Get Used to It: Ep. 42, "Substance Abuse"

ah [Applause] [Music] so [Music] hi welcome to get used to it i'm sheila james cuell your host or hostess depending on which you'd like to choose today we're going to talk about an issue that is much talked about in our community concerning other folks but very rarely talked about concerning us and that's substance abuse i'm very pleased today to have three uh informative and experienced uh people on the show and i'd like you to meet them this is kathy watt who is the executive director of the van ness recovery house welcome kathy thank you thank you for having me i'm glad you're here uh susan chessin who is the executive director of the alcoholism center for women welcome susan thanks for having me good that you're here and dr kevin williams who's a physician in private practice at the pacific oaks medical group welcome kevin thank you well this is a subject that people have a lot of trouble talking about although they'll always talk about their friends who have a problem or their family who has a problem very difficult for people to talk about themselves who have a problem let's talk to you first susan about tell us a little about the alcoholism center for women it's a program that's special for lesbians although we're open to all women it was founded in 1974 out of some federal money at the time it was one of the largest grants that had ever been made to a women's program and it really has provided a unique setting where lesbians can get services without having to face some of the homophobia that they might feel in other settings and where women who are not lesbian or who aren't sure who they are can be in a safe environment that's grounded in respect for women how old is the service been around a long time yeah since 74 i think that the residential program started first and then some non-residential services we have what we call an out participant program to emphasize that each woman is really a part of her own treatment she's not being acted on by others a lot of times when we talk about substance abuse people go right away to what they would consider you know the bad drugs and rarely talk about alcohol although in our community there's been a growing consciousness i think about it and i kind of wanted to start with this particular drug how do you think this affects our community in any particular way or the relationship of our gay and lesbian community to alcohol and recovery well we're getting ready to do a program about the extent of problems with substances in the community and one of the panels is called stonewall was a bar and it really has a lot to do with where we first felt comfortable coming out and socializing and and to this day where a lot of people find the roots of their identity in being able to be around other people who are openly gay so that's one of the sources of the of the issue it may also have to do with the fact that we reject a lot of roles and so we're not so worried about what the neighbors think or what uh somebody's going to say about us if we come home under the influence so there's a kind of a devil may care we're on the edge anyway let's uh just party and have a good time so the rel well it's true i guess people don't see alcohol always as a major problem they they might see it as a way that we all kind of loosen up and talk to each other and we're in our own world there's definitely a component of dealing with some of the internalized homophobia that we have of being able to relax in a social setting where there aren't any rules we're not sure who who asks who to dance or how are we going to get home and then what are we going to do if we get there so many many uh gay and lesbian people have never had sex except under the influence for example so how do you think this has a particular impact on lesbians is there a difference yeah we think that lesbians drinking patterns are more different than general women in the population than say gay men's drinking patterns are different from men in the general population it may be again some of the the rejection of the female passive role and not having to be a lady or something like that or there may be some other factors going on but we do see that lesbians really use alcohol at rates that are both early and heavy and prolonged so you start drinking young yeah mean part of it must be to make it go away make that gayness go away or i mean we you know we kind of talked about self-medication in a lot of different ways in our society but do you think that's kind of what's going on oh i definitely do uh people who are not sure what's happening with their lives i mean a few of us wake up one day and say well i know i'm different and i know what it's all about but very very few really i think that there's a process especially for women that coming out takes years and uh is an uncomfortable process still in most situations so something i think that the roots of substance abuse have to do with the fact that the substances work for us they make us relax and feel good and so to be able to manage your discomfort in a reliable way is is really a marvelous thing but the trouble is that it has consequences down the line that we we don't understand when we start out what kind of consequences well there's physical effects of always being under the influence or being under the influence on a regular basis because it's not nice to fool mother nature you know you you get those good feelings at the expense of of some other feelings and so you tend to see people whose baseline goes lower and lower over time that they're on an ordinary basis they're a little bit depressed and their reactions of course are affected reaction time and functioning there's such a thing as tolerance so that you may not know that a person is under the influence they may not be slurring their speech or falling down because they've acquired the habit so slowly that they've been able to adjust and and compensate so the people who who really look affected may not be the ones who have the biggest problem so some toll on your body what else well relationships if you're under the influence you're not dealing with who you