Patrick moore recounts his addictive past in ‘Tweaked: A Crystal Memoir.’
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By TRENTON STRAUBE
Monday, August 21, 2006
Thanks to ad campaigns of recent years, most of the LGBT community is aware of the dangers of crystal meth. Patrick Moore has been aware of it the past few decades. In the ’80s, he was involved in New York’s art scene and ACT UP. He was also an addict. His latest book, "Tweaked: A Crystal Memoir," recounts his struggles, taking the reader from legendary nightclub The Saint to a recovery house in California, his new home state. During our phone interview, Moore talks about gay men’s collective sexual history and the community’s tendency toward addictions .
Tell us about your current project, the yahoo.com health blog called "The Principles."
The idea is to use the general principles of 12-step recovery, like honesty and responsibility, and apply them to non-addictive people’s problems. I also cover breaking news. I did a series called "George Bush: Alcoholic." How do we make sense of the behavior of people we disagree with? One way to look at them is as having these tendencies like alcoholics instead of reflectively hate them.
The 12 steps can be applied to anyone’s life?
I see addiction and alcoholism as a spiritual disease, so I look at these principles more as a recipe for living. There’s a reason that an addict like myself tries to destroy myself. Either there’s a deep self-hatered or a deep emptiness inside me that fuels my addiction. That’s why I think of it as a spiritual disease.
Based on your work in the recovery house, have you observed specific traits that recur in addicts and alcoholics?
Loneliness and isolation — and we can be lonely and isolated in a room full of people. I hear over and over, "I can’t connect with another person." Alcohol and drugs help us bridge, at least temporarily, that gap.
Is the LGBT community more suspectible to this problem?
Addiction and alcohol rates for gay people are four to six time higher than straight people in this country. So there must be something that’s driving that: loneliness, isolation. As well as the fact that our meeting places are built around drugs and alcohol.
That’s changing, right? We can join gay sports groups or raise families, for example.
It’s changing for some of us. For the middle class and upper class, there are more outlets. I question that poor people have a lot of opportunities to socialize without drugs and alcohol.
Your crystal meth use started in the ’80s. How’d it feel to see the drug seep into the gay scene the past decade?
I felt disconncted from it. A lot of the crystal support organizations that have grown up didn’t exist when I got sober. I’ve always had a reluctance to make the discussion about addiction just about crystal. My addiciton started 15–20 years ago. It was a continuum from alcohol to coke to crystal. It’s all part of the same thing. There’s a danger in demonizing crystal meth. Once we get it tamped down in gay community, we’ll find another drug made out of some other hideous substance. While I had a horrible time on crystal, I would have probably reached those same horrible times even if I hadn’t found crystal.
Are anti-crystal ad campaigns effective?
The message I get from many of these horrific campaigns is that I’m so far gone, it’s hopeless. Certainly there’s validity in trying to not make crystal glamorous, but we need to look at some of the underlying issues driving this crisis rather than just staying in a crisis mode mentally. The same happened around AIDS.
What do you mean by that?
The gay community, in particular in this country, operates on a crisis basis. So when AIDS came along, it was hard to get people to look at the underlying issues, such as health care and the drug-approval process. We just wanted to deal on an emotional level with the people who were sick. But all those problems persist. To just tell horror stories about crystal meth misses the point. Why are we persistently trying kill ourselves in the gay community? That’s the larger discussion that’s not happening around crystal meth.
In "Beyond Shame," you discuss the community’s collective shame about our sexual history. Is that related to our high addiction rates?
As gay men, we constantly put out sexual images but never talk about emotional aspects of sex. Part of reason sex in an honest way continues to be shameful for us is that we have disavowed our sexual history. If I can’t find some way to look at the ’70 sexual revolution and embrace at least aspects of it as a revolutionary act of freedom, then it becomes a very depressing story: first killing ourselves with sex and HIV, now killing ourselves with sex and drug use.
And you don’t think that’s the real story?
The real story is that at one moment, sexuality, drug use, dancing, music the gay life of the 1970s was about creativity and exploration. And because of HIV primarily, we’ve turned it into our dirty little secret. Compared to the ’70s when drugs seemed to be more about exploration and coming together for a common experience, now they’re about isolating ourselves and turning off all the scary messages that go through our heads when we have sex.
Is it not possible for guys to come out today and feel empowered by exploring their sexuality?
I personally meet no young gay men who have the joyful sense that the world is full of possibilities when they’re having sex. I meet young gay men who are lonely and terrified about sex. And sex has become so weighted for them that there’s no possibility for them to be exploratory and creative. I don’t see that happening.
Easy to see how that attitude leads to drug and alcohol abuse.
If I’m terrified everytime I have sex, if I believe it’s inherently a self-destructive act, then God knows I’d need drugs to get through it. It’s such a quandry because I think people believe that we’ve become this intensely healthy self-realized community. I don’t see that in the behavior.
How has "Tweaked" been received?
Fantastic on several levels. One: it’s not just being seen as the story of a gay man and crystal meth. It’s been embraced by more mainstream bookstores. The larger story is about addiction and sobriety, and that does cross lines, although gay men have a particular take on it. I’ve also been doing a lot of radio interviews in Midwestern states. They are impacted heavily enough by this drug that they’re willing to talk about all of this. That’s a very hopeful sign.
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