Partying, Club Drugs, and HIV: A Gay Man Speaks Out

From his HIV diagnosis in 1985 until his death in April of 2009, Cass Mann was one of the world's longest-term HIV-positive survivors. He founded Positively Healthy, the UK's only HIV/AIDS charity staffed exclusively by openly gay men, which provided HIV services including education, support, and peer counselling. These videos now archive his wisdom and insight for future generations. Here he talks about the role that partying and party and club drugs play in contributing to the spread of HIV. Depression and anxiety often contribute to people contracting HIV, but so does partying. People often contract HIV when they are on drugs and partying. Drugs used in clubs while partying increase the risk that people will have unprotected sex. People sometimes even experience a sense of inevitability that they WILL contract HIV, therefore they don't take steps to avoid contracting HIV. People sometimes even long for the sense of finality that comes with contracting HIV because then they feel (erroneously) that the "other shoe has dropped" and they no longer need worry about contracting HIV. (In reality, even once HIV positive they will still need to practice safer sex to avoid infecting others, superinfecting themselves with additional drug-resistant strains of HIV, or coinfection with other STIs.) The HIV epidemic and the explosion of recreational drug use has proceeded in tandem. Positively Healthy even got one form of Poppers, Amyl Nitrate/Nitrite, banned in the United Kingdom in 1996, but regrettably chemical analogs continue to be used. Drug use can contribute to the progression of HIV infection towards clinical AIDS. Ecstasy is a disinhibitor contributing to unsafe sex. Crystal Methamphetamine leads to depression, anxiety, and suicidal tendencies. We are recreating the same conditions today that led to the AIDS epidemic in the first place, but we're doing it 25 years after the epidemic first started. For more information, visit http://www.AIDSvideos.org/. This video is freely downloadable from http://www.archive.org/details/AGayMa... . [Do you want to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS? Are you fluent in a language other than English? Then volunteer to translate our videos into other languages! Click http://AIDSvideos.org/translate.shtml to to learn how you can help!!! © Copyright 2008-2011 Global Lifeworks. All rights reserved. This work is licensed to be used for non-commercial purposes under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b....]

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