In following up the group for 18 months, an HIV seroconversion rate of 2.7% per year was found. This rate is several times higher than that which we believe (or hope) prevails among the City's gay male population as a whole, but it is not unexpected for a high-risk subpopulation of gays. Among the study group, seroconversion was much more likely among men who reported injection drug use. Also, speed use, and cocaine use, were strongly associated with other HIV risk factors such as unprotected anal intercourse.

This study confirms once again that speed is a potent accessory to HIV infection. In that regard, speed has a lot going for it:

• Speed users will inject many, many times in the course of a "run"
  
  
• Their injection style tends to be aggressive and bloody, by contrast to that of heroin users
  
  
• Speed users, on average, share paraphernalia with more partners than do heroin users
  
  
• Speed erases inhibitions-- in the passion of the rush and high, one can blank out on all the HIV prevention education one has had
  
  
• Speed encourages sexual hyperactivity, at least in newer users, and much of this is "rough sex" or sex with long-delayed ejaculation and consequent genital abrasion
  
  
• Speed users are inclined to sexual promiscuity, and to selling sexual favors for money or drugs
  
  
• Speed scenes are more likely than heroin scenes to "mix" homosexually active men with other people

Speed combines the worst aspects of cocaine and heroin. It is a rubbing-raw of people's protective covering, in an environment rife with HIV. And speed use is on the rise (see MidCity Numbers, November 1993).

(MidCity Numbers, August 1995)