When drinking is the easier, softer way . . .

It has probably never occurred to most of you, perhaps it has, but most people don't have any idea what it's like to grow up gay. Enduring the message that we are perverts, that we don't deserve to marry or serve our country, that God hates us, exacts a toll that few other oppressed groups understand. When the very people who could be showing us how to grow up and to love ourselves and how to love those around us are saddled with the same burden and hide, we hide, too. No other group can really do that. Black Americans can't pretend they're white. Women can't (usually) pretend they're men. The only other protected class that might compare would be religion, but that isn't something so central to a person's identity as to be thought of as immutable. People change religions all the time. I was born into an LDS family, for example. I wasn't born Mormon.

I was, I believe, born gay. My parents recognized it, or at least the possibility of it, by the time I could walk and talk. Like many parents and like our society as a whole, they did everything they could to redirect it, suppress it, retrain it, punish it, punish it and beat it out of me, as though it were a bad habit.

The National Institute of Health and Mental Health America report that:

• Gay and lesbian teens deal with harassment, threats, and violence directed at them on a daily basis. They hear anti-gay slurs such as “homo”, “faggot” and “sissy” about 26 times a day or once every 14 minutes.[1]
  
• Thirty-one percent of gay youth had been threatened or injured at school in the last year alone![2]
• Gay and lesbian teens are at high risk because ‘their distress is a direct result of the hatred and prejudice that surround them,’ not because of their inherently gay or lesbian identity orientation.[3]
• Gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual counterparts.[4]
• Gay teens in U.S. schools are often subjected to such intense bullying that they’re unable to receive an adequate education.[5] They’re often embarrassed or ashamed of being targeted and may not report the abuse.
• GLBT students are more apt to skip school due to the fear, threats, and property vandalism directed at them.[6] One survey revealed that 22 percent of gay respondents had skipped school in the past month because they felt unsafe there.[7]
• Twenty-eight percent of gay students will drop out of school. This is more than
  three times the national average for heterosexual students.[8]
• GLBT youth feel they have nowhere to turn. According to several surveys, four out of five gay and lesbian students say they don’t know one supportive adult at school.[9]

It is not surprising then that, as US Department of Health and Human Services reports, gay and lesbian youth are up to 300% more likely to attempt or complete suicide than their heterosexual counterparts. [10]

"Perhaps there is an easier, softer way." For many of us, that way is escape through drugs and alcohol. Again, the NIH reports multiple studies that all suggest that gay men are 50 - 100% more likely to be alcoholics or problem drinkers than straight men and half as likely to have abstained from alcohol use entirely in the last 30 days. [11]

Just like all alcoholics, it was incredibly difficult for me to reach out for help. It was very, very difficult for me to come to Alcoholics Anonymous and look for the similarities and to 'be a part of' when every message I'd ever heard told me something different. I might have not had to travel as far down the scale as I did if our culture didn't impose the idea that I was different.

I'd like to ask every member of AA to carefully consider exactly what we mean when we say, "I am responsible whenever anyone, anywhere reaches out for help. . ." This is a "we" program and we need your help. Stand up against prejudice and stand up to protect our children. Stand up because we may not be able to on our own. If we make it into the doors of AA, remember how hard it was when you walked in. Remember that the very act of walking in may be the very best we can do to reach out for help. Ask yourself to what lengths you are willing to go to carry the message of hope to another sick and suffering alcoholic.



