by Grant Lukenbill, submitted 25 Dec 1997
A national study from the University of Michigan indicates young Americans -- both gay and straight -- across the nation have been in the grip of a growing drug and alcohol addiction epidemic since 1990. Most alarmingly, acid and heroin use were cited as the prevailing most popular drugs now being used among young people -- with usage up by some 50%. Marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines are up 30%. Even the National Center for Health Statistics claims that nearly 60% of all Americans over the age of 12 claim to have used alcohol within the last thirty days.
Not only that, the latest study from Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute claims, like previous studies of its kind, that gay and lesbian substance use is much higher than that of straights, but most interestingly that the incidence is even higher for lesbians than gay men. These statistics are left unaddressed by most of the gay and lesbian press, but they are suspiciously missing from the ongoing, male-focused national debate about AIDS and public health.
As a middle-aged, white, HIV-negative man still in the throws of discovering each day how NOT to be a lesbian and minority issues-ignorant person, let me just state that I'm familiar with being accused of aiding new infections, playing into the Radical Right,s hands, helping enemies and being low enough to use spirited discussion as a means of promoting my next book every time I bring our community,s booze and drug problem up.
So for those of you who just like to rant, please feel more than free to quote me out of context because I,m already partial to being labeled a co- conspirator in the great capitalistic media evil that subjugates real discussion in exchange for sensationalistic personality profiling in editorial pages.
Nonethless, it would serve us all to remember that plenty in our communities have lost just as many friends to AIDS as Larry Kramer; that tens of thousands of us stopped doing drugs and an alcohol years before Michaelangelo Signorile came out fingering certain circuit parties; and while there are those of us who disagree with Gabriel Rotello's arguments about condoms, sex clubs and threshold theories, plenty of us are sober enough to confront blow-hards who paint him as the Anti-Christ.
Having said all that, and having remained quiet too long on what I've long believed to be a misguided public debate about sex businesses completely devoid of substantive acknowledgment of real issues about real people, I finally decided to chat up some sex club workers and sex club customers around the country as well as a few gay and lesbian health professionals. I also reacquainted myself with the most recent national statistics on new HIV infections, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism and drug abuse.
Predictably, few sex club managers talked. But employees and customers did. So did the health care professionals. And what they all had to say, combined with what all the studies indicate has once again confirmed for me what is the central driving force behind new HIV infections in young people.
Now for the record, I happen to be completely behind the principal of allowing legal private hotels, rental rooms, bathhouses, sex clubs, peep shows and book store booths where two consenting adults may gather behind a closed door and perform whatever affectional/sexual acts to each other they choose even if that includes unsafer sex.
What I,m against is the obsequious re-fetishizing of the bathhouse debate for questionable political gain (some three years now) at the expense of the real story about what is more likely part of the reason news AIDS infections are rising among young gay men: the fact that study after study that shows skyrocketing crack, heroin, speed, crystal meth and cocaine usage across the board among all young Americans -- gay or straight.
This largely unreported addiction phenomenon (and it is addiction) is as much related to the rise of unwanted pregnancies as it is to new HIV infections. It is not segregated to automobile back seats, back rooms, Manhattan's paltry handfull of sex clubs, or even gay male circuit parties which -- let's face it -- attract fewer people than will fit in any urban disco on a Saturday Night. Here are the facts you don,t hear about:
In 1996, according to the United States Center for Mental Health Services, a whopping 28.1% of Americans were under some kind of treatment by a social therapist or mental health professional. And 9.5% were specifically diagnosed with an alcohol or substance abuse problem.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reports similar numbers with the interesting caveat that the most abusive drinkers (both heaving and binge) are male and white and fall between the ages of 18-34. Abusive was classified as both binge drinking and heaving drinking (binge being five or more drinks on the same occasion at least once in the past 30 days, heavy drinking classified as 5 or more drinks on one occasion at least 5 times in the past 30 days). Those claiming to have used some form of non- prescribed recreational drug within the same period was as follows:
Blacks 7.5
Whites 6.1
Hispanic 5.2
Male 8.1
Female 4.2
Now, according to the University of Michigan, from 1992 to 1996 all drug use including pot, coke, crack, speed, acid and heroin increased consistently across the board from 8th grade through 12th in all regions of the United States. Most alarmingly, the use of acid and heroin has increased by an almost unbelievable 50%. But even pot and speed have increased by 30%
Even the National Center for Health Statistics show that the total percentage of Americans by race and sex, ages 12 and older in 1996 who reported the use of alcohol within the preceding 30 days is noteworthy:
Male 58.9
Female 43.6
Blacks 41.9
Whites 54.2
Hispanics 43.1
Now combine those trends with the fact that every single study of its kind conducted over the last ten years (Columbia; Univ. San Francisco; Univ. of Chicago; Univ of Iowa and New York State Psychiatric Inst.) concluded in varying degrees that drug and alcohol abuse levels among self-identifying gays and lesbians are markedly higher than that of straights.
Moreover, in one of the most recent studies (Rosario, 1996) the prevalence of substance abuse among self-identified lesbian under age 18 were found to be not only higher than gay men but 6.4 times higher than that of heterosexual females. And predictably, substance use prevalence among gay men in the same study was 4.4 times higher than straight men for the same age group. But when it came to alcohol use both gay and lesbian prevalence was 50% higher than straight youths.
The cold hard undeniable yet repeatedly de-emphasized fact is that no matter how you slice the numbers, play with the statistics or point to methodological loop holes and political red herring subjects, now matter how many personality editorials appear in the New York Times, the single greatest growing group of Americans currently at risk for drug and alcohol abuse are the young & the queer but more poignantly young lesbians.
Even a look at the most commonly provided statistical run-down from the Centers for Disease Control on modes of infection for HIV portray a suspicious omission of alcohol use and unacceptably large percentage of unidentified transmission for both men but especially women:
Men:
Transfusion/hemophilia 2%
Heterosexual contact 6%
Homosexual contact 50%
General intravenous drug use 23%
Gay intravenous drug use 5%
Unidentified: 15%
Women:
Heterosexual contact 40%
Transfusion/hemophilia 2%
General intravenous drug use 34%
Unidentified 24%
Is it any wonder new HIV infections are rising among young gay men at the rate of 4% annually? Are they rising among lesbians as well because of intravenous drug use but going unreported or merely reported as "unknown because of ill- focused news coverage and less than fair community leadership on the issues? As Richard Elovich, Director of HIV Prevention at GMHC acknowledges, " 4% may sound low to you, but at that rate one half of the gay men who are now 18 years old will be infected by the time they turn 30.
And at the published epidemic rates of drug usage, how many of our young gay and lesbian citizens will take their own lives, end up in nut houses, on the street (or as is the more likley case for black drug users -- in prison) because of unaddressed and untreated alcohol and substance abuse -- with or without HIV infection?
Does it take rocket science to see that closing bath houses and counting orgasms is not the answer -- that it may not even be a factor?
Isn't it time for us to stop allowing ourselves to be influenced by twisted perspectives and token debates lead by the few, focusing on the less significant?
Or is it that the rest of our community is simply panicking about sex and demonizing certain members in a larger effort to avoid admitting where the real problem of disease comes from?