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Life & Times Transcript

11/29/05

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Aids activists have a new fight on their hands and this time they're battling a different enemy.

Miki Rizzo>> But this drug is so addictive, it is so strong and this disease of addiction is so cunning, baffling and powerful that it just holds on to these people and won't let go until it's done.

Val Zavala>> And then, you've visited its beaches and admired its architecture, but have you ever been to the "funk zone"?

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Hena Cuevas>> It's called Ice, Crank, the White Lady. They're just basically street names for crystal meth, a powerful drug that can be made using the most basic household ingredients such as ammonia and nail polish remover. It's been a popular gay party drug for over a decade now, but experts are noticing an alarming trend. As the number of crystal meth users increases, so are the rates of HIV infections and there are some who believe this is no coincidence.

As night falls over West Hollywood where restaurants and clubs cater to the gay community, a party atmosphere fills the air. But there is another kind of partying away from the public eye that is threatening this community. Gay men using methamphetamine, or crystal meth, to get high.

Mike Rizzo>> I call crystal meth the perfect gay drug.

Hena Cuevas>> Mike Rizzo is the Director of Alternatives in Silver Lake. He says it's the only drug rehabilitation center in the country catering to the gay community.

Mike Rizzo>> I'd say about eighty percent of our clients are meth addicts and that certainly is an increase.

Hena Cuevas>> What is the appeal of crystal meth?

Mike Rizzo>> Meth hits the pleasure principles in the brain, so that's the first appealing thing. The second thing is that it lasts a very long time. You could stay up from it probably anywhere from twelve to twenty-four hours on one bump, which is like a line of crystal meth. And if you continue to use, you can be on a three, four or five day run. When I was out there, I actually knew somebody that was up for fifteen days.

Gaetano Vaccaro>> It's difficult to really estimate the prevalence of methamphetamine use in the gay community.

Hena Cuevas>> According to researcher, Gaetano Vaccaro, of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, crystal meth not only lowers inhibitions, but also increases the sex drive, a combination that is proving to be very dangerous.

Gaetano Vaccaro>> It affects the part of the brain that's really important for judgment, so the use of that drug in particular corresponds to a lot of high-risk behaviors of all types. Now for the gay male, it's usually more high-risk sexual behaviors.

Hena Cuevas>> Meth is a clear to white crystalline substance that can be easily made using household ingredients like ammonia and battery acid. This video of a raid in the Inland Empire shows how this kitchen was used as a laboratory.

Gaetano Vaccaro>> It's a cheap drug. It's cheap to make, cheap to find, cheap to buy, so relatively speaking, it's unique in that sense that it's very accessible.

Hena Cuevas>> Crystal meth, which can be smoked, snorted or injected, became a popular gay party drug in the west coast over ten years ago. It made its way into the east coast party scene in the late 1990's. Because it has been here longer, Los Angeles has become the place to come if you're interested in getting over your crystal meth addiction.

Stephen Whipple>> "Hey, Steve."

Mike Rizzo>> "Hey, Mike, how are you?"

Stephen Whipple>> "Good. How are you?"

Mike Rizzo>> "Good."

Hena Cuevas>> Four months ago, thirty-one year old Stephen Whipple came to Los Angeles from New York to get help with his addiction to meth.

Stephen Whipple>> It gives you this sense of wholeness, like it completes you.

Hena Cuevas>> He was in a long-term relationship with his partner of eight years, but he says something was missing.

Stephen Whipple>> Kind of like a -- I hate to say this -- like a bored housewife. That's how I felt.

Hena Cuevas>> What he didn't know is that he was suffering from depression. Then one day at a party, he says a friend offered him a drug that promised to take all that sadness away.

Stephen Whipple>> There was something missing in my life and it kind of filled that circle. It filled that empty hole and I just felt more productive, I felt more social, I felt more -- I don't know. It made me feel complete for the first time, but really what it was was depression.

Hena Cuevas>> It wasn't long before he became a regular meth user. Then his friend invited him to a party.

Stephen Whipple>> It was me and it was him and I said, "It's two o'clock in the afternoon. What type of party?" It was a crystal sex party and the combination of crystal and sex is very popular and it's a strong combination.

Hena Cuevas>> Not a party at a club or a bar, but in somebody's apartment where there was sex with multiple partners which went on for days.

Stephen Whipple>> It takes away all inhibitions, you know, and group sex is a really big part of that. It's an extremely haphazard combination, but you don't even realize it at the time.

Hena Cuevas>> Rizzo says the internet is used as a way to hook up with other men also engaging in this same behavior.

