Beyond Crystal, Free Yourself From Crystal Forever

DL Scott CtHA / AASD / CDC

Nine years ago I was approached by a woman, Susan Kingston, to become the Methamphetamine Specialist for a King County Funded Project called Project NEON. Project NEON is a harm reduction program that initially addressed safer use among Gay and Bi-sexual men who inject Crystal Methamphetamine.

Susan was looking for a way to blend more traditional chemical dependency skills and tools with more alternative and newer methods of harm reduction and prevention philosophies. Since many Certified Chemical Dependency Counselors were not, at theat time, trained in both traditional and harm reduction philosophies, she felt that my unique blend of these two philosophies would be perfect for the needs of the program.

After a couple of months of deliberation, I accepted the job offer and was literally thrown into the deep end of the pool with out a life jacket.

What I discovered over the next 9 years is a way of looking at the relationship between, not only Crystal Meth, and Crystal Meth users, but specifically the Gay Community and Crystal Methamphetamine.

The first thing I learned was that this program was originally designed as a harm reduction program to address the fact 51% of all Gay and Bi-sexual men who injected Meth were also HIV+.

The initial belief was that this high infection rate was due to unclean injection practices. As more data was gathered, the new theory is that the high infection rate is more likely due to unsafe sex practices while on Meth. What I learned from my clients was that Meth = Sex, and Sex while on Meth was usually practiced in a very unsafe manner.

On any given day, clients would come into my office with the report that they had either been continuing to use Meth, or they had experienced a relapse of use on Meth. “So what did you do while you were high?” I would ask. Continue reading ‘Beyond Crystal, Free yourself From Crystal Meth Forever’ »