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SOUTHERN VOICE ♦ DECEMBER 29/1994 '95 Camara '95 Geo fracker PLUS TAX, TAG & TITLE. DEALS RfTAWS RSATC. VIRGINIA HIGHLANDS CHEVROLET Ge© 6130 Memorial Dr. Stone Mountain 469-7121 Now you can get the best for your pet without leaving the neighborhood. Self Service Dog Wash Quality Pet Supplies Dog Training Mon-Sat 10:30 to 8:00 Sunday 1:00 to 6:00 892-1595 1186 North Highland In Post Office Parking Lot Drug abuse Continued from Page 16 if it's controlled use, you can still be caught in the cycle." And to what does Hughes attribute les bian and gay drug use? "One of the reasons is the lack of connection that gay men and lesbians have to society/' she submits, "the cutoff that we feel as human beings. That goes back to heterosexism and the oppres sion that we get from society. If bars are the only place you have to meet people, then that's where people end up going." But what about what Zachary said about different social settings? Are the circum stances surrounding drug use different for lesbians? "I don't want to get into stereo types," says Hughes, "but generally speak ing, I'd say that that is true, that there is much more of a party mentality in the gay male community than in the lesbian com munity. Most lesbians that I've worked with use alone, as opposed to going out and par tying, although younger lesbians do go out and party a lot. They just don't get to treat ment yet. They haven't lost everything yet." • • • Dr. Chris Crowe, a gay Atlanta psy chologist who specializes in anxiety disor ders and depression, is listing some of the negative long-term affects of popular drugs. "Chronic cocaine use can lead to suspi ciousness or even a paranoid psychosis, and a certain kind of brain syndrome," he says. "The patient looks pretty much like a schizophrenic, and after someone stops us ing cocaine, you can have a severe depres sion. Ecstasy is believed to be highly addic- five psychologically but not necessarily physically. As for crystal meth, some of the psychological effects are depression, anxi ety and irritability. People have a very hard time getting off of it because they get so de pressed." And are these the drugs Dr. Crowe's patients are using? "In my practice I see a preponderance of people using crystal and Ecstasy," he says, "and people who are mix ing cocaine and crystal together. Research indicates people with a tendency to have mood disorders, people who may be prone to depression, for example, are more likely to abuse these drugs." Again, why so much drug use? "It's very prevalent in our community...it always has been. It's been sort of associated with the 70s, with the 'disco lifestyle.' I can't help but think, right now there's so much pathos in our commu nity because of HIV drat it's a way to try to escape the grief." • • • "It's frustrating that we don't have more concrete data," says Eleanor Nealy, director of Project Connect, the alcohol and drug in tervention program at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York. "Studies in the late 70s and early '80s on the lesbian and gay community indicated that in terms of alcohol and drug abuse, one out of three lesbians and gay men has some kind of drug or alcohol-related problem, as compared to 10% for the larger population. But there were a lot of methodological prob lems with the early studies, so there's been a lot of debate in recent years about how accurate that figure is." What accounts for the discrepancy be tween gay and straight drug use? "One of the things studies have found," responds Nealy, "was that drug and alcohol use de clines significantly with, age in the general population and that didn't happen in the lesbian and gay sample." I ask Nealy if she sees a distinction be tween lesbian and gay male drug use. "I don't hear lesbians talking about K, crystal, and X, the way I hear gay men talking to me about that," she says, "so I would make a judgment that lesbians are not using those drugs the way that gay men are. I hear about cocaine in both communities." The term now being used for cocaine—"girlfriend"— seems very appropriate to me now. Nealy pauses, then adds, "I don't know whether the dynamics are different in At lanta from New York City, but cocaine and crack run neck and neck with alcohol in terms of the lesbians we work with." Nealy adds that "in terms of treatment, we tend to run gender-specific groups here. Even in the larger community, men seek drug and alcohol treatment at much higher rates than women do, and that seems to play out in the lesbian and gay community. Women also drop out at a higher rate than men." I wonder aloud why that is. "There's still more stigma for women around being iden tified as an alcoholic or addict," says Nealy, "but rates of alcohol-related problems are much higher for lesbians—about three times higher—than heterosexual women." And Nealy agrees with the notion that gay male drug use is very socially oriented. "With the gay men that I see who are into designer drugs and clubs, there seems to be a lot of acceptance. If you're spending all night long Saturday at gay clubs it's ex pected you're doing crystal or K or some thing." • • • It's Saturday night and I'm dancing at an Atlanta gay club. Suddenly, there's a commotion in the middle of the crowd. One guy has passed out, and his friends are drag ging his unconscious body across the room. Instinctively, I run to get help, telling the doorman to call 911. He seems only vaguely concerned and dispatches club security to check out the situation. I rush back to the dance floor area only to see the guy up on his feet again, his friends encircled around him. "Is he O.K.?" 1 ask, "I told them to call 911." "There was no reason to do that," one of them snaps, "he's fine now." And I can see that indeed he is fine. For now.