Mike Rizzo>> What happens is that people can go on the internet, scroll these websites and these hook-up sites, find someone that they're attracted to, quick chat online and, you know, exchange of phone numbers and addresses and, within half an hour, you can be hooking up with someone. It's sort of like the fast food of sex these days.

Stephen Whipple>> A really popular phrase is "party" which is the drugs and "play" which is sex. Some websites no longer allow those words to be used because it was quite obvious that that's what it was being used for. But in some respects, now people write "do not" party and play, which really is like code for "I do, but I'm saying I do not" because we can't write that.

Hena Cuevas>> Once a week, Whipple meets with Rizzo, a recovered meth addict himself. Today they're talking about the one thing Whipple feared the most: becoming infected with HIV.

Stephen Whipple>> "The HIV diagnosis is really hard for me to like put into reality. It's such a new thing for me, but it's really easy for me to like be in denial about it, to make it not part of my life because it hasn't been until right now."

Mike Rizzo>> "That's a direct result of your meth use."

Stephen Whipple>> "Absolutely. Two years ago, I started using crystal meth and I was HIV-negative. And it's two years later and now I'm recently diagnosed as HIV-positive."

Hena Cuevas>> And he's not alone. According to Quentin O'Brien, Mental Health Director of the Gay and Lesbian Center, in the last four years, about a third of those who tested positive for HIV also reported using meth.

Quentin O'Brien>> It's an association. Statistically you can't say that they are directly related, but clearly there's an association that we see there.

Hena Cuevas>> Since 2001, he says, the number of gay meth users overall nearly doubled. According to Rizzo, the drug makes the fear of getting HIV go away.

Mike Rizzo>> Someone that wouldn't normally engage in unsafe sex finds himself all of a sudden not really caring, you know. When someone doesn't put a condom on or someone, you know, engages in unsafe sex, it doesn't seem to be that fear of HIV infection. Sort of like almost, well, it can't happen to me.

Hena Cuevas>> And that's exactly what Whipple says happened to him.

Stephen Whipple>> I'm HIV-positive now because of it and somehow, even though I knew what I was doing, it never occurred to me that it could actually happen.

Hena Cuevas>> O'Brien and Vaccaro recognize the growing problem, so they're gathering city and community leaders to not only raise awareness of the growing use of crystal meth, but also to try and do something about it.

Quentin O'Brien>> Our starting point is that everyone understands that there is a problem and understands a lot of the complexity of the problem and then departs from that point and says what can we do about it.

Hena Cuevas>> After completing thirty days in rehab, Whipple had a relapse over Labor Day weekend. He says it wasn't hard to have a dealer find him.

Stephen Whipple>> I came to Los Angeles hoping that I could pretend to be na�ve in a way like I don't know the drug scene here, so maybe it's not as bad or it's easy. I really was surprised how quickly it happened.

Hena Cuevas>> He says he's now back on track, but Rizzo understands just how difficult the road to recovery can be.

Mike Rizzo>> This drug is so addictive, it is so strong and this disease of addiction is so cunning, baffling and powerful that it just holds on to these people and won't let go until it's done.

Hena Cuevas>> I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> Americans are popping more pills than ever before. I'm talking about legal prescription drugs. The number of prescriptions per American has more than doubled over the past ten years and, although these drugs can do a lot of good, they can also do a lot of damage. Greg Critser is a writer in Pasadena who has researched the down side of pharmaceuticals. You have written a book called "Generation Rx" and one of the groups that you focus on are children. We are medicating our children with prescription drugs more than ever before.

Greg Critser>> That's right. So the question is, why is that? I think it's a complex, social, economic reason. We have more parents working away from the home. We have a very heavy focus on performance in the school. Performance is sort of like the tribal ethos of childhood now. If you remember, when we were kids, there was always a couple of guys in the class who we just always knew were never going to go to college, right? And it was kind of okay to think that. Well, today it's not okay, right? So the question is, should that person be medicated?

What do we know about Attention Deficit Disorder? We know it's not a disease. We know it's a condition, right? It's a cluster of behaviors. We don't know exactly why it's there or when it happens. What we do know is that, if you give the person who you suspect has ADD Ritalin, they will get better. Now what you don't hear in this same argument is that everybody gets better with a little bit of Ritalin.

Val Zavala>> Even if you have --

Greg Critser>> -- even if you're fine, your performance will improve. This is something that's at the core of most researchers' thoughts right now. Well, what are we really medicating? And there are no simple answers to Attention Deficit Disorder, although I'll point out a couple of important facts. One is that those who get it more often, probably too often, are the upper middle class and the middle class. Guess who don't get it enough? Poor students.

