Carry On Up The Appalachian

by bear, bipolar, discrimination, exercise, gay, gay bear, HIV/AIDS, medication, mindfulness, recovery, wellbeing • Tags: , ,

Ross Hayduk at Cripple Creek.

May 21, 2012
20.4 mile day in 10.5 hours. Stopped at Cripple Creek for lunch, which made for a relaxing meal by a lovely miniature waterfall. We are so close to Waynesboro we can hardly stand it.

That’s a typical diary entry for 44-year-old Ross Hayduk, who is currently halfway through a six-month hike up the Appalachian Trail on the east coast of the United States.  The journey is over 2,000 miles.  A quarter of those who start never reach the end.  Hundreds quit within the first week.

This literal journey is just a small part of Ross’s ongoing life one, which includes two heavy boulders – HIV and bipolar disorder.

“This is not a vacation,” he says. “This is a serious challenge. I want to show that there is hope dealing with HIV and mental-health issues. I’m not doing this just formyself, but for the countless others dealing with the same issues I’m dealing with every day.”

Four charities will benefit from pledges to Ross’s hike: the National AIDS Memorial Grove, PAWS: Pets Are Wonderful Support, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.  You can find more information on his website here.

A resident of San Francisco, Ross says he is in good shape right now.  He worked closely with his trainer Todd Templin to get in the best physical health for the trail, and mentally he’s been working out too.

“ I depend upon a network of friends, as well as talk therapy, to keep me from isolating and slipping down into depression,” he says.  “Additionally, my doctor, Shawn Hassler, and I have found a great balance of anti-depressants to keep me on an even keel.”

How is he keeping up with his HIV and bipolar meds in the middle of nowhere?  He’s sorted it out in advance with Walgreen’s pharmacy, who have pre-packaged his doses in daily packs and have them ready and waiting at various post offices close to the trail.

He’s not short of company either: his four-year-old Australian cattle dog Oscar is on the road with him for part of the journey.  Ross adopted him from San Francisco Animal Care and Control three and a half years ago, and he credits his furry friend as an important part of his treatment team.

“Along with a medication regimen, professional care and proper diet and exercise, Oscar’s companionship has been an important part of treating my bipolar disorder,” he says.  “Without Oscar, my life would not be as full or complete.”

Oscar.

It sounds like Ross has thought of everything and has it all sorted.  It wasn’t always that way.  He felt alone as the “weird little gay kid” growing up in Bluefield, West Virginia.  He says he never appreciated what his parents provided for him until he was an adult, and now credits them with making him into the strong person he is, both mentally and physically.

San Francisco called after he came out, particularly after seeing the classic 1970s screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” and the seminal “Tales Of The City” mini-series.

The great city saw some hard times for Ross, with his lowest point getting caught in an addiction to crystal meth.

“When I was injecting crystal meth,  I reached out to others, shared my embarrassing truth, and asked for help.  Once you push past the personal shame, there is support on the other side,” he says.

Living with both HIV and bipolar disorder hasn’t always been peachy either.

“Lack of understanding by the general public is never surprising, but lack of acceptance within my own community is disheartening,” he says.  “If you take the entire population of the globe, drop out all the women and children, then take out the straight men, you have a pool of bisexual and gay men.  Now, ask those men if they really want to be involved with a bipolar, HIV-positive man, and the numbers drop considerably.

“Then mention that you struggled with substance abuse, and they run screaming for the door,” he adds.  “Not literally…oh, who am I kidding?  These are gay men, they do run screaming for the door!”

Like many of us, his sense of humour – particularly absurdist – has kept him afloat over the years and continues to keep his engine running.  As well as laughter, he values creativity and fairness, and is very fond of classic movie marathons at the legendary Castro Theatre.  (He also, like my husband, has a soft spot for Wonder Woman)

Ross plans to finish his journey on September 6, which will mark his 45th birthday.  Financially, he’ll be starting his life over again as a job loss last year made it necessary for him to dip into his retirement savings.

But he is hopeful his experiences on the trail will lead him to new adventures.

Sunday March 25, 2012

Waiting for mail to arrive on Monday at NOC [Nantahala Outdoor Center]. So, I am taking a zero day and using it to go rafting in a solo “ducky” inflatable raft on the Nantahala River. If I cannot hike today, I can still have an adventure to add to my list of Appalachian Trail memories!

Ross is aiming to raise just over US$20,000 on his hike.  Head to his website to follow his trail diary (including some incredible photos), read more about his athletic achievements, and of course, to donate.

