I knew it. I felt it. It was as clear as the incessant call of crystal meth itself, on those nights when a seductive phantom of the drug cozies up to me in bed and brings its knitting.
In a Huffington Post news article on accused killer Luka Rocco Magnotta, buried in the story pages deep, a former lover says that the alleged murderer used methamphetamine, the drug popular among gay men that has claimed years of my life and left countless men in utter wreckage.
The story of the Canadian “low budget porn actor” has horrified the public with its harrowing details of torture, cannibalism, and necrophilia. The young man has been accused of killing a student, cutting him to pieces, and then mailing body parts to various locations. He allegedly consumed some of his victim and performed sexual acts with the body. He is also accused of uploading a video recording of the crime onto the internet.
Horrific, yes. But the sheer madness of the crimes, and the killer’s insane determination to make it as shocking as possible, was sickeningly familiar to a recovering methamphetamine addict like me. There is no evidence yet that crystal meth played a role in these crimes, but allow me to explain why the mix of porn, insanity and meth use struck a disturbing chord with me.
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Among gay men who use recreational drugs, crystal meth abuse remains epidemic, sought for its fabled power to heighten sexual desire. In the last ten years, “crystal” has emptied nightclubs and sentenced friends to the isolation of online porn or to the emotional wasteland of “party and play” orgies frequented by fellow addicts, where syringes are common and condoms are not, and which feature exhausted, drug-driven sexual compulsives. The events have all the charm of dead bodies having sex.
Just as the drug demands more in its pursuit of the thrill of that first transformative rush, so does the sexual psyche. Before long, typical sexual behavior isn’t enough in the life of a crystal addict, and more extreme components are brought into play, such as risk and location, props and posturing, all as users experience a darkening of the sexual landscape that would cause your very soul to shudder.
In my experience, finding sexual fantasies to stimulate the weathered sexuality of meth abuse means exploring alien territory, where nothing is off-limits and the darker, the better. It becomes a perverse game of one-upmanship between addicts on the depths each will plummet for the sexual shock needed. You think about violence, one might ask the other. Fine, but have you ever thought about this? That’s hot, says the other, but what I really think about doing… is this.
Never mind that the images they are conjuring have never occurred to either of them prior to their addiction. They are mining something much darker than their authentic sexuality has ever known, all in the service of an insatiable sexual craving poisoned by a drug made with ingredients like ether, Drano and brake fluid. And so their perverse tales build and accelerate, tossed back and forth like playing volleyball with a severed head.
This is why the exploits of Mr. Magnotta set off my meth addict radar. The very outrageousness of his vile acts felt, to me, like an addict who had explored the depths of his imagination and come up short, for whom the depravity couldn’t be satisfied any longer without being made flesh. Whether his pre-existing insanity carried him across a mortal line or crystal meth pushed him over it, we don’t yet know. But meth addicts like me were shaking their heads at the accounts of Magnotta’s heinous acts and wondering why the rest of the world hadn’t suspected the connection, and why news reports hardly mentioned his crystal use as if it weren’t particularly relevant.
There are horrors that don’t arise from childhood abuse, or sociopathology or even garden variety insanity. They come from a white crystallized substance that promises everything and delivers nothing, that rewires your brain and twists your most human instincts into something that repulses even you.
Do meth addicts regularly commit murder? Of course not. But I have spent a few sleepless nights since the Magnotta story surfaced, haunted by fantasies I shared with other addicts that I had hoped to never face again.
I received a gift that too many addicts do not, the gift of finding help and taking it. Without my personal fortitude, without the trip to rehab or hitting bottom or the grace of God himself, my meth-soaked daydreams might have eventually hungered for something more intense, and beyond the safety of simple fantasy.
Instead, I have been saved, today, from what lies behind the darkest curtain. But make no mistake, I carry the burden of regrets, and they include those with a very human toll.
During the bleary days and nights of my last crystal meth relapse, I happened across a friend with whom I had been acquainted in a mutual program of drug addiction recovery. We didn’t speak of it during our few hours together, satisfied to smoke and inject meth without the intrusion of cleaner days. But being in his company vexed me. I had always ignored and denied my relapses to others in recovery and this occasion would be no different. If you didn’t see me do it, it didn’t happen. But this friend had seen, had known, and could later finger me as a liar.