Val Zavala>> You mean, don't get Ritalin?

Greg Critser>> The poor. Ritalin, that's right. So it's a very much class-based diagnosis. If you wanted to make a big improvement in the lives of some poor kids, you might want to think about giving them Ritalin. On the other hand, if you wanted to make an improvement in the social fabric of the upper middle class and force them to make some kind of lifestyle changes like being home more often with their children, you might consider prescribing less Ritalin.

Val Zavala>> Interesting.

Greg Critser>> Right. So Ritalin is very complex. Now when you get to childhood depression, this is a very frightening area because what's happening is that drugs that were never intended for children, such as Prozac or Paxil, are being prescribed to children and we know now that there is a severe down side to that and that is that it increases suicidality and suicidal thoughts among children. That's why the FDA is coming out with some of the warnings that it's coming out with.

Val Zavala>> So children who are suffering from depression are getting drugs that have never really been tested on children?

Greg Critser>> That's right, that's right. All of the major prescription drugs for depression were tested on adults for relatively short periods of time. Their main claim to fame is not their effectiveness. Their main claim to fame is that you can't overdose on those drugs, okay?

Val Zavala>> You can't overdose?

Greg Critser>> It's very hard to overdose on the new generation of antidepressants as opposed to the older generation. However, in terms of efficacy, how well those drugs work, they don't work much better than the older generation of antidepressants. So what are you really selling when you sell someone Prozac? You're selling them an easier side effect profile and there's really nothing wrong with that. Depression seems to be a bona fide condition. In some cases, using brain scans, we can actually see changes in the brain.

But the way we dole out powerful drugs to children has really got to change and I think that you're seeing that change now where, five years ago, it was very common for a general practitioner to say, okay, let's try some antidepressants. Now those same GPs are saying, well, wait a minute. I don't really have the expertise to prescribe this drug and these drugs are more complicated than the drug companies ever told me about. So you're seeing some change there.

Val Zavala>> But if parents are dealing with a child who is ADD or is clearly depressed, should they immediately go to the pharmacy or what should they do first before we jump right into the drugs as a solution?

Greg Critser>> I think the answer to that is to go to someone who's not a general practitioner, to go to a therapist or go to a psychiatric counselor. Those people are fairly well trained at parceling out these behavioral problems. You know, in about five years, there will actually be a better answer to that question because there will be brain scan technologies that can detect when a certain behavior condition is based on your physiology or whether it's based on family dynamics or both.

You know, the parent who's confronted with ADD and someone who's kind of whispering that in their ear is having a really tough time. My key piece of advice would be to, if you're going to invest money in this problem, invest it in a physician who really knows the issue, and that usually is a psychiatrist.

Val Zavala>> Good advice, Greg. Thank you so much for all your work and your book, "Generation Rx".

Greg Critser>> Thank you.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Sam Louie>> Los Angeles is known for its love affair with cars, but with rising gas prices, pollution and congestion, there's a growing movement to lessen this dependence. Here in Silverlake, one group wants to steer the public from four wheels to two wheels. It's a small repair shop called the Bicycle Kitchen. It doesn't serve food, but the folks at this kitchen do offer food for thought. Their mission? To get more Angelenos to ride their bikes.

Jimmy Lizama>> What I push is for bicycling to become a very normal aspect of someone's life in Los Angeles.

Sam Louie>> Jimmy Lizama is one of the founders.

Jimmy Lizama>> The norm is to get in your car in the morning, go to the gas station, fill it up, stress out on the freeway, stress out some more, go park your car, stress out about parking and then come home and be stressed out because you had a hard time getting there and back. On a bicycle, by and large, for the most part, you get on your bicycle and you're rolling immediately. You're getting exercise, you're not clogging the streets, you're getting some sunshine, you're interacting with the community and you're getting there a lot faster. "So go ahead and just crank and shift and see what happens."

Sam Louie>> What makes the Bicycle Kitchen unique from other bike shops is that this place is a nonprofit repair center run entirely by its staff of volunteers. Donations help pay for rent and supplies.

Jimmy Lizama>> We do just about everything. I mean, from headsets to hubs to bottom brackets to crank selections to pedals, everything. The only thing we don't do is we don't actually build the frame. We just like get donated frames and then help people build them up.

Sam Louie>> The volunteers don't actually fix the bikes. Instead, they charge seven dollars an hour and teach you how to do it yourself.