WTF’s the problem

8
by gay, homophobia, self-stigma, suicide, transphobia • Tags: , , , , , ,

Mid-1980s law reform protest. Photo credit: Ian Mackley, GayNZ.com

For some time now, the “c” word has been levelled at some in our communities, and the word is “complacent”.

GayNZ.com editor Jay Bennie even went so far as to pronounce the death of activism in a recent editorial about the AIDS Candlelight Memorials.  He has a point.

In remembering those who died in the first phase of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, we should remember what they were up against.  This was a country where homosexual sex was illegal, no provisions were in place to stop you being fired from your job, kicked out of your home, refused treatment from a doctor or service from a business because of your sexuality or HIV status.  Relationship recognition wasn’t even on the radar.

As friends and partners died, and people lived under daily threat of arrest or discrimination with no legal redress whatsoever, a grass roots movement organised under the banner of another “c” word: “confront”.

Bennie writes:

“…against the kind of odds which are almost unimaginable today they were incredibly successful. They got laws changed, society awakened, organisations created and results achieved. They built networks and resources and projects and saw them through to exhilarating and well-earned success.

“In the new millennium most of the lessons they taught us by their heroic examples are forgotten by, or unknown to, most glbti people.

“… let’s ask ourselves what are we, as individuals and groups of all kinds, actually doing now, in 2012, to make life better for those who still need our wider support to achieve their own liberation from repression, doubt and state- and society-sanctioned bigotry.

“Are we already so fragmented, isolationist, or self-absorbed, or blinkered, or complacent that the answer for most glbti New Zealanders is: ‘Fuck all’?”

It’s that empowering, enough-is-enough anger that has lit the fire under a new awareness and fundraising campaign from Rainbow Youth and Outline, WTF.

Rainbow Youth’s Sam Shore, one of the main forces behind the campaign, says that they’ve openly modelled the idea on successful overseas campaigns, particularly FCKH8 from the United States.

“We looked around the world and saw what campaigns were really successful and what people have been responding to,” he says.  “And it was FCKH8, Give A Damn, and It Gets Better.  We wanted to do something like that, because it hasn’t been done in New Zealand.  We wanted a phrase that would help the campaign stand out from the background and also be empowering for people.”

The campaign has been launched with what is to be the first of several videos.  It features a range of well-known New Zealanders, gay and straight, drawing attention to issues of inequality and asking “what the fuck” is up with this?

It’s been viewed over 40,000 times on Youtube in a matter of days, and hundreds of comments have been left – as you would expect, not all of them positive.  There’s barely literate homophobic rants which illustrate just why such a campaign is needed in the first place.

But the negative comments that are perhaps most surprising come from gay people themselves.  Blogger and former Good Morning co-host Steve Gray has launched several missives at the campaign, which are at best bewildered and, at worst, misinformed.

“This campaign is not about ending discrimination, it is about raising money for Rainbow Youth and Outline services. They should at least be honest about this from the start than do some ‘KONY2012′ ‘clickactivism’ con that donating to these groups will end discrimination in NZ.”

OK… so we’ve compared New Zealand’s biggest organisation that supports gay young people and their families through education outreach in schools, a drop-in centre, and peer support groups all over Auckland (Rainbow Youth); and a nationwide gay telephone counselling service and mental health advocacy organisation (Outline) to…

…an American organisation (Invisible Children) that works to raise awareness of child exploitation in Uganda, backed by money from anti-gay Christian organisations who have links with politicians trying to exterminate gays in that country.

WTF?

There’s more…

“There is talk about discrimination, but the examples are we cannot marry, (marriage is not a right), Doctors don’t understand your want to transition, (get a better doctor), and gay teens are far more likely to top themselves that straight teens.”

Marriage is not a right?  Sounds a little bit like this Virginia lawmaker who refused to appoint a lesbian judge, adding the missive “sodomy is not a civil right”.

“Getting a better doctor” works well if you’re in a big city and have money, but not so much if you’re young and in Gore.  That’s presuming you’ve got the guts to challenge your doctor in the first place because you’re already marginalised by the system – the kind of marginalisation that helps lead to gay people “topping themselves”.

Jesus, with friends like Steve, who needs enemies?

” Well, I can’t stand the ‘FKH8′ campaign and I totally loath this cheap, yet just as nasty version. i do NOT want people swearing as if this is a way to get any kind of message across. It is not cool. It is crass. It is so tacky and classless.”

This from a man who has used the phrase “kick her in the c**t” on his blog.

But, to be fair, he’s not the only person perturbed by the use of a profanity in the campaign.  Some people think it’s counter-productive and alienating.

