Tik and HIV: A ticking time bomb

A study by the Centre for Health and Prevention Studies at New York University has found that the use of tik leads to dangerous sexual behaviour.

Studies have shown that tik users have more sexual partners. (David Harrison, M&G)

The street drug crystal methamhpetamine, known as tik in South Africa, increases the chance of men who have sex with men to contract HIV by 400%, according to a US study.

But according to Hetta Gouse, a neuropsychologist in the psychiatry and mental health department at the University of Cape Town (UCT), the impact of tik addiction on HIV infections in South Africa is likely to extend far beyond this group.

While men who have sex with men are the main consumers of the substance in America, in South Africa it is also used in high numbers by heterosexual men and women. The figures are the highest in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

Gouse is conducting a study on the rate of HIV infections among tik users in the Western Cape.

Over the past decade there has been a drastic increase in tik abuse in the Western Cape: whereas only 0.3% of Cape Town patients admitted to rehabilitation centres reported tik as a substance of abuse in 2002, it increased to 49% in 2007, according to a Medical Research Council study.

Pleasure and pain Tik also referred to as speed, meth or globes is a stimulant that affects the central nervous system. In South Africa it is typically sold as a white powder or slightly larger crystals packaged in a straw that sells for R20 to R30. American users tend to inject the drug, but South Africans mostly smoke it with the use of a heated light bulb.

The drug releases a chemical called dopamine in the brain that influences emotions and sensations of pleasure and pain. According to The Body, a US-based HIV website, tik and cocaine work in similar ways. But the effects of tik are significantly stronger and last much longer: whereas cocaine increases dopamine concentrations to about 400% of normal levels, tik boosts them by up to 1500%, giving users intensely pleasurable highs that can last for 12 hours.

Tik not only increases libido, but it also allows you to have sex for much longer periods at a time, said Kevin Rebe of the Ivan Toms Centre for Mens Health in Cape Town. And the longer you go the more friction and abrasion there is, thus the higher the risk of damage to barrier surfaces through which HIV can enter your bloodstream.

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Tik and HIV: A ticking time bomb