PARTYING WITH TINA

The Allure of Crystal Meth Can Lead To a Dead End of Addiction and
AIDS

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 Southeast 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 Portland and other
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 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.

More than 10 percent of gay men questioned for 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 Washington County 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 in SeaTac, 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."

Joseph Rose is a staff writer for The Oregonian of Portland, OR