Why do people drink alcohol or/and take drugs?
The answer to this question is a long one but the ones one tends to hear the most about are:
Fun, depression, lack of confidence, social pressure, lack of sexual confidence, loneliness, and habit.
Where the line is drawn when consuming them regularly affects your persona either physically, mentally or spiritually?
The challenge is that every one of us is the only one who knows exactly where that line is.
Here some potential clues:
_When you can not have fun without drugs or excess of alcohol you have crossed that line
_When being depressed you don't find comfort in constructive activities like reading, cooking, gardening or talking with friends but consuming alcohol or drugs
_When you can not say no to family, friends or lovers when they insist you have to drink or take drugs even when you don't want to.
_When the only way for you to engage in sexual intercourse is when you are drunk or "high"
_When you feel lonely and start preferring the company of alcohol or/and drugs instead of calling another human, talking to your pet or going out.
_When you start feeling that when going to parties and gatherings you have to drink or if offered drugs have to take them even if you don't want to (part of this attitude can be attributed to lack of confidence)
Any human, woman or man, can relate to these situations.
The challenge within the gay community is that the abuse of alcohol and even more drastically, drugs have been made "normal" as if drinking copiously and taking drugs are behaviors inherent to being gay.
One of the testimonies to this harsh reality is the film industry: Watch gay movies and you will see a very high consumption of drugs; even in the romantic ones.
How is it possible that one of the most popular "romantic" movies in recent years was "Weekend"? You will see that the story reaches its peak when they have sex and...take drugs. Really?
How and when did we reach this point where we cannot have a beautiful genuine intimacy without any alien substance being part of the equation? Why does that happen? Is it for fun? Is it a lack of confidence? is it for overcoming the shame of desiring another person of your own sex? What is it?
And that is how we portray ourselves: Insecure, needy, incomplete.
Unfortunately, it is not just the abuse of alcohol and hard drugs that are constantly present in all that is "gay" but soft ones too like poppers.
Many gay men cannot or don't want to have sex without poppers. Some say it relaxes them, others that it is the only way that they can be penetrated.
This is certainly another of our addictions. If you need something external to you and the body of your partner for having fulfilling sex certainly there is something missing and the way of filling that void should not be this kind of chemicals.
Others argue body problems. If you are tight, you can be sure your anus is going to relax if you want it to, it is a muscle and you are the master of your body so you can get it done if you really want it, not easy? Of course not, but with practice, it will obey and work for your pleasure and that of your partner.
The gay community trough gatherings, sex parties, films, tv programs have perpetuated and accepted this dependency as part of what being gay is. IT DOES NOT NEED to be that way, it should not.
We should aim for having genuine, fulfilling and extraordinary moments with our temporary or long term partners without the help of any substance or artifice. That person should be the only (a powerful one in that regard) that takes you to a level of wonderful desire. For this of course you need to be more selective as no just everybody will do it.
But... Is that bad?
Is that bad being able to be more demanding about wanting that one who really can make you feel?
And it is here when we can talk about another addiction: Sex
As gay men certainly we have fewer limitations when we want to have sex, we just go for it without thinking too much of the implications (besides of course sexual health reasons). If to this you add alcohol and drugs, that is an extremely powerful cocktail for abuse and addiction.
When you reach that moment, you are not selective any more, there is just a primal and basic desire to have sex with almost whoever crosses your way leading you to a path of self-destruction, self-loathing and loneliness.
What the gay community has done to minimize this? What the gay community is doing for the younger people to move away from drugs? besides the sexual health clinics.
The drama that we are living is that with the excuse that being gay implies being inclusive we have taken that "inclusiveness" too far as to accept that drugs and sex addiction are part of who we are, we can not talk about it or reject it publicly because some gay may feel discriminated or attacked in regards to their "freedom".
Taking drugs, taking alcohol or and poppers should be a personal decision and should not in any circumstance be endorsed by anybody (like it happened with cigars...yes you can sell them, yes you can buy them but you are not allowed to promote or glorify it. It is what it is: a very personal choice that may take you to the wrong path. You are the only one responsible for this). The effects of it are harmful, destructive and diminishing.
It has to be a choice not a cultural or societal imposition.
YOU ARE READING
I'm not Gay, I'm Homosexual
No FicciónThe word gay has been synonymous of liberation, fight, human rights, homosexuality, lesbianism, etc but it has become synonymous of excess, abuse of freedom, hatred, self-loathing as well among men and women who feel the emotional and physical des...