If he came back into recovery, that is. And so, when considering this chance meeting of two meth users adrift, I had only one thought. One selfish, depraved and evil thought.
Maybe he won’t come back. Then no one will know about my lies.
For this addict in recovery, those who don’t come back from an extended relapse usually have met one of several possible fates, most of them dire. They may have been arrested and now face time in our horrendous penal system, or they are strapped to a gurney somewhere with serious bodily injury or a broken mind, or maybe they’re dead. To secretly hope anyone doesn’t come back from a relapse feels downright sociopathic.
What is the difference, I might ask, between taking a life outright and hoping another suffering addict continues sticking toxic needles in his arm, sentencing him to serious if not mortal consequences?
That man with whom I shared part of my relapse deserves to be in recovery – and I actually wished he wouldn’t find it. To call him my friend is a disgrace.
I might as well have cut him up into little pieces.
This essay was originally published on My Fabulous Disease.
Lefty
No.
Thanks for asking.
ChickenLady
*squawk* that meth is nasty shit, ChickenLady has seen some pretty boys turn to teh horrors, she counts herself lucky to have gotten out of the drug scene before it became prominent.
Mezaien
Crystal Meth, Opium, Heroine, Christianity, and Islam, are all mental disorder that can and will bring you to mental poverty and social dysfunctions.
Ben Dover
The “success” rate of rehab and 12-step programs must be, like, 2%, since these losers are always “relapsing.”
Lvng1tor
Addictions can make you do a lot of things you never thought you would but they can not change the base person you are.
Crystal Meth is a special kind of hell. It hooks so deeply into your soul. There are only a few Meth only treatment centers and even they don’t understand why meth hooks so many people who don’t normally show addictive disorders. There are no conclusive studies on it. You assholes above can judge all you want but people with addictions are sick and need help. Good people can get addicted too. I know a lot of great productive, loving, fun people who clawed and scratched and failed and crawled and scratched again and again till they got clean. They have more strength than you will ever know….
I hope none of you ever have to personally know how hard it is… Meth Kills…slowly…get anyone you know off that shit…NOW!
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
Dude should write a book
Maggie Gallagher could write the foreword
O_O
Qjersey
Lack of sleep due to meth binging makes people delusional.
Ihadtosayit
I think everyone should watch this documentary about Meth and the Gay Community…
METH explores the rising wave of crystal methamphetamine use within the gay population. Through the reflections of a dozen gay men, we learn of the drug’s allure, its promise, and why its popularity is soaring. Some of the men in the film are current users, and they share their life with us while under the constant influence of “Tina.” Other interviewees are former denizens of “Tina World,” who have managed to crawl back from the depths to which their addictions brought them. Throughout, METH is an unflinching look at the devastating effects of addiction to this very serious drug.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE5sCv901L4
keepcalm
Nope. You need to do your homework. He’s a complete sociopath. His cat killing videos spoke volumes alone.
Tackle
@Lvng1tor: Actually they DO change the base person of who you really are and sometimes drastically. Having been there,and experiencing it first hand, with two of my ex bf. Drugs can affect and damage the part of the brain that deals with logic, common sense, reasoning and will power, which is why it’s classified as a disease, because of the sometimes irreversible affects they can have on the brain. Rendering many different people, even when the drug use stop. Therefore “changing” the base person of who they are.
DB75
As a recovering addict, I am sympathize with the thinking that this fellow was a victim to the drug that controlled his life. However, as a recovering addict, I know the importance of taking personal responsibility for one’s actions. Therefore, my answer is no, meth did not make him a killer. It might have numbed his sensitivities, but he still made the choice to kill.
my $.02
DB75
@DB75: I can sympathize….can’t type, but at least my heart’s in the right place. lol
Tackle
And let me make this clear. I’m NOT saying they can change someone so drastically as to make them a murderer.