I’m sure there were people in the 1980s who thought that storming a church hall rented by the Salvation Army and other anti-gay groups to stir sentiment up against homosexual law reform was counter-productive and alienating.  It was this infamous moment in New Zealand history that saw the late Invercargill MP Norm Jones screaming “go back to the sewers” at gays from the stage.

The mere fact of making gay issues visible seems to make some gay people upset, and perhaps they are right to be afraid.  Activist Bill Logan remembers that through the whole period of homosexual law reform there was an increase in anti-gay violence, and the community was fractured on what tactics would work best:

“Logan also remembers a situation when there was a move to have a particular public demonstration in Wellington “and some of the people here thought ‘No, we’ve got to stop this demonstration thing… demonstrations look radical, people don’t like demonstrations… not a good idea.’…That demonstration eventually went ahead.”

25 years on, and there’s still no consensus on how we should best approach awareness campaigns.  Sam Shore thinks they’re on the right track with WTF, but acknowledges that the campaign was never going to please everybody.

“We aren’t attacking people with WTF, we’re saying New Zealand is better than this. At one point we were leading the world when it came to human rights,” he says.

“This first video is a starting point.  We’ll see what people respond to and try to adapt to that for the rest of the campaign.  We’re a non-funded organisation with not many staff, and this is the first thing we’ve done like this, so we’re learning a lot.

“We also want people to see what we’re doing and that will be built into the website.  We want to show people where the donations are going – I think that’s really important, that they see the money is not going into a black hole.”

Perhaps the most bizarre backlash has been from gay people, including Steve Gray, who object to the presence of straight people in the campaign:

“I have never needed straight people to fight my battles. FFS, this patronising idea just seems so ‘gays can’t help themselves, better get white straight people to do it for them.”

[NB: Gray seems to be colour-blind as well as numerically challenged.  There's not just white straight people in the video, and elsewhere he claims that Rainbow Youth received $400,000 from Dancing With The Stars "years ago...and they don’t seem to have had any visibility since then".  It was actually $260,000 in 2009 - it doesn't take a great deal of maths to see that amount of money isn't going to go very far in doing nationwide outreach work.  Also, hint: just because an organisation isn't on television doesn't mean it isn't doing effective work in the community.  Rainbow Youth was my first port of call when I came out in the mid-1990s, pre-Internet, and I don't know what I would have done without their support groups.]

Shore is perplexed by these objections.  “A big push for us was to build awareness in the straight community that these issues do affect you, because it’s your family and friends.”

Having worked with agents myself in casting gay-themed short films, I was surprised that some had not voiced their objection to their clients appearing in a gay campaign.  Shore says that most were fine, but some were not.

“I won’t say for who, but some performers stood up and said I’m going to do this whether you tell me I can or not, because I believe in it.”

And it seems that quite a lot of others do as well.  While it’s too early yet to start counting the donations, Shore says the response to the campaign has been far greater than they expected.

This could be the start of something good.

The guy in the short shorts

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by body image, gay, self-stigma • Tags:

Daniel Carter has taken up residence in my kitchen.  I’m not sure how I feel about this.

I don’t know why my husband has put him there, because he doesn’t find him especially attractive.

What I do know is, if there were a series of panel tests, most people would prefer to see Daniel Carter in shorts rather than me.

This doesn’t, however, stop me wearing them, despite much ribbing and complaints over the last few years.

When I was in my 20s and stick-thin, I hated having any part of my body exposed because I was ashamed of it.

As I approached 30, I made a conscious effort to eat properly, lift weights and get bigger.  I didn’t want to be a bronzed god – if anything, I wanted to be squidgy and average.  I didn’t want to see my ribs when I looked in the mirror anymore.

I climbed from my skinny 68kg to 85kg, and with the onset of age and medication side-effects the weight stayed on.  My waist expanded.  And I was proud of it.

I began wearing football shorts at that time during the summer, around the house, when I was exercising, and if I was going out somewhere and felt like it.

I remember turning up at a New Zealand AIDS Foundation AGM once in them, getting a few looks askance, and a bitchy comment from someone else.

It was pretty clear to me from that day that my extremely white, pudgy legs were offensive to some people, and I shouldn’t be displaying them in public.  I mean, for God’s sake, if you’re going to show off your assets, at least make sure you have some, was the implication.  Only people who look like Daniel Carter should be allowed to wear shorts.