Jimmy Lizama>> It's a way of empowering people. Many a times, myself included, people go to a bike shop and you encounter kind of a cold experience. You drop off your bicycle and you don't know a thing about what happened. Usually, you're going to ride your bike when it's done and you haven't learned anything in the process.

Sam Louie>> The idea of a grassroots bike center came to Jimmy four years ago when he and his friends were fixing bikes in the kitchen of an apartment.

Jimmy Lizama>> So we said, well, wouldn't it be really cool if like people came in, hung out, worked on their bikes, socialized and then, you know, made a community out of it? So that's exactly what happened.

Sam Louie>> When the Bicycle Kitchen first opened, Jimmy and his friends supplied the knowledge and customers gave what they could.

Jimmy Lizama>> Back in the day, beer was exchanged (laugher), soda pop, anything that was cool. I mean, someone would come in with like really cool parts and be like, here, here's some parts. Awesome. That's the whole deal, you know.

Sam Louie>> Nowadays, they cannot accept alcohol, but food is still welcome if you can't afford to pay cash.

Jimmy Lizama>> "Whoa, that's bizarre. From where? Korean market? Really?"

Sam Louie>> Jimmy says he's continually amazed by the growth and popularity of the Bicycle Kitchen, especially in a town overrun by cars.

Jimmy Lizama>> We went from having myself doing the work when it first started to two volunteers, to three volunteers, to once a night, to once a week, to twice a week, to four times a week, to a brand new space, to a lot more bicycles, to six days a week, to thirty volunteers. It just gets bigger and bigger every single week that we operate.

Sam Louie>> So it seems the Bicycle Kitchen has found its recipe for success, a batch of volunteers mixed with community support and topped off with a determined vision for change. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> Santa Barbara has a lot more to offer than beaches, architecture and shopping, but to appreciate it, you've got to be willing to slow down and step back into its past. Well, that's what Vicki Curry did when she got a tour of Santa Barbara's historic sites from local historian, Neal Graffy.

Neal Graffy>> I just think this is one of Santa Barbara's most magnificent buildings.

Vicki Curry>> You know Santa Barbara about as well as anyone and, when we asked you for your favorite places, this was at the top of the list.

Neal Graffy>> This was number one, the Arlington Theater. There are so many things I like about this. For one, this block has been named the Arlington for almost a hundred fifty years. Before the Arlington Theater, there were two hotels, both of which really put Santa Barbara on the map as a destination place for tourists and also for invalids who came here to recover. We were first a health resort before we were really a tourist city. The two hotels, one burned down, the other destroyed by an earthquake, but out of the rubble rose this Arlington Theater.

Vicki Curry>> The Arlington Theater was built in 1931 by the Fox West Coast theater chain. Designed by the architectural team of William Edwards and Joseph Plunkett, it's based on fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth century Spain.

Neal Graffy>> Above you here, artist Samuel Armstrong put in the five most popular dances, three of Spain and two of Mexico at the bar in there.

Vicki Curry>> Graffy says the artists who worked on the building were masters of illusion.

Neal Graffy>> Even these beautiful wood beams above us are all concrete and painted and just pressed between boards to give them that perfect wood grain look, but it's all an illusion just for the magic of movies.

Vicki Curry>> Well then, I'm sure the inside is just as beautiful, so let's go take a look.

Neal Graffy>> Great.

Vicki Curry>> This is amazing. I don't think I've ever seen a movie theater that looks quite like this.

Neal Graffy>> Well, I think this is part of the brilliance of Joseph Plunkett. He put together these two Spanish villages on either side of the theater with that open sky above us. Originally, there was a copy of an ancient Roman aqueduct bridge connecting the two villages and it was a re-creation of an authentic one. Everything is re-created from something authentic.

Some of the things we can see behind us were those lanterns and the shadows. They're fake shadows. They're painted on. A great artist, John Gamble, without pay, painted all the scenery along the edges of the villages, all the mountaintops and trees that come along there. When I first came to Santa Barbara and I came out here, I thought I was outside. I was just a kid. I went, oh, man, this is great, and I've always found a great pleasure in bringing friends here for the first time. They sit and just go, oh.

Vicki Curry>> And this is now both a movie theater and a performing arts center?

Neal Graffy>> Yes. A lot of great concerts in here. The Santa Barbara Symphony plays here, rock concerts, stage plays and --

Vicki Curry>> -- so lots of opportunities for people to come in and see this amazing space.

Neal Graffy>> Absolutely.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Next, Neal Graffy showed us a small green park hidden away just a half block from the town's main thoroughfare, State Street. It's Plaza De la Guerra.

