Tweakers: How Crystal Meth Is Ravaging Gay America

by Frank Sanello

Drawing upon conversations with addicts as well as experts in the gay community and at drug treatment centers, journalist Frank Sanello examines how crystal-meth abuse is reaching epidemic levels among gay men, and how almost one-third of the new cases of HIV are caused by the decreased mental capacity associated with crystal. Tweakers get a quick, cheap high, an exhilarating loss of inhibition and increased stamina at the price of permanent behavioral changes, brain damage and death.

Frank Sanello is a Los Angeles-based journalist whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe and the New York Times Syndicate. He is the author of Opium Wars, The Knights Templar and To Kill a King.

Genres: Nonfiction, Drugs, LGBT

248 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2005

Reviews

[Claire Frances · Rating 4 out of 5]

The reason why I read this book because I always am fascinated by chemicals (chemistry's my minor in college) in drugs and how they affect on your brains and bodies. Methamphetamine contains many toxic chemicals such as battery and pool acid, drain cleaner, lye, lithium batteries, antifreeze and more chemical names that you would not want to know. Based on my knowledges of drugs, meth is the worst drug ever. It controls you. These gay men are blaming on meth for getting STDs, HIV or AIDS because when they are tweaking on meth, all they want are sex and drugs with other people and do not care about protections and their healths when they are high. I recommend this book to someone who has an addiction problem with meth or someone you love. It can save your or his/her life.

[Rafael]

This book was really truthful of the world. What i mean about that is that this book talks abut a gay guy that does drugs and what he does with his life. The guy is an adict, constantly he gets thirsty for more drugs. Also this book has alot of intreview with the people that use Crystal Meth. For the people that want to read this you should be open minded and not drop the book just because theres gays in this book. If you know who i am you would of never thought that i would pick up this book but this book really changed the way i look at people and by look at people i mean gay guy or lisbin girls.

[Jeannie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm really not sure why I wanted to read this..it was really depressing. It was interesting too but not in a feel good kind of way, the stories were very real and disturbing. I believe it's an honest depiction of the meth epidemic that STILL is sweeping our nation. It jumped back and forth between short dialogues with meth addicts into facts about it and honestly just made me feel helpless for anyone caught in the grips of this torturous drug.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this in 2021 so I can't knock it for being so dated.

[Mikaila · Rating 1 out of 5]

Grammatical and spelling errors and sources were not spelled correctly on top of what I felt to be extremely fragmented throughout. I would search some of the quoted sources to find their names were incorrect which was a disappointment as this was written by a journalist. This was a difficult read for me for those reasons.

[Alan D.D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book to know about this devil known as Crystal. It was very interesting and educational to read about addicts' lives in their own words and how Meth was changing them in so many ways.
Un gran libro para saber sobre este diablo conocido como Cristal. Fue muy interesante y educativo leer sobre las vidas de los adictos en sus propias palabras y cómo la metanfetamina los estaba cambiando de muchas maneras.

[Christian · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was more like "eh," and the title tells you exactly what you will get: a hard focus on sad sack recounts that are almost straight out of a case manager's client notes. There are a few notable points of interest, but mostly redundant, seemingly copied and pasted from other published material, with no resolution or approach to the problem.

[Rick Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be fascinating, deeply disturbing (in an insightful way) and incredibly educational. Whether you are an addict or not I feel EVERYONE needs to read this book at some point in their life. I loved it.

[Erin M · Rating 1 out of 5]

poorly written, cliche, extremely repetitive, lacked depth overall.

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative