Author Archives

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

• Chief Wahoo’s Curse: How the Cleveland Indians Went From Breaking Racial Barriers To Just Being Racist

  By Drew Gibson on April 4, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  1948 was a pretty amazing year to be a sports fan in Cleveland. The newly formed Cleveland Browns had just rattled off a perfect 14-0 season on their way to a third All-America Football Conference championship in three years, the… Read More ›

• The Dead Are Always Drug-Free: Why An Abstinence-Only Approach Will Never End The Heroin Epidemic

  By Drew Gibson on March 29, 2016 • ( 8 )

  

  Heroin is not alcohol. This might seem like a fairly obvious and even ridiculous point to make, but there are so many people in our courts, our governments, our treatment centers and our recovery communities who don’t seem to grasp this… Read More ›

• An Olympic Sized Disaster: The Many Ways The Rio Summer Games Can Go Wrong

  By Drew Gibson on March 16, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  There are few things in this world as reassuring and satisfying as the moment when, after shuffling through the crowded corridors of a stadium concourse, you catch your first glimpse of baseball field before a game. Everything about it, from… Read More ›

• There’s No Such Thing As A Mild Mob: Putting Trump’s Followers In Context

  By Drew Gibson on March 7, 2016 • ( 3 )

  

  Warning: Some of the details of the historical events discussed below are by their nature extremely disturbing. If, for any reason, you feel as if reading about racially-motivated lynchings would cause you undue emotional or psychological distress, you may want to… Read More ›

• The Curious Case of The Bat In Southern Guinea: Why We Still Don’t Know How The Ebola Outbreak Started

  By Drew Gibson on February 19, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  Imagine, for a moment, that the United States is being ravaged by a mysterious and deadly virus. This virus—let’s call it the Stanley Virus—is believed to have first appeared a little less than a year ago in a community somewhere… Read More ›

• God Didn’t Do This, We Did: The Ongoing Crisis in The Central African Republic

  By Drew Gibson on February 9, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  More often not, when one overhears someone expressing the belief that religion is the opiate of the masses, it is accompanied by a certain degree of secular snark. Religion, in this interpretation of Marx’s oft misquoted maxim, is a device… Read More ›

• Fearmongering & Football: A Look At The Ridiculous Anti-Drug PSA Airing During The Super Bowl

  By Drew Gibson on February 7, 2016 • ( 4 )

  

  All things being considered, I’d have to say my abilities as a job interviewee aren’t stellar. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got no problem tooting my own horn, answering questions on the fly and being engaging and all that noise…. Read More ›

• Who’s Afraid of The Zika Virus? How We Perceive Threat With Infectious Disease

  By Drew Gibson on January 31, 2016 • ( 3 )

  

  My fellow Americans, there is a new disease among us. It has only recently begun to make its way to our country from Latin America, but it will surely spread farther. Discovered in Sub-Saharan Africa shortly after World War II,… Read More ›

• Sentiment Over Substance: How Presidential Candidates Talk About Addiction Without Saying Much Of Anything

  By Drew Gibson on January 25, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  It happened at the beginning of the New Hampshire Forum on Addiction and the Heroin Epidemic, well before the 5 mid-card presidential candidates who participated in the event showed up to speak. About halfway through the morning portion of the… Read More ›

• Off His Meds & Away From Reality: Charlie Sheen’s Struggles With HIV & Mental Health

  By Drew Gibson on January 14, 2016 • ( 1 )

  

  Acceptance is the answer. As someone who has been through his fair share of rehabs and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, that is an axiom that I am sure Charlie Sheen is well acquainted with and, based on his history of addiction… Read More ›