I’ve just started exercising at a gym again and it was brought to my attention the other day that I am known as “the guy in the short shorts”.  They are, in fact, no shorter or tighter than any of the other pairs I see on display there.  The only difference is the pins that are sticking out of them.

A lot of us have issues with our body image.  We constantly receive covert and overt signals from society about what we should look like.  We receive far less subtle signals about what we shouldn’t look like.  And given that it takes 5 positive messages to outweigh a single negative one, it doesn’t take long to accumulate a complex.

I still struggle with perceived inadequacies about my body, but they are minor and I’ve got them under control.

I know this because I am completely immune to criticism about my shorts.  Ten years ago, I would have been embarrassed into submission and stopped wearing them.

Today, I won’t.  Because I like wearing them and they’re comfortable.

I spoke to a man recently who said that he would like nothing more than to be hugged, but he hated his body so much that just the thought of his chest pressing against another person made him sick, so he avoids all forms of physical contact whenever possible.

His pain is silent, but he at least acknowledges his issues and owns them.

I wonder if the people who feel the need to comment on the bodies of others can say the same about themselves.

7 things you need to know about your self-harming friend

18
by discrimination, friends and family, mental illness, self-stigma, suicide • Tags:

OK, so you may have just found out that someone you know and love is harming themselves.  Cutting or burning their skin, banging their head, maybe even overdosing on sedative medications.

I am going to out myself today as one of these people.

Here’s some things you need to know:

1. Self-harm is different from suicide

Most people doing some or all of the above do not intend to kill themselves.  Although it shares similarities with suicide in that it is an extreme response to intense emotional pain, the person does not usually want to die.

When the brain is clogged with depressive, anxious or manic feelings, “transferring” the brain’s attention by creating a pain response can cause immense relief.

This does not mean that you shouldn’t be concerned: self-harm is obviously not a safe way of responding to emotional pain, and many accidental deaths occur when a person goes too far with their chosen method unintentionally.

2. Real self-harm is not trendy

You may have read sensational articles about kids at school cutting themselves because it’s trendy and all their mates are doing it.  You may also know people who enjoy pain as part of BDSM culture.

This behaviour may be as difficult for you to understand as someone who harms themselves for psychological reasons, but it’s important for you to understand the distinction.

A person who self-harms for psychological reasons would not be doing it if they were able to find a more effective means of dealing with their inner trauma.  How do you know if your friend is harming themselves due to mental distress?  Ask them.

3. The feelings are overwhelming

Imagine a situation where you’ve felt the most intense physical pain in your entire life.  Can you remember how you felt at that moment, and how in that state of intensity you wished for anything to make the pain stop?

That’s how bad psychological pain can feel for someone who self-harms.  Here’s a few quotes from younger people in New Zealand to help you understand how overwhelming this can feel, and how self-harming provided a release:

“The physical pain when I cut takes the focus away from emotional pain – and the physical pain doesn’t feel as bad as the emotional pain.”

“When I’m down I feel helpless and hopeless, like things are never going to change, and I feel angry with everyone. After I cut, I feel less angry, like something has been released.”

“Taking pills helped because it made me feel drowsy and not care if my parents were shouting. It made all my problems feel far away.”

“I just hated my body, I blamed it for what had happened (abuse). I wanted to hurt myself, to punish my body because I didn’t like myself.”

“After the argument with my mum I was really upset, I didn’t know what to do. I cut myself because I was trying to calm myself down – I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”

4. They’re not a psycho

You should be concerned about your friend’s self-harming, but leaping to judgmental and dismissive conclusions such as “they’re psycho” do not help, and demonstrate an unwillingness on your part to understand what they’re going through.

At its core, self-harm is a form of problem avoidance, and as mental health advocate Deb Martinson says, people who self-harm are no more psychotic than:

“…people who drown their sorrows in a bottle of vodka are. It’s a coping mechanism, just not one that’s as understandable to most people and as accepted by society as alcoholism, drug abuse, overeating, anorexia, bulimia, workaholism, smoking cigarettes, and other forms of problem avoidance are.”

Maybe you can relate to some of the things above, and it will give you a greater understanding of self-harm as a phenomenon.

5.They’re not doing it to upset you

People who attempt suicide are often written off as attention-seekers.  With self-harmers, because the intention is not usually to die, this misnomer can be even more prevalent; especially if your friend habitually engages in self-harming behaviours on a regular basis.

You are understandably concerned and upset by what is going on.  But don’t make this all about you.  If your friend has confided in you that he is harming himself, that is a major step.  Stigma often keeps people quiet about what they’re doing, precisely because they fear upsetting their nearest and dearest.