Cam
If I remember the case correctly though, he was sending letters, uploading to Youtube and being fairly detailed with the behavior. It would seem he was already somewhat nuts, but if I remember, when he fled, he was making informed decisions on hiding and when caught was calmly sitting in some store or coffee shop. He wasn’t presenting the image of a tweaker on his last legs.
Spike
Why is anyone that ever appeared in a porn video considered a ‘porn star’?
Little-Kiwi
No. He’s a psychopath. His family has distanced themselves from him for years. No. This is not because of Meth.
Maude
The daughter of one of my co-workers in New York, was a drug addict and one day she came home while her father was at work, and at first she asked, then, she begged, and finally she beat her own mother close to death for money to buy drugs.
Frank her father cried while telling me he had to call an ambulance when he arrived home and found his wife in a puddle of blood, and the house was ram-shacked as though a gang had done it, “….but it was just my little girl”, and when the police arrived, he had to give them her description and when they found her the next week, she was on the street trying to pick up men for money for drugs.
Frank never spoke of it again, and out of respect I never asked.
I figured if he wanted me to know, he’d tell me.
Maude
@Spike:
Because the rest of us who do it without benefit of camera are amateurs?
Polaro
Meth didn’t help, but that guy was bad news from the start.
Stache99
A meth addicts brain has literally been rewired. I’ve read books of researchers who’ve studied what it does to the brain. I’m utterly amazed by what this crap can do. Suffice to say that you’re no longer in the drivers seat anymore. It’s even more amazing that people still have the ability to come back from this crap. Of coarse it takes a LONG time. Some of them get so messed up they just never completely come back. I have one friend who still hears voices in the walls.
Stache99
@Ben Dover: I take it that you’ve never had any problems with addiction.
Stache99
@Ben Dover: Oh and they’re not losers. Part of recovery is relapsing. Very few make a clean break.
lykeitiz
Although this article is very well written & is a cautionary tale that many need to hear, I’m not so sure how much meth played a part with Luka Magnotta, mostly because of how well thought out and meticulous he was with everything he did.
I’ve been fascinated with this case for a while, & I don’t see how someone being completely strung out on any substance could have done everything he did.
For starters, he had many different facebook accounts where he had a different name for himself in each one, complete with full lives, travel stories, photos that were either photoshopped or completely fake. It was so extensive that when his murder investigation began, they had to rule him out in several other, unrelated murders because he had himself placed in cities all over the world at various times, most of which turned out to be completely made up.
He did in fact, record the murder and post in online, complete with “coming soon” announcements for it 2 weeks before the actual murder. After the murder he mailed body parts to the headquarters for both major political parties in Canada, as well as a school.
There was also an interesting sidebar to the story where a couple years before the murder, Ron Jeremy (straight porn legend) was asked to participate in a police sting when a group of animal rights activists were tracking Luka Magnotta for posting videos of himself killing kittens. The sting was supposed to involve Jeremy luring Magnotta into a 1-on-1 meeting to discuss a porn deal, but Jeremy backed out after watching the kitten videos. He was afraid to be in a room alone with him, or afraid of retaliation if the arrest or sentencing didn’t stick.
The Canadian media has reported on this relentlessly, but so far the U.S. media has pretty much ignored it.
So, although meth may have been one of Magnotta’s problems, his history seems too detailed to me for it to have been a major factor. Still a great article & a great cautionary tale though!
Stache99
@lykeitiz: I hear what you’re saying but tweakers are known for their abilities to fool people. That’s why allot of the criminal ones get involved in things like mail and check fraud. When they put their minds to something they can do highly detailed but repetitive tasks with super human abilities.
As the author pointed out meth causes your sexual fantasies to get darker and darker. When I was using mine eventually went to places that today I’m utterly repulsed by. Now you take someone like this who already has problems and it’s not too hard to see why he did what he did.
redcarpet
At this point I don’t know why anyone would consider starting this drug. It’s not exactly hard to find people ruined by it. Just turn on the TV or drive to a rural area.
When heroin or coke seem safer by comparison then you know its something you shouldn’t touch with a 100 foot pole. Same for related drugs like Aderall.
TomMc
Most people who use drugs/alcohol, even to excess, are not that nuts. Perhaps the author of this tripe has another agenda?
