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Clarity about crystal

In Tweaked, his compelling exposé and memoir, ex-addict Patrick Moore exposes the spiritual origins of gay men’s fondness for crystal meth.



Crystal meth use is epidemic, a pestilence that, while not specific to gay men and lesbians, is particularly harsh for us. Books and TV films (like Gia) about the devastating effects of the drug on people’s lives are beginning to have some efficacy—what was seen a decade ago as recreational drug use is now beginning to be viewed as a wide and perilous path to gay self-destruction.

In the midst of all this, activist and author Patrick Moore’s new book, Tweaked (Kensington Books) stands apart. Its literary quality is apparent, and it’s a real artistic leap forward from even his excellent 2004 examination of the gay male sex culture, Beyond Shame.

But it is Moore’s sly melding of his own personal experience as an alcoholic and meth addict, along with his account of meth rehab sessions, that really strikes home in the book. While the author hesitantly yet proudly proclaims his sobriety, what he reveals allows us to see clearly for the first time the real depth and enormity of the meth problem that our community now faces.

I’ve known Moore for some time, so I was able to do what few other readers could—that is, ask him about this mysterious and potentially deadly pandemic. Like any real dialogue, our conversation took us to places neither of us had really considered before.

Picano: Having now read Tweaked, I’d like to know what you think causes the abuse of substances such as crystal meth. Is it genetic, psychological, or some combination of the two?
Moore: I think addiction is a spiritual disease. The inclination to use drugs, at least for me, came out of a feeling of not belonging to anything—not being connected to some feeling of comfort or well-being. I asked a kabbalah teacher once if his belief system had an explanation for addiction. He said our intention when we use drugs is to communicate with God, but because we’re not spiritually equipped to do that, we’re damaged when we try to take that shortcut. It’s like a child seeing a beautiful flame and wanting to touch it, not knowing it will burn them.

Spiritual, yet you can’t deny a physiological connection to drug abuse. Studies have shown that. In my own family there was substance abuse, including alcoholism, and I discovered in my mid 30s that I have a sort of allergy to alcohol, which is the other side of the same genetic coin. When I would go out to dinner with friends, we would have long dinners with a cocktail, wine with the meal, a drink after. All very civilized, and I never got high. But I found myself waking up in the middle of the night with projectile vomiting! Remaining sick hours on end afterward.
Did you stop drinking?

I cut down to one or two drinks, tops. I found a limit where I don’t get ill, and I stick to it.
Your experience points out the difference between an addictive personality and a nonaddictive one. I also got very sick from drugs and alcohol, and that experience meant nothing to me. The negative parts of addiction never slowed me down until they became so extreme that they were impossible to ignore. But having said that, I do agree that whether it is genetic or environmental, our families instill in us a tendency towards addiction. In other words, my grandmother, who I talk about in Tweaked, was a severe alcoholic and addict. I don’t know whether it was genetics or behavioral, but my connection to her did play a role in my becoming an alcoholic. If you talk of Warhol’s Factory and the people around it, they were creative.

And rebellious and nuts too.
And they were part of that milieu. It was an underground that was related to creativity—to the arts. That’s significantly different than getting high and hanging at the bathhouse for a week. It was not, it seems to me, a scene that was about isolation.

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