As has been said about suicide, if you really believe that someone is doing it to seek attention, then give them that attention.  There are a lot of easier ways to gain attention than potentially putting your life at risk.

Control your own emotions as best you can and offer to help your friend deal with the feelings that are causing the behaviour, rather than concentrating on the behaviour itself.

6. Distraction helps

Self-harming occurs when emotions reach boiling point.  Some people find that a distraction can help to move the mind away from the distressing thoughts and into a safer space.

This is also the same with suicidal thoughts.  I have experienced changes in my thoughts about dying in as little as a few minutes, from sitting on the couch to going into the kitchen and making a cup of tea.  The simple physical actions required to do this were enough to calm that particular storm.

But for someone experiencing mental distress in the form of self-harming thoughts, the storms are ongoing.  Talk to your friend about being a person they can call at a time when they’re feeling like self-harming.  Plan in advance what you might do, and perhaps have something as simple as a code word or sentence that your friend can call you with.

21-year-old Laura had this to say:

“The best distraction that has helped me is diversion. If I feel the need to cut now then I leave my flat. I will go and sit in the park or go to a church and sit there or even go to the cinema. This way I am not likely to cut because I will only do it in the privacy of my own flat, whether it is in the bathroom or my bedroom.”

Those are some ideas to get you started.  Think of the things you enjoy doing with your friend, and I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with more diversion techniques between you.

7.They need you as an advocate, not an adversary

Not only is self-harming and suicidal behaviour misunderstood, it is incredibly stigmatised.  Some do not look kindly on those who self-harm, and sadly this includes some in the medical profession.

If your friend ends up needing medical attention because of their self-harm, they may need you as an advocate.

Deb Martinson explains some of the stigma that self-harmers can encounter from emergency departments:

“In emergency rooms, people with self-inflicted wounds are often told directly and indirectly, that they are not as deserving of care as someone who has an accidental injury. They are treated badly by the same doctors who would not hesitate to do everything possible to preserve the life of an overweight, sedentary heart-attack patient.

If the patient is calm, denies suicidal intent, and has a history of self-inflicted violence, the doctor should treat the wounds as they would treat non-self-inflicted injuries. Refusing to give anesthesia for stitches, making disparaging remarks, and treating the patient as an inconvenient nuisance simply further the feelings of invalidation and unworthiness the self-injurer already feels.”

As someone who has experienced both being in hospital due to self-injury and accompanied friends who have been mistreated, I can tell you that your friend may be in no state to demand the treatment and respect they deserve, particularly if their wound is severe or their overdose has left them drowsy.

In that case, it’s down to you.  Are you up for the challenge?

Brain litter

10
by alcohol, bipolar, depression, film • Tags: , ,

A promotional still from the 1980 Village People disaster “Can’t Stop The Music” – sometimes the world’s worst film is better than real life.

My world at the moment is an uncertain place.

It may seem a ridiculous thing to say, because the world at large is an uncertain place at any given time.  I could collapse from some unknown internal ailment before I finish typing this sentence, but for most of the time we live with the cognitive illusion that we’re in control of everything.  We couldn’t function otherwise.

That little circuit isn’t working for me at the moment.  I woke on Monday morning with a helium stomach, a feeling I haven’t had for a very long time.  I used to feel it through most of my school years, to the point where I just thought it was normal to feel vaguely sickened in the morning.

The feeling of dread and disappointment wasn’t enough to keep me in bed.  There’s enough mechanisms firing to chant “the only way out is through”, as Alanis Morissette once sung in one of her less list-making moments.

I arrived in Newmarket for an early-morning tech check for our film night this week.  The street was mostly empty of cars, but several rubbish bins had been tipped over.  The wind had blown their contents all over the street.

As I exited the car park, I took it in as I walked toward the cinema building.

That’s my mind, I thought.  Strewn with litter, and abandoned.  The sun is out, but it’s not lifting my spirits.  It’s like a dirty heat lamp in a Chinese buffet at a food court, and I’m absorbing its wattage in measured doses, enough to keep me dried out and vaguely edible.

There was an ancient form of torture known as the “death by a thousand cuts”.  It’s a phrase that’s passed into our lexicon as a metaphor, but it was once very literal and real.  A single small cut will not do any lasting damage, but get enough of them in quick succession and your body won’t be able to cope with the leakage.

Every little thing that crops up for me at the moment feels like one of those cuts.  Talking to someone on the phone.  Answering an email.  Pestering a company that’s spontaneously restarted a direct debit without permission to return our money.

