Gscene Magazine - October 2020 | WWW.GSCENE.COM

66 GSCENE

CRAIG’S THOUGHTS Our dark secret. We never speak of it. By Craig Hanlon-Smith @craigscontinuum ) In January 2005 I spoke to a friend about the new clan I’d been welcomed into during the festive season. My new friends were incredible. In their company I felt alive like never before and the excitement, nay exhilaration, was electric. I neglected to inform my friend that this new group relationship wasn’t entirely platonic but on reflection all these years later I’m sure she knew. In her gentle yet affirming way she said: be mindful Craig that if you’re using drugs with these people how much the drugs may be influencing your feelings and emotions. I didn’t listen. What followed was the most challenging year of my life and I’m lucky to be here to tell the tale. Of course in the moment I lived off the accelerating exhilaration and ignored the context of my equally accelerating drug use. These substances were after all party drugs, legitimate amongst the middle classes and gay community. How I turned up for work everyday is unfathomable to me now. Of course, I didn’t always. Towards the end of 2005, an acquaintance took delight in describing how others were talking of me. In less than sophisticated tones she defined how those around me saw my disappearing hopeful light of a future, not to mention my weight loss and dull complexion. Her words were poisonous and yet, it was the jolt I needed. In all the time that ran the expanse of that year, only one sober friend made reference to their concern, and he is a friend I’m proud to hold close today. Not one other person I knew reached out or spoke of it, even though they must have seen. It took the vindictive swipe of an acquaintance to hold up the mirror and, although unknowingly, slap me into the land of WAKE UP. To this day I feel she thought she was being nasty and taking great delight in it. I’m forever grateful for her intervention. Drug use is the scourge of our community and continues to disproportionately affect gay and bisexual men amongst us and yet we don’t speak of it enough. Those waist deep in the mist are surrounded by others who live the same life and consequently are ill equipped to

support the afflicted. In fact they encourage it. Texting and messaging images of desire, lust or perhaps just a crack pipe to hook in the vulnerable. Those with money are more sophisticated in their assault, offering luxury accommodation or at least an apparent step up into a social world we may never otherwise aspire to belong to. The magnetic draw is the same. It’s toxic. It hooked me all those years ago and it works similarly for others today. We give drugs affectionate and familiar names to humanise them. Molly, Mandy, Tina and who could fail not to have their head turned by the glamour of anything named Crystal. These are dangerous substances that we in the gay and bi male community have legitimised in ‘chill-outs’ and ‘parties’. Dating profiles contain ‘h n h’ as a badge of honour or fishing net to draw in others whose drug use will then give an authority to their own. It’s as manipulative as it’s deceitful and dangerous. We think a little here and there won’t hurt and after all they load us with an exhilaration we feel we can never get from another quarter of life. I’m free to be who I want to be and if this is what I choose who are you to raise an eyebrow or a seemingly judgemental question? They make us feel exciting, attractive and wanted. They also steal into our worlds as a chemical SAS in the dead of night when our defences are weak and the effects on all those caught in the backdraft are devastating. Men walk amongst us who through their use manipulate and deceive with faux kindness, shady glamour and a friendly welcome so that they do not feel alone in their habit. They prey upon the vulnerable albeit sometimes unknowingly. These drugs, or chems as they’re now colloquially defined, are highly addictive life changing substances that rob families of their

sons, sisters of their brothers, significant others from their partners, and dear friends from those who care about them. And we, the gay and bi male community, see it amongst us and are criminally silent. We don’t want to lose the friend or alienate the brother and so we trundle about our daily choreography deliberately blind. We who are silent are just as guilty of the manipulation if not more so and we’re killing each other with a quiet kindness that is morbidly stupid. More tragic than the distance drug use creates between those we love, is the murder of the self. The light that’s dimmed, the creative spirit slowly buried, the potential to love, live and fly into a future so bright we are unstoppable - we kill it. Dead. I’m not ashamed of my history and proud to have been strong enough, brave enough or perhaps just lucky enough to start over. But without question, everything I am today, in love, life and career is because someone opened a door for me and I was able to walk through it. We must STOP ignoring this plague, STOP legitimising community abuse, and STOP using PREP or an undetectable HIV status as a get out of jail free card that means you can throw yourself safely into the ‘party scene’ with wild abandon, slam the life out of your veins, or smoke yourself into a future that is dead inside. STOP. Get help. Your sober friend can’t do it, your family can’t do it, and you can’t do it alone. We can support and care and walk and talk but you have got to come on that journey with a system that knows how to look after you properly. Knowing you’re loved won’t be enough, you’ll find a way around it and be back on the cutthroat carousel indefinitely. If you’re that friend, get them to get help. Don’t facilitate a forgiving silence with potentially horrific consequences. The future is bright. Gleaming sunlight. I promise you that and I live to tell the brightest story full of sunshine warmth. As for the rest of us, remove the blindfold and start screaming. These men deserve better and perhaps if we were just a little bit more upfront and honest to them and ourselves about it, one of them might wake up. Just one. It’s got to be worth supporting that one bright kind soul into a future, right? American writer and HIV/Aids activist Larry Kramer said of the emerging pandemic in the early 1980s: “If what you’re hearing doesn’t rouse you to anger, fury, rage and action, gay men will have no future here on earth”. So called acceptable drug use amongst our kind is its own pandemic and robs gay and bi men, and those who love them, of a meaningful future. It’s time to ACT UP, FIGHT BACK. SHOUT. SHOUT TODAY. WAKE UP and meet the sun.

“I’m lucky to be here to tell the tale.... in the moment I lived off the accelerating exhilaration and ignored the context of my equally accelerating drug use”