Ric has been working at the front desk at The LivingCenter in Boston for one year now. He has been a member for 13 years.

Q: How did you first come here?

Originally, we started as a meals program. My former company was right around the corner, so I would come over during lunch hour and I would go over and talk, socialize for an hour or so. Maybe compare notes on medications or whatever. Basically, that was the impetus.

Then of course, volunteering to help the Center pull together. I also did some volunteer work on the front desk as a member and I used to donate quite a bit of furniture from my former company. Prior to this, I was a facilities and office manager, which is what I do here. I am the Director of Facilities.

Q: How did you hear about TLC?

Back then TLC was over at the YWCA, it was a block over from here. It was word of mouth basically.

I first got my diagnosis officially in ’86. But my doctor and I think I’ve been infected since 1978 or 1979.

I am in recovery for 21+ years now. This December, it will be 22 years.

My drug history goes way back. I think it was around 12, 13, 14. Somewhere around there when my mother was prescribed diet pills and tranquilizers. I would steal them as a child. I wasn’t a stupid kid. I knew what they did immediately. If I took the tranquilizers I was very low key and sort of drousy. If I was doing her diet pills I was up and peppy and very talkative. I sort of figured out what the drugs do as far as moods go.

I guess I continued doing that through high school. Pretty much off and on. I wouldn’t say I was a regular or daily user. It was erratic. But I knew if I wanted that type of high I could just go to the medicine closet to the pill bottles.

When I graduated from high school I mostly went toward alcohol. That is what was available back then, you know, drinking in college. I joined a fraternity and we had an open bar in the basement 24/7. We always had a tapped, chilled keg on. That pretty much was my drinking career. It really took off during college. I am always surprised I got a degree. Sometimes something from class comes back to my mind.

I am originally from New York and came to Boston for college. When I came back to New York, as a gay man, I started socializing in bars. That’s what I gravitated toward. Then I did this whole drop out thing everybody was doing in the 60’s and 70’s. It changed my life radically. I dropped out of the corporate world. I became a bartender. I gave away all my business clothes and just wore jeans and a t-shirt. My thinking changed. I got involved in movements, gay rights, civil rights, women’s rights, anti-Vietnam demonstrations, I got some arrests. I became much less materialistically involved. Essentially that’s what I did the first few years after college. I didn’t pursue a career. The corporate business world just didn’t work.

My bartending career actually took me all over the country. I left New York, it was just too insane for me. Living with eight million people was just not going to work. I moved to the tropics, to the Virgin Islands actually. The gateway to drugs from South America. It was very convenient.

My drug taking was still not excessive or habitual. It was something I did to play. It was not something I did on a daily basis. From St. Thomas I moved to San Francisco while it was becoming the gay mecca of the world. That’s when my drug use really took off. Alcohol took a backseat as I did more LSD and prescription drugs which I bought illegally from other people. Also, peer pressure at the time within the gay community was all about drinking and drugging. The sexual revolution also became involved with the drug scene, smoking dope and tripping… That’s where my drug use really took off. And ended also. I was there about 12 years.

Somewhere along the line in my drug-fogged mind I realized this was not good. I just remembered at a birthday last week, I was standing behind a bar at 35 in San Francisco talking to a regular and he said, “If I didn’t know how much drugs you did and how much you drank, I’d think you were just a normal guy.” And I said I was a working addict. I was resigned to dying at a young age. I knew a number of people at that time who had died of overdoses and drug related accidents. I started losing my peers.

A friend of mine took me to my first AA meeting in San Francisco. The first think I heard was that I couldn’t do any mind altering substances. Well, that would change my whole life. My whole life was built around drugs. I mostly did drugs that were uppers, alcohol was my moderator. If I got too high, alcohol could bring me down. It was this seesaw I kept playing on, looking for that middle balance which of course never happens. Then I bottomed out. I became unemployable, I lied, I stole and cheated- all of the things I said I would never do before coming an addict. I did them all… I am very embarrassed… I did very demeaning things… for drugs.

“All of that I call my other life. My drugging life”

I lost all of my friends. It was recommended to me to go into treatment of some sort. Some people in AA actually said I was one of those people that would really benefit from a 31 day program. My whole life was around use of drugs to do my life. I had drugs for every event in my life. If I was going to do laundry I had certain drugs, if I was going to the movies, if I was going to watch TV… I had all of these formulas, menus of drugs to do. And I realized when I was clean and sober, when I put down everything, I realized I didn’t know how to do my life. All of a sudden very simple chores became monumental. Simple things like crossing the street became overwhelming. Just making that decision- will the light last long enough. Did I get to the intersection soon enough? Would I have to run? Would I get caught in the middle? What was I going to eat? It became a big deal. And my emotions were all over the place. It was like uncorking a bottle.

All of that I call my other life. My drugging life. I really had two separate personalities. The personality when I am drinking and drugging is not exactly the best person in the world. I am argumentative and vicious. I say anything I am thinking without even wondering what the consequences might be. I just throw out anything that comes in my head. Since quitting, I don’t do that anymore.

I also found my place in the human race in recovery. I do belong. You know most addicts feel they are on the fringes. I actually have a purpose in life that is to help my fellow man, to contribute to society rather than just take. That is a part of recovery. Most 12 step programs, the last step is to carry the message of sobriety, to help people whenever they may ask. I’ve done that, but I’ve also expanded it to do other things. Like what I do here. How can I help other men living with HIV? I am able to listen with a very compassionate ear. I think all of that is a direct result of getting clean and sober. When I wasn’t clean and sober, it was strictly me. I would kill you if it was my only way to get high.

Q: Was your treatment program in San Francisco?

I went to a program in Minneapolis in a hospital. They had scholarships for people that couldn’t afford to pay. It was pretty expensive back then. I didn’t have insurance. All I had to do was pull together airfare and pocket money. I have been clean and sober since.

Q: No relapse incidents?

I had a relapse the weekend I was leaving San Francsico. I was four months clean and sober, I had a plane reservation, I had a bed reserved at the hospital. I was leaving and I had no idea how to celebrate, to do a farewell. So my idea was get together with a close friend and do drugs and drink. It is a long, long story, but basically, instead of flying to Minneapolis, I was really paranoid of course, I was doing crystal meth, I thought the people at the airport would know who I was because I had cancelled so many times, I took a bus. A greyhound bus. Thirty-eight hours. I detoxed on that bus. I don’t recommend it.

Q: How do you see the treatment available to folks in Boston?

Totally inadequate. Completely inadequate. Especially in the last decade, funding for treatment has been cut so drastically. I know people having trouble getting into detox or any kind of program. The programs don’t have space and the people don’t have the money. When I first got clean and sober there were many, many more programs. In Boston and nationally.

I worked for a recovery corporation. They had a couple of hospitals, one in Connecticut, New York, New England… There were a group of us that were gay and lesbian who would go around and train the staff on how to deal with gay and lesbian clients. There were many, many programs. In twenty years they have almost all disappeared. Those around are all private. None are publicly funded. If you have insurance you can go and if not, it’s thousands of dollars.

In 1981 when I did my program in Minneapolis it was $4,500 for 31 days. Now it’s got to be more.

I don’t think there is a lower rate of drug abuse today than twenty years ago. Now it is more people and less treatment. I don’t think people who want to recover are given the opportunity because it’s not there when they need it. There is a little window. It is just there when a drug addict thinks, “Maybe I should stop this.” If help isn’t available- and it just about has to be instantaneous- they will go on to get high or drink. Then it is just a memory. Treatment on demand is so important because you have to capture them in that mindset.

If you don’t catch them at that point, they’re not going to talk about it. Right now in the gay community there is a horrible explosion of crystal meth use. It is killing the population. I compare it to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s. It kills people because it basically isolates the person. They don’t eat properly or sleep properly. They don’t take their meds or follow the medication schedule. If they have the virus they get resistance to the drugs. It is a snowball just gathering momentum.

It is so addictive. Steven Tyler from Aerosmith was a crystal meth addict and he is very open about it. He says there is no such thing as recreational crystal meth use. You use it once or twice and that’s it. I know people who have lost their homes, their lives, their cars, everything. All because of one drug.

Q: Why is it so prevalent right now in the gay community?

Because it is a sex drug. And it lasts so long. When I was using it was $25 a gram and cocaine was $100 a gram. Now crystal meth is going close to $500 a gram. It’s supply and demand… We used to call it the poor man’s cocaine because it gave the same euphoria but lasted much longer. Cocaine, you have to do every 15-20 minutes, but with crystal meth, you can be up for eight hours.

Q: Is Boston addressing the drug problem?

It’s in its infant stages. We have always had a heroin problem, we’ve always had a cocaine problem, an alcohol problem. I think alcoholism is much more prevalent up here. There have been monographs done about the Irish culture and the Irish people and they seem to have a medical and genetic affinity for alcohol other people don’t have. Also, I have read about how the Irish don’t address alcoholism as a problem. It is expected, everyone has it. It is about learning to live with it. “So you are an alcoholic? Okay, everyone is.” You still have to go on and live your life.

I think there is also a higher rate of alcoholism in the gay community because we socialize in bars.

Now with the internet and sex lines on phones, you don’t even have to go out of the house. You can call your drug dealer and have your drugs brought to the house, call someone over for sex, and you don’t have to leave the house. You can become a hermit. I think a lot of it is unspoken.

We had a symposium in April that was sponsored by the Department of Health and other non profits in the recovery business and it was specifically for crystal meth. It wasn’t for any other drug. Crystal meth itself has become a severe, major threat. There has always been crystal on the west coast, that is what Hell’s Angels is known for. They had the kitchens to cook up the drugs and they distributed them. That has been a problem in California since the 60’s. Crystal Meth Anonymous started out of Los Angeles. It has destroyed thousands on the west coast. It has only come into light here in the last couple of years.

I’ve always felt very safe in Boston until three or four years ago when I started hearing whisperings about crystal meth being available. When I first came here, people had never heard of crystal meth. Now you talk about it, and people’s eyebrows go up. “Oh yeah?” They know about it.

Since the symposium, there have been a couple of others around the state. I still don’t think it is being addressed as intensely as it should be. I think it should be on the forefront of recovery. It is just devastating.

People do irrational things. People do not think rationally on crystal meth, not that they do on others, but specifically on crystal… you feel like you can do anything, like you are Superman. Paranoia comes with it. Part of coming down involves depression. We call them suicide Tuesdays. If you go up on Fridays then usually you come down on Tuesdays after no sleep and nothing to eat for four days. Tuesday comes and they’re crashing. It’s suicide time. People seriously think they can’t get through it. But after a day or two… it’s Friday again. Maybe they are just addicts on the weekend, but eventually people do it more frequently and then it is no longer a drug to play on, but a drug to exist on.