It’s all just minutiae, and as we all do, I wade through them and tick them off one by one.  But I can feel the cuts starting to build up.

The tech check at the cinema runs smoothly.  We’re playing the disastrous 1980 Village People musical, “Can’t Stop The Music”, and as I watch the opening titles with their cheesy split screens and an inexplicably cheerful Steve Guttenberg rollerskating through New York like a low-rent Gene Kelly, I feel something inside me lift by about half a point.

My world may be uncertain, but it’s also ludicrous.

I head for the exit, and the cinema is not yet open.  The caged doors are down, and I have to wait a minute for Cathrine, the cinema manager, to come and let me out.

She turns the key in the lock and says, “You don’t want to stay trapped in the cinema forever?”

“Sometimes it’s better than real life,” I answer before heading back out into glow of the heat lamp.

Wanna be an outdoor lad?

6
by exercise, flourishing, friends and family, gay, wellbeing • Tags: , , ,

Chris Knight likes getting wet and covered in mud.

Now that I’ve set off all the pornbots, I can reveal that it’s because he’s into a number of outdoor pursuits, of which caving is his favourite.

“Caving with a group of gay lads can be highly entertaining,” he says.  “You think you’ve heard every piece of innuendo imaginable? Well… I’m sure you can imagine! I also love mountain climbing, scrambling, via ferrata, and I go to the gym as well as going running during the week.”

“Mainly so I can eat crisps and biscuits,” he adds with a laugh.

When he’s not eating crisps and biscuits or spending time with his partner Tim, the 32-year-old Manchester resident is the office manager for OutdoorLads, a UK charity promoting wellbeing among gay and bisexual men.

OutdoorLads seeks to empower men to get active, challenge themselves and develop their potential in a supportive and friendly environment.  Chris has been involved with the charity for the last five years, after first reading about an indoor climbing group in a Manchester gay magazine.

“It seemed like a fun thing to try so I went along (with some trepidation) and never looked back,” he recalls.  “I met a really friendly and genuine bunch of guys, which seemed so at odds with large swathes of the traditional gay scene, that I was very quickly hooked.”

Chris grew up in a small village in Derbyshire in the East Midlands, with the Peak District National Park on his doorstep – 555 square miles of hills, rivers, moorlands and forest.  He began to lead events in his local area, which led to him taking on a co-ordinator role for the whole northwest of England.

The events attracted hundreds of men, and Chris was soon recruiting and training new event leaders.  By 2010, he was the charity’s first fulltime employee.  Having a living based around the outdoors is not something he would have envisaged when growing up.

“At school I hated sport,” he says.  “I guess I was the typical kid that most gay men identify with – rubbish at football and rugby and always last to be picked for the team. That does have an isolating effect on you, but luckily I was also in the Scouts and living on top of a national park meant frequent opportunities to try other, more varied activities.”

So he can identify with men who have turned their backs on physical activity because of that leftover “last chicken in the shop” feeling.  How does he make them feel welcome?

“Simply by making sure that each of our events has something for everyone,” he says.  “We run around 1000 events a year – all led by volunteers – some are marketed as entry-level and some are über-hard-core. On weekend events, we try and offer a range of activities so that there’s always something for everyone to do. Being left out on your own is not an option!

“There’s no getting away from the fact that, like starting a new job, turning up to your first event on your own can be a daunting experience. But new members are welcome at any event and I can guarantee that after 5 minutes they’ll be chatting away to someone and any nerves will have disappeared.”

OutdoorLads has 20,000 registered members, and in the 300-odd events Chris has been involved with, he still meets new guys regularly.  He admits to getting a little emotional when watching back a video produced for the charity’s AGM with members recounting stories of how their experiences at events have changed their lives for the better.

“To say I felt both proud and humbled would be an understatement. It was powerful stuff.”

Chris is well aware that depression, loneliness and suicide are more prevalent among gay men than their straight counterparts, so he is passionate about using physical activity as a way of improving mental health for gay men.

“All group outdoor pursuits have three things in common; they represent a challenge, they require teamwork, and encourage social interaction,” he says.  “The challenge can be something as simple as going on your first hill walk to scrambling along Striding Edge in the Lake District (with a 600m drop on each side); it can be learning how to pitch a tent or going wild camping in the remotest parts of our country, or even just turning up at your first event!

“The challenge is specific to each individual, but by overcoming each one the individual is spurred on to achieve even greater goals. Because physical activity is involved: the greater the achievement, the greater the health benefits.”

Trust and teamwork is particularly important as part of Chris’s favourite activity, caving.  Expeditions usually involve teams of nine, squeezing through narrow gaps to reach large caverns.

