Headcase - Crystal meth and sex

When Mark King, the former education director of AID Atlanta, took my workshop for blocked writers 10 years ago, we started calling him Opie. With his strawberry-blond hair, boyish face and aw-shucks attitude, he reminded us of the eternally sweet character played by Ron Howard on "The Andy Griffith Show." In fact, Mark had worked as just such a character in TV commercials after college.

But our use of the nickname was ironic. We knew he had a hedonistic history, a rather dark one, that in part strongly belied his persona. And his reluctance to write about that part of himself deprived his writing of the depth it could have.

"It was out of the question then," Mark told me recently.

It's an axiom of my work that the function of a creative block is to inhibit awareness of something that creative work would require us to face. Eventually, though, whatever the block is covering, typically the disowned part of ourselves, called the "shadow," overtakes us as a symptom far worse than the inability to write or draw or play music.

In Mark's case, that was a fall into a hell beyond ordinary hedonism. He became addicted to crystal methamphetamine, "Tina," as it's commonly called. The drug's use is epidemic among gay men and is commonly blamed for escalating rates of HIV infection among the young. It is the subject of a documentary, Meth, that will be shown at 5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 12, at the Plaza Theatre, as part of the gay-themed Out on Film Festival. Mark is one of director Todd Ahlberg's featured interviews in the film.

Mark moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., four years ago but had begun using crystal meth while living in Atlanta. He became the partner of a wealthy man from whom he hid his escalating use of the drug. After a year of nearly daily use, he got Hepatitis C from sharing needles. Already HIV-positive for about 20 years, he had to go on chemotherapy for a year and began attending 12-step meetings.

"I stayed clean during the year I was doing the chemo," he said, "but relapsed about a month before we began filming Meth two years ago. I continued episodic use until August when I admitted how bad things had gotten and my partner broke up with me. I went from an idyllic life traveling around the world and living in a beautiful house to living in a halfway house."

I asked Mark what the appeal of the drug was and his response was immediate: "Sex. Well, you could also say it was the darkness of it. It was everything you talked about needing to deal with in the workshop. I couldn't deal with it so I literally became my shadow self."

Mark is unsparing in his description of what his life became. "At first," he said, "it feels voluntary and you feel, sexually, you can go places you wouldn't ordinarily go. Then it becomes involuntary — complete sexual depravity.

"Two guys on crystal always start playing a game of sexual one-upmanship. You start talking about doing all kinds of things that are taboo — incest, blood — and of course safe sex disappears. There I was, HIV-positive, barebacking all the time. All you think about is getting high and having sex."

Crystal has actually been around quite a while but Mark says its popularity soared when its main sexual side effect, erectile dysfunction, was countered by the appearance of Viagra.

"Also," he says, "its popularity came at the right time. It decreases sexual inhibitions in a community suffering fatigue over AIDS. Tina, especially mixed with Viagra, gives gay men back their sexuality — at a terrible price, of course." Psychologically, the drug really is a doorway to the shadow, our "opposite" self. An AIDS educator such as Mark ends up becoming a "barebacking pig." Gay men, generally demonized on the basis of their sexual activity, become exaggerated versions of that characterization. Many completely ruin their lives and health.

Mark, who will attend the Atlanta debut of Meth, says the film shows both the appeal and devastation of the drug. It also reveals, unintentionally, the dishonesty that attends addiction. "I come off as the voice of reason — the guy with some sobriety," he says, "but the truth is that I was high as a kite when I made my interview."

As for the future, Mark says he is taking things one day at a time. "I know everything that befell me saved my life. Sitting in a halfway house is what I need to do now."

Cliff Bostock holds a Ph.D. in depth psychology.