are and the other people can't either one thing that happens for lesbians i think there's the misconception that not very many of us have kids but as a matter of fact the rates of parenthood are about the same in the lesbian communities for the rest of the community and parenting is a very tough thing especially if you're a single parent and being a gay person or a lesbian you're not an approved parent so being under the influence with relation to the kids they don't know who you are you're handling some of the stress of being a single parent or being a parent but it's not really authentic it's interesting you said um this is what you might be feeling you might want to you know self-medicate at the expense of other feelings and that actually i think is also the case um this is a way to hold down whatever sense you might have of shame um and i suppose as you said an effective way though the cost down the line is so extraordinary that if you think cumulatively about all the drunks in our community and the loss of of all that potential and all of that you know fulfillment it seems like it's an extraordinary toll i don't mean to sound selfish because i i love this community so much but an extraordinary toll on the community too um but it's so accepted so what brings someone to acw well some of our women come directly off of a very bad experience such as a rape or or identifying that they have no place to live they're homeless or they're on the streets other people get to what we would call a bottom but another way through a job that tells them they have to change or a court sends them to us sometimes people are released from jail and told get yourself some treatment be or go go back it's a condition of their release well i'm i'm glad you're there um kevin tell me is there any difference with the with the men in our community i think there are some differences and and quite a lot of similarities and uh and the root causes of why people use substances i think one of the big differences in the gay male community is that there is a there's a higher degree of sexuality that's involved in a lot of drug use in the gay community um you know there was a there was this whole period of sexual liberation in the 70s and the early 80s and a lot of a lot of the crystal use i think that's happening nowadays is is kind of a reaction against this period that we went through in the mid 80s where because of hiv lots of uh it was taboo to be uh to be out there and to be sexual and to be involved in uh and different relationships and being promiscuous and so now uh there's kind of a backlash against that and uh people are tired of uh of suppressing you know that desire and they use the crystal as a means of saying it's okay you know i can do it because because i'm under the influence and i'm not responsible for my actions it gives them permission to do that it sounds very familiar in terms of alcohol or marijuana or anything where people it's as though we take our responsibility and say okay here's who i am without the drugs or alcohol now i'll put the responsibility on the drugs or alcohol to free me up to do but there's a really um evil undercurrent really in in what you've said one that's very uh distressing and i've heard at a number of aids conferences um this backlash as you referred to it this notion that the the central meaning of gayness was about sexual liberation it was a way of rebelling but it wasn't only about roles it was about uh striking out against this uh sexophobic society and saying this is this is a good thing that we're doing we are the liberators of society by our actions and then comes aids which is exactly the uh kind of the the opposite force saying you know you think that this is what you're going to be about but now you have to risk death if you're going to be about that right exactly or you have to change you have to do something else and the only ways we could think of to change were essentially safe sex i mean we haven't thought of another way to change so here's an entire community either dying or practicing safe sex and what you're saying is that we we've heard that there's a an epidemic of crystal use that it's really about this backlash i think to a large extent is about this backlash um i think you know the other reasons that uh that come into play are reasons of self-esteem reasons of self-worth of being able to you know some of the same reasons that people use alcohol in order to be able to feel liberated to feel like they can talk to people that they can be more gregarious be more lively that it unleashes the real them and uh there's a lot of there is a lot of internalized homophobia and a lot of uh self-esteem issues in the gay male population particularly when you're dealing in a uh in a city like los angeles where uh being out and being one of the in crowd and being when going to the gym and all those things seem to matter so much um there's a lot of uh uh people have a lot of of issues of value of their own self-worth and because they see everybody around them who seems to be so gregarious and so happy and so out there and so i think they use the crystal as a way of of equaling that of being on that level also well it's it's interesting there's a real dichotomy in in terms of how of using substance to deal with internalized homophobia because if you're homophobic you would hate being gay or hate yourself for being gay but you are gay so the drugs really allow you to live out something that you hate without taking responsibility for it and but people are very worried about this what's what are the dangers in it i don't mean to sound naive but um what are the dangers in this well crystal um and you know crystal's only one of many drugs that are pretty rampant right now it you know to me it's the most insidious because it is it's a very seductive drug the high uh is very intense and people feel very powerful on it but you know what tends to happen is because it's fairly long acting people will go on binges that will that may last for days on end and you know during that time not only are they subjected to the effects of the crystal which is an amphetamine so you know things