“Once you are trusting those achieving the challenges with you, the right conditions are created to encourage conversation and build friendships. This happens without you even realising. Strong friendships foster the mental wellbeing and positive self-image we are looking to promote.”

Chris feels that LGBT sports groups are vital both for promoting physical activity within our community, and supporting gay athletes to feel comfortable coming out.

“For young people, both gay and straight, there are hardly any LGBT personalities who are standing up and saying that gay people can play football, win at sports, climb mountains and achieve anything they aspire to,” he says.

“It’s really important that professional LGBT sports personalities feel they are able to be open about their sexuality. It is only by doing so that they can create the conditions whereby gay people realise they have nothing to fear by getting involved in sport and also to show straight people the diversity of the LGBT community.”

OutdoorLads is the UK’s premier LGBT outdoor pursuits charity. They are the UK’s most social group for gay and bisexual men who love the great outdoors. Get out more by visiting www.outdoorlads.com. 

Don’t get mad, get laid

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by anxiety, bipolar, gay, manic phases, psychology, sex, violence, wellbeing • Tags:

Orlando Martinez, image courtesy The Great Bear

The feeling of wanting to smash things is not a pleasant one.

Caught between the swelling need to release the caged beast within and the fear of losing control, your brain inflates inside your head, you grit your teeth and your whole body can start shaking.

I’ve found myself in frustrating situations where thinking about it can get me so angry, it’s like my head is an old-fashioned kettle and it’s just been put on the element. I have to distract myself and avoid talking about it well before whistling stage is reached.

Sometimes letting the anger out doesn’t give you the release you crave, it seems to throw petrol on the fire. I’ve used the punch-a-pillow routine and attacked the bed during times when I haven’t been able to hold on any longer, and with each blow came further signals from the brain: “he’s going for it, send more energy to the fists!”

Particularly in men, depression can manifest itself in anger.  And mania or mixed states don’t do much to suppress responses to situations where we feel wronged, either.

Anger kills, this much is obvious from the homicidal rages that end in murder. But evidence is emerging that ongoing outbursts of anger can cause damage to your heart, lungs, and immune system. This from MailOnline:

  • In a study of over 4,000 men and women; men were up to 30 per cent more likely to suffer atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat) if they had regular angry outbursts or got furious when criticized, compared to the more even-tempered
  • In an eight-year study of 670 men at Harvard University, those with the highest hostility ratings had significantly worse lung capacity, increasing the risk of respiratory problems
  • In another Harvard study, subjects asked to recall angry experiences suffered a suppression of the immune system that lasted six hours

And just to cap things off:

Researchers at Ohio State University recruited 98 healthy volunteers who underwent an anger assessment and then agreed to have minor burns on one forearm to create a blister.  For eight days, the wounds were checked daily by doctors to track the speed of the healing process.   Those who were least able to control their anger healed more slowly than those who kept their temper in check.

Unfortunately, holding onto one’s anger is just as bad. A Swedish study of 2,755 male employees in Stockholm found:

“…those who did not openly express their anger if they were unfairly treated at work doubled their risk of a heart attack.”

What is the point of anger, then? We experience it, so it must have had some evolutionary purpose.

Indeed it did, and this purpose is something that has underlined our entire approach to crime, punishment, revenge and retribution over hundreds of years, from the streets to the workplace, from our homes to the school playground.

Anthropologist Daniel Fessler writes that despite the costly and irrational decisions that can result from anger, its evolutionary purpose was as a deterrant. We respond with anger to both (a) stop a current attack and (b) forgo the risk of future attacks by displaying that we are, to put it bluntly, not to be fucked with.

“Due to differences in the variance of reproductive success between men and women, men can be viewed as playing a higher stakes game than women, one in which the fitness consequences of transgression are generally greater.

Selection has therefore favored more risky aggressive responses to transgressions in men, with corresponding differences in the propensity to engage in other forms of risky behavior.”

Fessler also notes that just because anger served such purposes in our distant past does not mean it serves a similar purpose today, citing the current problems we have with obesity being linked to our evolutionary preferences for sugar and fat.

Ironically, we must forcibly evolve a behaviour change to circumvent the damaging effects of an emotion that once ensured our survival. And given that natural selection gave us anger, why not use sex as a remedy?

