MEET THE SLAMMERS

The link been methamphetamine's infiltration within the gay community
and increased HIV infections among us is a key cause for the growing
concern about this problem. Yet this troubling linkage is the direct
result of gay men using the drug to enhance sexual encounters and
lessen the difficulties many face in managing self-esteem issues as
they try to fuck and make connections with other gay men.

Among gay men who use meth, there is a subset who choose to
administer the drug intravenously. These injection drug users are
known as slammers and they slam meth as opposed to snorting, smoking,
or "booty bumping," the practice of inserting it into the rectum
where it is absorbed by the porous mucosal lining.

These slammers are the queer mavericks among meth addicts, willing to
engage in the most taboo activity within drug-taking culture, needle
use, and giving it a special homo spin.

According to a recent study led by Dr. Perry Halkitis at the Center
for Health, Identity, Behavior, and Prevention Studies at New York
University, the number of gay men who slam represents only seven
percent of meth users in our community. While almost three quarters
of meth users snort the drug, and half smoke it, these slammers may
have something important to teach us about gay meth users in general
and high risk, highly sexual users in particular.

What's crystal clear, so to speak, is that the slammers are a special
breed among us, who push the envelope of what is acceptable among gay
men and who may help us understand the outer limits of behavior that
symbolizes tensions that all of us share.

All the slammers I spoke to--though I am a therapist, none of these
men were my patients--talked about the intensity of the high when
they inject meth.

"The rush is immediate and extremely powerful," one user I'll call
Oswaldo said. "The immediate sensation was a rush of warmth and
tingliness and feeling like I wanted to melt my body into another person."

The slammers all strongly associated meth use and sex and the
experience of powerful connection with other users.

Doug shot up the very first time he used meth. He's a self-proclaimed
"druggie" who had lots of experience with many different drugs. He
wasn't freaked out by needles, as many people are; he was already
HIV-positive; and he was clear that shooting up meth was attractive
to him to the extent that it accentuated "the secret, private bond
that one doesn't have in other areas of life."

Doug already saw himself as an outsider. Shooting up meth confirmed
and extended this sense of being an outlaw, a member of a secret society.

"Once you know somebody else does it, you know they're in the same
headspace as you," he said.

Doug compares injecting meth to being the kind of person who might
have their whole back covered in tattoos, being a rebel who really
pushes the boundaries and finds commonality with others like
themselves. For him, it's all about the connection made with the
person you're doing it with.

Oswaldo agreed: "There's definitely a bond or a sense of togetherness
that comes from knowing we both like the same thing and have both
experienced the intensity of slamming."

In fact, this sense of a powerful connection to like-minded fellow
users sharing the intensity of the experience was the single most
resonant commonality among the slammers I spoke with. One went so far
as to say that in his opinion "the prevalence of injecting meth is in
direct relation to where gay culture is at."

What he meant by this is that in gay male culture it's very common to
have intense feelings of being an outsider combined with difficulty
accessing intimacy. Shooting meth confirms the uniqueness of the
loner mystique while providing instant access to intense intimacy
both within the ritual of shooting up and the inhibition-less sex that follows.

The bonding between slammers is the flip side of the stigma toward
injecting drugs. And while few of the users I spoke to had any
experience with heroin, or even saw it in their circles, all of them
felt that other gay male meth users looked down on those who inject.

In fact, this two-tiered society of slammers and other meth users
parallels the two-tiered society of gay men, the HIV-negative and the
HIV-positive, another version of the outsider dynamic.

Colin, who recently stopped using when he left New York City, and who
remains HIV-negative despite more than five years shooting up meth,
talked about the darker side of slamming, detailing stories of meth
paranoia that while not exclusive to the injection experience clarify
the costs of sustaining use.

"I have met people who seem perfectly normal," he said, "and then you
realize that they have been thinking that there is no roof on their
apartment for six months and they come to think of this 'fact' not as
a huge problem but more like it's a new form of reality, as in: 'Come
in, how are you? By the way, I must apologize for the complete lack
of ceiling.'"

All the slammers agreed that, as Doug put it, "People use drugs until
they can't, until things fall apart."

None of them felt that any public health campaigns or warnings had
any impact on their use, or used messages that spoke to their
experience as slammers. Oswaldo stopped using when he thought he was
having a heart attack when shooting up, describing "the sheer terror
I felt when I almost passed out. I didn't want to die like that."

All of them paid a heavy price for their use in one way or another,
losing jobs, friends, apartments, savings, and more.

"For all the brouhaha about how great it feels," Oswaldo said,
"ultimately one is paying with one's life. Tragically, slamming sets
the bar for sexual/sensual pleasure very, very high and one feels
like there's no other pleasure, drug induced or not, that is worth
pursuing. In my time in recovery, I've noticed that slammers have a
far greater relapse rate.

The relearning of other forms of pleasure is also harder. The
flashback effect of euphoric recall is scary when it happens."

"People do drugs because they are bored and lonely," said Doug.
Slamming meth "fulfills a specific cultural need" for closeness and
intimacy. In order to help people not to slam meth, he said, "our
community needs to help people meet those needs."