Stache99
@TomMc: I’ve seen plenty of otherwise normal people turn into absolute nuts on meth.
Kidomega123
He just LOOKS psycho in all of those photos. A trivial observation, I know, but optics matter! LMAO.
Kidomega123
@Ihadtosayit: I REALLY want to watch that documentary but meth use is so depressing to me, I’m not sure I’d make it through the whole hour and twenty minutes. :\
lykeitiz
@Stache99: At some point, I’ve crossed paths with just about every substance EXCEPT meth, and with all of them, I’ve found that excess leads to less functionality, not more. I do realize that some (particularly alcohol) can make you do things that the “real” you would never do. However, since I don’t have any personal experience with meth, I’ll have to take your (and the author’s) words for it. I certainly know what I’ve heard and read, and none of it’s good. Your points are well taken.
Stache99
@Kidomega123:It’s actually very entertaining and educational to watch. Probably the best drug documentary ever made.
If you’ve done it, thought of doing it, or know people around you that do it then you should most definitely watch the documentary. If not (thankfully for you) then no reason to watch.
Ihadtosayit
@Kidomega123: make it thru as long as you can…it is an interesting and real life account as to drug use in the gay community..
Lvng1tor
@Tackle: That was more my point also, speaking to the murder…I know also first hand that people can have a dramatic personality shift. I agree to and understand what you are talking about.
Haightmale
I find this story very disturbing, and think that it’s incredibly irresponsible for Queerty to publish the story. The writer is “Mark,” and his opinions reflect his experience, and his feelings about a murderer. He said that “His vile acts felt, to me, like an addict who had explored the depths of his imagination and come up short, for whom the depravity couldn’t be satisfied any longer without being made flesh.”
The writer is speculating about a very serious subject, and everyone should remember that this is speculative. It’s not based on fact.
It’s disheartening to read all of the ignorant, misinformed, and judgmental remarks, surrounding crystal meth use. I’ve been sober for 7 years, and have to tell you that most of you are terribly misinformed.
Almost 99.9% of people who use crystal meth have serious mental health issues surrounding depression, and in many instances, the underlying problem is undiagnosed.
Crystal meth use is a public health issue, and it’s not a problem that can be solved by most of the idiots here.
Have some compassion and empathy for people struggling with addiction. It’s a disease that carries a stigma that you all are contributing to.
We are a community that is under constant attack from millions of Americans who think our sexuality is a lifestyle, and systematically denigrate our existence, and discredit our loving relationships. Can you blame some of these people who turn to narcotics to ease their depression and pain?
Frank
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/crystal-meth-origins-link-back-to-nazi-germany-and-world-war-ii-a-901755.html
Meth is basically what powered the Nazi armies. Maybe if more sane people knew that, then fewer crazy people would be left using it.
Stache99
@Frank: Hitler was known to use it too.
In 1936, Hitler was using opiates and a newly developed agent~~methamphetamine~~ regularly. By 1939, he was severely impaired, an empowered addict leading Germany on a road to ruin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WlJ3jax0Q0
Frank
@Stache99:
Well, that was an interesting video. I figured he was addicted too, but I had no idea to what extent. Thanks for sharing that.
Bellerophon69
Had a boyfriend who was sweet until he got into Meth and it took me 4 years to finally get rid of him. The last year or two we didn’t even have sex; I wouldn’t get high with him because I couldn’t get it up on that shit and I don’t like staying up for three days at a time, I have a good job. Ain’t nobody got time for that! He wouldn’t have sex with me unless I was high too, and I knew he probably was out partying and playing while I was at work anyway, ’cause I’d come home in the evening after my (Friday/Sat/Sun) 12 hour days and he’d stay up all night until I left for work the next morning. Then he’d be crashed on Monday and wouldn’t get up ’till Wednesday then bitch at me because I didn’t want to do Meth and party all day and night Thursday before I had to go back to work. His fun was my nightmare and the only time I got any peace was when he was crashed out! I miss the first 2 years we were together, I didn’t even mind getting high with him every now and then, but I’m glad I have nothing to do with him now.