by drug legalization advocates.

You can do a google search on the question - you'll find that it's not easy to find good statistics all in one place.

But, for example, you can look at the numbers for alcohol and illicit drug related deaths - a figure you will often see, taken from stats gathered in 2000, is 85,000 alcohol related deaths vs 17,000 illicit drug related deaths.

(Most drug legalization advocates claim that the drug related deaths number is improperly inflated. I happen to agree with that, unfortunately, that makes it hard to come up with a reliable number, so lets use the governments number. Usually, you'll see a number of around 4 to 6 thousand illegal drug related deaths a year from the drug legalization advocates. Also, you will often see a higher estimate of alcohol related deaths - one commonly repeated is 107,400 deaths per year in the United States from alcohol abuse (Harwood et al., 1998).)

So, it's a little over 4 to 1 in related deaths, from the governments figures.

An alternative set of figures from the drug legalization advocates looks like this, over a twenty year period, illegal drugs caused about 45,000 deaths, while alcohol caused about 380,000 deaths, from stats taken I believe from the Center for Disease Control:

Then you have to examine the other social costs - effects on families and marriages, accidents, job productivity, unwanted and unsafe sexual acts, crimes commited under the influence of, etc. But, I'd have to put about a dozen cites here to demonstrate this.

But a commonly cited study says the costs of this was about 185 billion in 1998. Most of the people that talk about this say this cost only reflects the most extreme cases, and fails to uncover a large amount of costs that are hidden and borne by the families - for instance from small accidents and days of work lost, that were not reported as being alcohol related, or divorces that were not described as being affected by alcohol.

Then, there's the medical perspective - we could debate for hours using different sets of statistics about the relative medical risks of ordinary moderate to heavy use of these chemicals. But most of what you just mentioned is debateable - for instance, there is no clinical evidence* of nuerological damage in humans from mdma, and as time passes, and we continue to fail to see serotonin damaged individuals appearing, despite the fact that millions have taken ridiculously high doses of the stuff for the past twenty years, it's starting to look like serotonin damage is a medical myth.

(*"Clinical evidence" refers to reports from health professionals in the field, not to lab studies. Laboratory studies often don't apply to clinical experience, and until they are repeated and peer reviewed they are suspect.)

Unfortunately I can't find the article that referenced this curious non-appearance of clinical harm for all the millions of mdma users, but it did exist. Here's a substitute, the recent British study that placed mdma low on the list of harm causing chemicals.

However, in general, at the ordinary doses used, alcohol causes more damage to the body, especially the liver and brain, than most if not all of the illegal drugs.

But, since this is a debateable topic, would you be satisfied if I said, _in my opinion_, alcohol has been proven to be a dozen times more dangerous than illegal drugs in general.

Because I don't want to sit here and list cite after cite, knowing that internet cites are badly organized and suspect. And it was a pain in the ass to write this much.

[Squirt]

Center for Disease Control and Statistics

There are approximately 75,000 deaths attributable to excessive alcohol use each year in the United States (1). This makes excessive alcohol use the 3rd leading lifestyle-related cause of death for the nation (2). In the single year 2003, there were over 2 million hospitalizations (3) and over 4 million emergency room visits (4) for alcohol-related conditions. SOURCE DATA

Center for Disease Control and Statistics

In 2004, poisoning was second only to motor-vehicle crashes as a cause of death from unintentional injury in the United States (1). Nearly all poisoning deaths in the United States are attributed to drugs, and most drug poisonings result from the abuse of prescription and illegal drugs (2). SOURCE DATA

[samebb]

On the side of alcohol being said to be "far more dangerous than all other drugs put together" im going to have to say "bullshit".

I have been drinking since I was 14. That was the age i started going out into town drinking and clubbing. Back then, yes, I drank WAY too much. I was getting legless 3- 4 times a week. I will agree, that drinking like that is very bad for you and no doubt if kept up for years would kill you.