Neal Graffy>> This plaza, I think, has seen more history than the Santa Barbara Mission has and I think that's saying a lot. Now originally, you know, this was just open land and behind us we have the De la Guerra Mansion built around 1820 through 1829. The fifth commandant, Presidio Jose De la Guerra, built it for his family. So this is open land, but at the other end of the plaza was the Carillo Adobe, so the two most powerful families in California, the De la Guerras and the Carillos at opposite ends of the plaza.

It hasn't always been an empty plaza like it is now. In the 1870's, City Hall was right in the center of the plaza here and that lasted up until the 1920's when they tore it down and put up the new City Hall right behind us. Just around that time, this place looked like an architectural salvage yard. There were adobes over there, a two-story hotel, a restaurant and any number of false-fronted buildings around here.

I think De la Guerra Plaza is also sort of the birthplace of that Spanish look that Santa Barbara has. In the early 1920's, a man named Bernard Hoffman bought the De la Guerra Adobe back there and built around it a shopping complex called El Paseo and he said this is the blueprint for Santa Barbara, this Spanish style. Not long after he did that, behind us the Daily News building came up in 1922, George Washington Smith, the top architect of that design, followed by the new City Hall in 1923.

Then when the Santa Barbara earthquake hit in 1925, the El Paseo, City Hall and the Daily News building withstood the quake, so people are looking and saying the Spanish style has something to it if you survive a quake. So these were sort of the blueprints now for the new Santa Barbara. The plaza has been the scene of any type of gathering you can think of. This is where everything happens in Santa Barbara.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Next on our tour, the "funk zone", a little-known area just steps from the beach.

Neal Graffy>> I love this area because it's sort of like the end of an era. This is the forgotten area of Santa Barbara. It's old warehouses, fish markets and it's been found by Santa Barbara's artistic community and just whacko community and you can find anything along this stretch in here. Originally it was just forgotten land. Nobody liked it. It was low-lying land, swampy and prone to flooding every year.

As our drainage got better, it got built up. For a while, a lot of the fishermen lived here. There was a huge fishing industry in Santa Barbara, so this was residential area. Then as the railroad came through, there was more warehousing, huge lumber yards just off the beach from us and, in the 1930's, that started to dry up and this is what's left over.

Vicki Curry>> In recent years, this old industrial area has taken on a new life.

Neal Graffy>> There's an old book store, there's an antique store, there's an Italian pottery shop, surfboard shops, all kinds of stuff, and you just can't find areas like this anymore because it probably gets more expensive especially down by the beach. People want to start putting in new buildings, condominiums, etc., so the pressure is on for this area and I just think it is such a unique area for young entrepreneurs to put out whatever they want and you can find whatever you want down in this area.

Vicki Curry>> And yet, is this area going to be preserved or protected or is it possibly up for development?

Neal Graffy>> It's possibly up for development. Some parts of it, they're trying to make and preserve as an artistic area, but when the pressure is on and someone owns the property, they have a right to develop it. So it will be a toss-up to see what happens in the future, but for right now and at least for a few more years, it's a great place to come to. Every time I come down here, I find something new and different.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> So, Neal, what are some of your other favorite places in Santa Barbara?

Neal Graffy>> Well, one of them is right behind us, Stearns Wharf. To me, this is what opened the door for Santa Barbara. Prior to this time, if you wanted to come to Santa Barbara, you got rode ashore, cargo was dumped off boats and just floated ashore, so this really allowed health-seekers, cargo, tourists, to come ashore safely. It really put Santa Barbara on the map for all the wealthy people to come to and they fell in love with Santa Barbara. Some of them stayed here and actually bought up property like this and gave it to the city, which is why Santa Barbara has a huge stretch of beachfront that's undeveloped without any, you know, houses or businesses or anything else on it. It's just open to the public.

Stearns Wharf is always a great place. There are museums on it, there are restaurants and there's plenty to do. Just down from us, you can take a nice walk along the beach and go to the Maritime Museum and there are more restaurants over there, but it's a great museum. There's the Lost Horizon Bookstore in downtown Santa Barbara not far from the De la Guerra Plaza that we were at. I love going in there. Great selection of old books. And I also love the Santa Barbara Historical Society. There's a great history of Santa Barbara. It's a new exhibit they just put in there, so it's a wonderful place to go. There are also places that you can just find on your own. It's just new and old and it's all coming together here in Santa Barbara.

Vicki Curry>> Neal Graffy, thank you so much for taking the time to show us around your favorite places.

Neal Graffy>> It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Sponsored in part by:


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