[1] Bart, M. Creating a safer school for gay students. Counseling Today, September 1998
[2] Chase, Anthony. "Violent Reaction; What do Teen Killers have in Common?" In These Times. 9 July 2001
[3] Norton, Terry L., and Jonathan W. Vare. "Understanding Gay and Lesbian Youth: Sticks, Stones, and Silence." 17 July 1998: 3
Lexis Nexis. 20 June 2002
[4] Report from the Secretary's Task Force on Youth Suicide (Paul Gibson, US Department of Health and Human Services), 1989
[5] Chase, Anthony. "Violent Reaction; What do Teen Killers have in Common?" In TheseTimes. 9 July 2001: 3.
[6] Garofalo, R. Wolf, R.C., Kessel, S., Palfrey., J (1998) Pediatrics, 101 (5), 895-902
[7] Chase, Anthony. "Violent Reaction; What do Teen Killers have in Common?" In These Times. 9 July 2001
[8] Bart, M. Creating a safer school for gay students. Counseling Today, September 1998
[9] Sessions Stepp, Laura. "A Lesson in Cruelty: Anti-Gay Slurs Common at School; Some Say Insults Increase as Gays' Visibility Rises." The Washington Post 19 June 2001
[10] Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration, "Report of the Secretary's Task Force on Youth Suicide. Volume 1: Overview and Recommendations." January 1989
[11] National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institute of Health, "Sexual Orientation and Alcohol Use Disorders." March 2005

Broken Windows

"Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars."

Broken Windows by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, which appeared in the March 1982 edition of The Atlantic Monthly

Yesterday I learned that my mother had finally, after all the crap she's done, all the drunk driving, drunk dialing, drunk wedding wrecking, drunk ax wielding, drunk lying, drunk sending her kids to Scandinavia and leaving them there, etc. -- gotten herself arrested. Money can insulate you from almost anything, but not forever, and money cannot buy happiness. It can finance a spectacular misery and it can postpone, or evade entirely, reaching a real bottom. That is mom's situation; too rich to have the kind of consequences that it sometimes takes to fully concede defeat.

I learned from my sister that my mom had been arrested. I was checking e-mail on my mobile phone at work last night around 9. Her note said if I ever need a reminder of why I stay sober, take a look at the Ada County Sheriff's Arrest Report for January 31st. Of course I called my sister immediately. I'll spare you the details of the sordid story - it will probably make it into a screenplay at some point anyway - but the climax was my screaming mother being arrested in front of her home for obstructing police. Some part of of me, the part that isn't perfect yet, was thrilled that she was finally reaping some consequences from her addiction. The part of me that still hangs on to resentment toward her for any of the thousand ways she has harmed her children suddenly felt vindicated. In spite of all the 4th step inventory written on her and in spite of having some idea of my part, I have kept a careful distance from her. It wouldn't do either of us any good to make that amends too early. Clearly I need to do it so that I can put that inappropriate glee behind me.


The joy was fleeting though. It lasted just long enough for me to get home from work and pull her mug shot up on the sheriff's web site. It shocked me.
If the community of recovery is a neighborhood and the eyes are the windows of the soul , I live in a great neighborhood today. I live among people who solve their problems by serving their Creator and helping others. Windows in my neighborhood don't stay broken. Trash doesn't stay out on the street. Looking at the windows in mom's neighborhood breaks my heart.

Get Up, Suit Up, Show Up

One of the things we hear in meetings over and over is “Get up. Suit up. Show up.” When I went into exile from life and made my home in a coffin at the end of the world, get up, suit up, show up was about all I was able to do – and then only out of necessity. The drugs aren’t going to go get themselves. If I had waited too long, if I had not saved something to help me get up and on my way, if there was nothing to be had when mine ran out, I was in for a painful and difficult spell. Get/Suit/Show up, at that point, was not consciousness, willingness or effort. It was a biological function of addiction, like breathing. That is what it feels like to be an addict. In the coffin at the end of the world, drugs and alcohol become your oxygen. The only path I could see before me was heartbreaking and enduring it required anesthesia.

The anesthesia wore off, stopped working, and God showed me a different path if I would have it. Of course I would have it. All I had to contribute, though, was my willingness to make the effort, which, in the beginning, meant getting up, suiting up and showing up. It took me five days to get up. It took another week or so to suit up and arrange to get to treatment. It took another couple of weeks to work out those details and to show up there. Walking in the door, I believed that treatment was going to give me the tools and self-knowledge I needed to overcome the obsession and compulsion. It had not occurred to me that anything more would be required.

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