I think when you get to a level of maturity where you realize "binge drinking" is bad, alcohol becomes a healthy part of the diet. If I go out for dinner with friends, I will have a couple of glasses of wine and REALLY enjoy it. Its proven that alcohol is small amounts is very good for the body, wine especially good for the blood I believe.

I also believe that alcohol is not addictive. I think alcoholics are not addicted to the alcohol, but the state they get into when they have had it. Maybe that’s part of addiction, but the only time iv ever been near the stage of "all that mattered was my next drink" was when I was very depressed, and alcohol got me away from it.

Now, moving on, I want to know how Alcohol can be more dangerous than Heroin or Crack?

The reason I ask, is I have known both crack cocaine and heroin addicts, and its scared the shit out of me, Heroin especially. Im no drug expert but I know the health problems surrounding heroin really can kill you, and that’s not even mentioning what it "may" or “may not” have been cut with.


End of the day, id rather have a glass of wine or a beer everyday, than a needle in my arm, or a lung full of crack smoke. I think my health is far better

[gaybucks_chip]

Squirt and Bill, thanks.

I try to be a stickler for accuracy in what I post (and expect to be called on it if I blow it), and so I expect the same from others. Bill's original statement appears to be unsupportable.

Squirt's data (which I consider to be from a reputable source) shows that alcohol is indeed a major killer... but of course, one has to factor in the percentage of the population using alcohol vs. drugs, and one also has to factor in the second study, which points to illegal drugs as a major source of "poisoning" deaths, which I'd assume includes ODs.

I'm not for a moment arguing that alcohol isn't damaging, or even that it may not be more damaging in some cases than other illegal drugs, but the original statement I was questioning was the claim that alcohol is "dozens of times more dangerous and addictive than all the other illegal drugs combined" which I think we've shown is not an accurate statement.

I would go further and say that I don't think it's even accurate to say that alcohol is necessarily more damaging to the body than, say amphetamine class drugs or perhaps even MDMA and its analogs. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison; they affect different body systems with different levels of severity.

If you're now changing the statement to say that it's *your opinion* that alcohol is dozens of times more dangerous, then of course I can't argue that, as it's opinion. My objection is to broadly stated claims for which there's no supporting data.

BTW, Bill, I agree that Internet sources are next to worthless... the only cites for this sort of thing I generally consider worthwhile are from scientific or medical journals or government agencies... and even those studies have to be carefully evaluated because often times they are biased by who is paying for them or unintentional experimenter bias.

[Dzinerbear]

I also believe that alcohol is not addictive. I think alcoholics are not addicted to the alcohol, but the state they get into when they have had it.

That's addiction. People are addicted to the euphoria, the confidence, the joy, the whatever it is that they feel when they take a substance. You seem to be confusing addiction with a physcial need of some kind, but it's the emotional state that's brought on by a substance that people are chasing.

Now, moving on, I want to know how Alcohol can be more dangerous than Heroin or Crack?

Alcohol is more sinister that crack or heroin because the unmanageability of an alcohol-based life can be slower to appear. Crack and heroin, you're addicted pretty quickly, and then, most of your energy is spent chasing the next high. It doesn't take long with these kinds of drugs or meth for you to lose friends, jobs, money, homes, etc. With alcohol you can maintain a seemingly normal life for years and decades before you figure out you need help.

A guy can start doing crack and see his life pretty well spiral out of control in less than a year. And if he's lucky, he can seek treatment, work through it and clean up his life. If he can stay on track, then maybe he's only lost a couple of years of his life. An alcoholic can take 10, 20, 30 years to reach the point where they figure out they need help, and at that point, they've lost 10, 20, or 30 years of their life. Which is worse?

Alcohol is socially accepted, as was smoking, and we saw how that worked out.

Michael

[chubbs]

Speed/Meth is the worst BY FAR. Now I am not saying the others are not harmful. All drugs take their toll in one way or another. Alcohol being legal is a whole other story. In a way comparing alcohol and hardcore drugs is an apples/oranges comparison.