such as jitteriness and palpitations and increased blood pressure you know um with long-term usage they can develop paranoia and anxiety and uh there's a tremendous the tremendous come down when you come off of the crystal people become extremely depressed and uh you know may stay in bed for days and uh and and one of the reasons why they go on binges and why they continue to use is to avoid that depression to avoid that coming down and so people end up not only having the side effects of the crystal but then that leads them into other other behaviors that are not healthy for instance they don't sleep they don't eat properly they don't drink enough fluids and you know and if you look at the sub segment of the population that's hiv positive that's that's really deadly uh if you're not taking enough demanding good care of yourself and getting enough rest and eating properly so it becomes a very lethal drug there's a lot of fatalism though i mean when you say it's deadly someone who's hiv positive may be smiling to himself at this very minute watching the show thinking yet deadly what isn't deadly you know life is deadly to me um but i was also interested in some things that you had said about uh men who are negative in the community we've also heard about um a a sort of a psychological backlash on their part would you say i think that's i think that also is really true there's uh there's a sense of fatalism certainly that i that i hear amongst people who are hiv negative one that uh that it's going to happen to them eventually and i think that the crystal uh allows them to uh um to to let that happen in some ways they you know they want it they feel they feel guilt um about the fact that they've remained negative while all their friends and all the people around them are positive and i think the crystal allows them to uh you know to expose themselves to risky situations that they feel you know they they deserve to be in and that that's going to happen to them anyway not just unsafe sex you're talking about other kind of risky yeah even though that's a very risky even though that's a very risky situation um you know they uh also will put themselves at uh at tremendous physical harm and endanger with uh and in different situations um uh you know just just physical violence uh extremely rough sexual practices uh a lot of s m bondage type things that that really can cause a lot of physical harm well it it may be too strong for me to say so but it sounds to me like a form of suicide i mean certainly high-risk behavior is like a russian roulette in a way and um this is a community with a very high degree of suicide especially among our young people as we are learning more and more and i i don't know whether you'd agree with the opinion but especially for men who say might as well get over seroconverting um going to happen anyway or i shouldn't be the only you know survivor's guild it it seems to all tie together for me with the with the internalized and external homophobia it's hard for us to live in the world and this is an answer that people choose um but you seem to be i mean i hate to say but we all seem to be in the rescue business here is is rescue possible what happens yeah absolutely i think that uh rescue is very possible um it takes uh it takes a tremendous amount of will on on the person uh and it's not easy it's it's not easy at all crystal is a very difficult uh drug to uh to get off of and i have uh you know had many patients who have had multiple relapses before finally being able to kick the habit and you know a lot of it comes from really wanting to make a change and also from getting some some psychotherapeutic intervention to help them you know along that path um you know i think that's really that's really critical i mean one of the uh the things that we had talked about is that in order to deal with the addiction you really have to deal with some of the root causes of where the addiction comes from and unless people you know willing to look at that and sometimes that can be very difficult it's it's hard to look at yourself and to see your own happiness and where that comes from but unless people are willing to do that or able to do that it's very difficult to kick the addiction but for those who can do that it's very rewarding well and sometimes of course what you have to do when you do kick the addiction is you begin on your very first steps of looking at yourself although when you see the monster that you thought you were it often turns out you're not that much of a monster it's kind of a relief to find out kathy what do you what do you see in uh at van ness house i guess we run the rescue mission i certainly hope so crystal rescue mission um you know so many of our men and women have used alcohol or drugs to even get the courage to go to the bars as gay men and lesbians um and it is the homophobia and it's theirs and what they see out there um the crystal use is rampant there's no doubt what it's doing in our community and we see the people whose lives have kind of come to a halt there's really nowhere for them to go it's like they didn't die which for many of them is is a sad thing to realize and recovery and having these doors open to them is not what their choice was their choice was out so we jump that hurdle with them and and uh and and try to move forward and and like was said earlier there's a lot of relapse with crystal um you know so it's kind of advanced what we do is try to establish a home where they will feel safe to come back and tell us what's going on free of judgment we try to build a home that is different than the home they believe they grew up in as they stay sober over time many of our residents realize they ran away before their families had a chance to throw them away and many of them as we can build the bridges back to their family we get the support but what we do initially is just try to build a safe place for them to tell us the truth about what's going on and give them to some skills to go out and and exist in this world rather than compete you know the gay community and especially the men and here where we live it's so competitive i mean the body's