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Drug Use Among Gay and Bisexual Men at Weekend Dance Parties: The Role of Intentions and Perceptions of Peers' Behaviors
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....[parties in Southeast United States and in the Northeast United States; 41% had postgraduate education]......."an epidemic that continues to plague gay and bisexual men in the United States.....drug use among this population remains a critical public health issue-not only due to the direct consequences of harmful use (e.g., overdose, development of a substance use disorder) but also because of the link between drug use and incident HIV infection"
Among all party attendants, 44 % intended to use ecstasy, and approximately 1 in 5 intended to use each GHB, marijuana, cocaine/crack or crack, unprescribed EDDs, and poppers (intention to use ketamine and crystal methamphetamine were lower, with approximately 15 and 7 % of respondents intending to use each, respectively). Among those who completed the follow-up assessment, prevalence of actual use generally reflected intention to use, particularly for ecstasy (42 %), GHB (18 %), marijuana (20 %), unprescribed EDDs (18 %), ketamine (13 %) and crystal methamphetamine (7 %). On the other hand, use of poppers was lower than intended (13 %) whereas use of cocaine/crack was greater than intended (25 %).......Party attendants generally thought that more men would use each drug type than actually intended to use (Table 2).
Fig. 1 Weekend use of specific drug types among those who
intended or did not intend to use that drug type......As hypothesized, intending to use a specific drug was the strongest predictor of actual use
The weekend dance events studied in the current investigation are important venues for preventing drug use and associated harmful consequences among gay and bisexual men.....participants tended to overestimate other party attendants' drug use, especially for ecstasy, cocaine/crack, nonprescribed EDDs, and poppers
"......a congruence of additive psychosocial health problems among urban MSM, including substance use, ''magnify the effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in this population.......addressing psychosocial factors affecting MSM, specifically mental health, substance use, and violence, is critical to addressing HIV infection among this population and, separately, could enhance the utility of existing interventions focused specifically on HIV.....
........The results from the current study confirm what past studies using convenience samples have described: that at weekend dance events in vacation destinations held for gay and bisexual men, drug use is notably high. In our study, which used an approach designed to be more representative
of all those in attendance [32, 33], almost half of participants arrived at the party intending to use ecstasy, while one in five intended to use each of five other drugs (GHB, marijuana, cocaine/crack, unprescribed EDDs, and poppers), and one in ten intended to use ketamine and/or crystal methamphetamine. These intentions were strong predictors of use of these drugs over the course of the weekend. However, the results presented here indicate that even after accounting for these specific drug-using intentions, men's beliefs about other party-goers' drug use was important in predicting their own drug use over the weekend. Among those who intended to use ecstasy and marijuana, thinking that more men would use these drugs predicted individual use. What is more striking, however, is the role of normative beliefs among those who did not intend to use each drug type. In multivariate models that accounted for use of each drug in the recent past, among those who did not intend to use, those who thought more men would use ketamine, GHB, cocaine/crack, and unprescribed EDDs were more likely themselves to use each drug type over the weekend....
.......men were more likely themselves to use for at least three drug types (ketamine, marijuana, and cocaine/crack) if after the party they thought more men used than they thought would use when they first arrived. It could be that after afforded the opportunity to use themselves these men thought that many more men used these drugs, or that seeing many more men using than they initially thought influenced them to use these drug types.
......The weekend dance events studied in the current investigation are important venues for preventing drug use and associated harmful consequences among gay and bisexual men. In the current study, participants tended to overestimate other party attendants' drug use, especially for ecstasy, cocaine/crack, nonprescribed EDDs, and poppers. Prevention campaigns geared toward reducing individuals' overestimation of their peers' substance use
behaviors are effective strategies for curbing individuals' substance use, though to date these campaigns have focused primarily on heavy drinking among college students
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