Author Archives

Virally Suppressed is a progressive blog and outreach movement centered around matters of HIV & social justice in America and across the globe.

• Queen City Conservatives: How The Tafts Can Teach The GOP To Be Functional Again

  By Drew Gibson on January 14, 2015 • ( 2 )

  

  There’s an old saying–often attributed erroneously to Mark Twain–€”that has it that when the world ends, a man should want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always 20 years behind the times. As a resident of the Queen City(1) for… Read More ›

• Edward W. Brooke & The Importance of Moderate Republicans in American Politics

  By Drew Gibson on January 12, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  Given the frenetic and bloody start this new year has taken with the Charlie Hebdo killings, the Boko Haram massacre of thousands of innocent civilians in northeastern Nigeria and the row over the murders of two NYPD officers, even the… Read More ›

• Excusing The Appertaining Rage to Such a Meeting: A Young Man’s Anger in Early Sobriety

  By Drew Gibson on January 8, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  Clark’s face was like a kiwi—a big angry kiwi that had been left on a windowsill for so long that the sun had blanched it a blotchy cream color. None of the hairs on his head were longer than ¾ of an inch,… Read More ›

• Constitutionally Incapable: Brief Reflections On My Time Living With an Autistic Alcoholic

  By Drew Gibson on January 5, 2015 • ( 0 )

  

  In March of 2009, I went to the Hazelden Center For Youth & Families in Plymouth, MN to receive dual diagnosis treatment for alcoholism/addiction and bipolar disorder. Thankfully, both my addiction and mental health have been in check over the… Read More ›

• When ‘It Gets Better’ Isn’t Enough: Leelah Alcorn & The Struggles of Transgender Youth

  By Drew Gibson on December 31, 2014 • ( 0 )

  

  Adolescence is a wretched place—a charnel house chock full of freshly formed skeletons waiting to be shoved into closets and strange erogenous urgings that spring up at the most inappropriate moments. It is a time of kinky little hairs that… Read More ›

• What We Talk About When We Talk About Mental Health: The NYPD Shooting & Mental Illness in America

  By Drew Gibson on December 23, 2014 • ( 2 )

  

  This past summer, I was being a good twenty-something and flossing my teeth with one of those tiny flosser-thingies with the handle on them when the floss caught itself in a little gap between one of my molars and the… Read More ›

• Bowling For Presidents: How College Football Can Help Sort Out The Field For The 2016 Election

  By Drew Gibson on December 17, 2014 • ( 4 )

  

  Boys and girls, we have entered very strange air as of late. The mid-term elections are over. The dumpster fire that was the 113th Congress is pretty much finished. And, as 2014 fades into 2015, the first presidential rumblings for… Read More ›

• The Wall Street Woodcutter & The Trees: A Look At The Passage of the Cromnibus Bill

  By Drew Gibson on December 12, 2014 • ( 4 )

  

  Come on down and have a sit with me. Just a sit—a brief sit—so’s I can tell you a little story my daddy used to tell me when I was knee-high and tow-headed and didn’t know shit from Shinola about… Read More ›

• The Whiteness of My Discontent: How Privilege Affects The Way I Protest

  By Drew Gibson on December 9, 2014 • ( 3 )

  

  My whiteness speaks volumes, but I cannot hear them. It tells the world around me that my life matters—that the shedding of my blood and cracking of my bones will bring with it consequences denied to darker-skinned men. In my… Read More ›

• Other Voices, Other Towns: Conversations With Complete Strangers

  By Drew Gibson on December 5, 2014 • ( 0 )

  

  It was a little after 8:30 in the morning. I was sitting out on the concrete patio of a strip mall coffee shop in Dearborn, Michigan, still dead to the world due to the deficit of caffeine and nicotine in… Read More ›