According to WebMD, shagging offsets most of the downsides to angry outbursts listed above:

  • Sex has been linked to lower blood pressure and overall stress reduction
  • Having sex once or twice a week has been linked with improved immune function, with higher levels of immunoglobulin A, the very globule depleted in the Harvard study where respondents were asked to recall an angry experience
  • Thirty minutes of sex burns at least 85 calories; and if you’re a man you can reduce your risk of fatal heart attack by half if you have sex twice or more a week (according to one British study)

So it appears there may need to be a small change made to the old saying, “don’t get mad, get even”…how about don’t get mad, get laid?

I’m sure we could get some government money to fund a health campaign on this.

Couldn’t we?

Gonorrhoea press briefing

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by gay, sex, wellbeing • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Dustin Hoffman in “Outbreak”. Not as exciting as my life.

When I arrive at the New Zealand AIDS Foundation Auckland office, reception is crowded.  I fill in the visitors’ register and sheepishly ask Steve, the receptionist: “Where’s the um, ah, meeting?”

“The gonorrhea briefing?” he replies loudly.  “Just through there,” he smiles and gestures through the door behind him.

All sense of decorum lost, I fill in “clap clinic” on the visitors register underneath the bit where you’re supposed to write who you’re seeing and head on through.

Mike, the communications officer, ushers me into a small office that used to be mine when I worked here.  It’s now a meeting room, bare but for a small table in the centre and four chairs.

I’m soon joined by Hannah, editor of Express Magazine, and Jacqui, senior writer for GayNZ.com.  We discuss being called to this secret squirrel event.

Dawn, the communications manager, had phoned us all yesterday to be briefed on an “emerging gay men’s health issue”.  This was exciting.  It was like being in an Agatha Christie novel.

Of course, both Jacqui and Hannah had had to ruin the surprise for me by asking what the whole thing was about, so now we were all waiting awkwardly in the room, just before 10am, trying not to think about discharges from the penis.

I tell Hannah and Jacqui my idea for writing up this post, by starting with an old Billy Connolly joke about the clap.  I repeat it to them.  They don’t laugh.  I mentally revise my plans.

I know, I think.  I’ll ring Dr George.

“Hi mate.”

“What’s the funniest gonorrhea story you’ve ever heard?”

“Ah, I’m just about to see a patient.”

“Oh good, you can ask them.  I need to make this blog post funny, or people won’t read it.”

“It’s a woman.”

“Ask if her husband’s got any funny gonorrhea stories.  Hello?  Hello?”

The door opens, and Mike is back.  He leads us into a larger meeting room where NZAF staff Tony Hughes, research director, Jason Myers, policy analyst (and author of a really interesting study I blogged about last year on the lives of HIV positive men), are waiting.  Also in attendance are Dr Sally Roberts, clinical head of microbiology for the Auckland District Health Board, and Dr Nicky Perkins, clinical director of the Auckland Regional Sexual Health Service.

The excitement mounts.  It’s just like being in Outbreak, only without Dustin Hoffman and exciting string music.

“So where are the hazmats?” I ask.  Blank stares.

As it turns out, they just want guys to go and tested, because gonorrhea is making a rather unpleasant comeback.  You can get it in your knob, your arse or your throat, and the latter two locations don’t usually produce symptoms.  It also increases the risk of HIV infection, and left untreated can lead to testicular, blood and joint infections.

It’s completely treatable with a single dose of antibiotics, as are other common STIs like Chlamydia.  If you’re a sexually active man, you should be going for a screening every 3-6 months.  Stride in there, drop your pants, and tell them to swab everything. (*) Pee in a glass if you have to.  You don’t want to be spreading this stuff onto other guys.

(*) If the idea of someone shoving a swab up your bum embarrasses you – although given what else you get up to, I can’t think why – you can actually do it yourself now through the service NZAF and Auckland Sexual Health Service are providing.

In terms of prevention, condoms and lube for anal sex will help curb the spread of rear-window gonorrhea.  For the rest though, regular testing is the best option as the occasional STI comes with the territory if you’re playing about.

And if there happen to be any moralists reading this – of whatever sexual orientation – please get down from your horse if it happens to be named Abstinence or Monogamy.

As author Sam Harris points out in his new book Free Will:

“There are more bacteria in your body then there are human cells.  In fact 90 percent of the cells in your body are microbes like E. coli (and 99 percent of the functional genes in your body belong to them).”

Irritating infections are a part of life, and there’s no difference between a sexually transmitted one and the stomach bug you’ve just picked up from touching your little niece’s pooey hands.  It’s called life.

For more information, head to the Gonorrhoea Is Back website (ooh, I can hear the string music again now!)

[PS. Bits of the above may have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Except the disease-y bits.]