I'll say it again, speed/meth is the worst by far. IMO it is the worst drug ever invented and will be responsible for more death over the next 50 years than all others combined.
see http://www.tweaker.org/html/home.html for some good info.

--Chubbs

[EVILKID]

Having gone to rehabb farely recently and beeing clean for the last 7 months.

I have to say that the drug use in the gay community or even in the porn industry scares the shit outta me.

I cant blame recreational users that have control.

i GUESS THE KEY IS NOT TO FALL IN TO DEEP

[Squirt]

I must be living in the twilight zone

The only times I've seen drug use and sluts is at the clubs. Clubs are not the Gay community, they are hookup joints, just like in the straight community. The straight community is not defined by clubs either.

The Gay community consists of Gay community centers which have meeting groups and community events you can volunteer for, etc. etc.

The key is to hang around people who empower you and compliment your personality type NOT hanging around people that see you as meat or a means to an end, amongst other things.

Regarding drugs in the porn scene.. in 6 years I've filmed 3 people that you could tell were on drugs. I learned from them and don't film people who are high because a) they can't maintain an errection b) their eyes are bloodshot or pupils dialated, makes for shitty content and c) they get sweaty and discolored, not good content.

[gaybucks_chip]

Squirt, I agree with you, but I think that for some of the younger gay crowd, the club scene IS the gay community, as far as they know. A lot of the conversations I have with our models (pretty much all guys 18-22) revolve around looking for "good healthy" guys to go out with, and I try to explain that, with few exceptions, the club scene generally isn't the best place to find healthy people interested in relationships.

A lot of the guys have a hard time with that, because they equate clubs with "the gay community"...when I suggest other places to meet gay guys, it's like a radical new concept to them.

It's all about education, and I do think the drug problem has gotten worse in the clubs in the past few years, and that, in turn, has led to the problem going out of the clubs and into many of the other social scenes (parties, get-togethers, etc) where young gay guys hang out.

[XXXWriterDude]

Wow, thats one hell of a way to label every gay man or woman :eek:

Regards,

Lee

Let's not get into semantics. As anyone knows, there are plenty of exceptions to every generalization. To me, that's just a given. I don't need to point those people out.

[XXXWriterDude]

This is common in the African American community and hispanic communities as well.

The difference with the Gay community is that our members are made up of all races, and all members of our community have less rights then heterosexuals. Another thing to keep in mind is that when an African American child is born, he is not rejected by his parent, or family, or ridiculed because of his minority status, many members of the Gay community are and this rips at the soul of any human being, the fabric of who we are.

One can't help but to question ones worth when it's acceptable for people to lobby against their having equal rights.

Imagine the uproar if there was a lobby pushing to make it illegal for African Americans to adopt children, or marry, or have health coverage for their partners.

Coming together for equality is something that lifts the spirit and helps empower those who feel worthless. I see a day coming soon where we have found our soul again and come forward stronger then ever as a force nobody can deny is worthy of equality.

Great post, Squirt. Those are my points as well. All of the stuff going on in the gay community happens in other communities as well. Women are, of course, very prone to insecurity and feelings of inadequate self-worth based on archaic views of femininity passed down through the years, but I do think there is a special kind of self-loathing that is birthed within the gay community, especially within the gay male community. Not only are we gay, but we are gay MALES, so we are also under pressure to conform to standards of masculinity and maleness. We've all seen how lesbianism can be considered "hot" and "trendy" in pop culture. Women being lesbians don't pose as much of a threat to society, because women don't run society. Gay men, however, are viewed as being traitors to masculinity and the patriarchal power structure in general. (This is, of course, not to say that lesbians don't have it bad too. I minored in Women's Studies in college. I know the oppression they've faced as well.)

I just think that there is something very specific about being gay that contributes to our own kind of alienation and self-hatred that manifests itself in excessive drug use and the other things I mentioned.