got to be the certain shape and the clothes have to be a certain kind and you know you got to look that certain look and uh unfortunately crystal fuels that ability like we said you know you can go you cannot eat for a lot of days and if you go to the gym every day and you don't eat every day and you do a little crystal you can achieve that look that is seemingly the look that this community is about and and it's not true you know we are all sizes shapes and everything and uh you know that's what i hope people get to hear and and that whatever they're using the drugs and alcohol for they don't need to you can you can be who you are and and make it in this community without the drugs and alcohol but they just they provide such a buffer well it's funny there's so there's an interesting crossover to me and again i always tread a little bit on thin ice about this stuff but women were always and still always are so apparently concerned about achieving a certain look a model's look and the men in our community seem to have adopted that notion looksism that is not necessarily i mean it has its own kind of flavor but because it's not essentially feminine but it really is about what makes you valuable in your society and for so many years that's was the truth for women you had to look a certain way that was your only value and to adopt that kind of sort of negative approach in the flip side we were talking about alcohol and i assume crystal and other drugs as well what what how is it acted out in the lesbian community secretly where so many women for so long and lesbians drank in the bars or drank at home i mean and i think a lot more at home than in the bars i mean and just by i mean there's one lesbian bar here in town and there's 10 men's bars and certainly there's the same number of lesbians looking for treatment as to his gay men so they're clearly drinking somewhere but what crystal's doing is crystal there are many lesbian underground bars and when we talked about earlier the sex that men are having on crystal women are doing the same thing s m bondage and the different kinds of sex that crystal gives them the freedom to have is very risky and very scary because it's putting lesbians at risk of transmission that at least at the van s house and what we've heard prior to crystal wasn't going on you know the women are just doing high-risk sex and and lesbians weren't doing that you know four five six years ago but crystal gives you a freedom to do things sexually that you know really no drug before it and it's and this mix of crystal that we have i mean it's amphetamines it's been around a long time but uh it's created a sexual freedom that is just putting people at risk and lesbians i mean it's uh well that's the same it's fun that's the flip side of the emulation factor in a sense i guess for so long they were telling us you know lesbians really need to lighten up about sex i mean this is the problem that women have they're so uptight about it and they really need to do something about this well apparently women are getting the message but not internally really able to go that far and so this hyper masculinity notion of you know pushing the edge of the envelope and being very sexual and all those things that actually a lot of men are rejecting these days women are now way late in history adopting and emulating and this seems to be connected to me where you're freed up to do all these things that are really essentially bad for you and and really cost the community enormously well in the rate of abuse i mean lesbian battering and abuse that goes on around alcohol and and in drugs too but alcohol i mean you know we don't talk about lesbians we don't talk about what lesbians do and you know there is the amount of abuse is i don't know what the percentage is but it's high i don't know how many well the the gay community services center here told me the other day that half of the people that come into them for counseling men and women are dealing with domestic abuse in gay and lesbian relationships well you know that's it's actually a subject i know a lot about having worked in the issues for 20 years or so and a lot of people blame their violence on drugs or alcohol which we've generally rejected because you actually talked about all of you freeing up people taking away inhibitions well if your inhibitions are taken away you are your real self you're doing what you really want to do not necessarily though because one of the things that happens with alcohol and and i think with uh meth there's an irritant quality it's as if the drug gets in there and puts us on edge in a different way i i really don't i think it's dangerous to think that the person under the influence is themselves they've lost some inhibition but they've gotten some other stuff that is is acting there too so it's it's really not necessarily uh either person i mean you have to kind of get sober to find out who the person is which is another concept is the scary part for some people we're going to take a break and we'll be right back don't go away because this just gets more and more interesting last night i met the most incredible girl so sexy the way she held her cigarette her clothes reeked of tobacco her fingernails were kind of yellow later we kissed it was like licking an ashtray and then she whispered the sweetest thing in my ear i think i'm in love this is 911 [Music] stay on the line tell me what happened it just started freaking out smiling thingies and he put his fist through the window and now he's playing he was using any drugs yes do you know what he took oh it's his speed math i think okay how much did he play i'm not sure we got an ambulance going over there right now hi welcome back to get used to it i'm sheila cuell your host and today we're talking about substance abuse my guests whom i hope you met earlier are kathy watt from van ness recovery house susan chasine from the alcoholism center for women and dr kevin williams who practices at pacific oaks well we've talked a lot about crystal we've talked quite a bit about alcohol we haven't said a word about pot that nice drug that safe drug that medicinal drug what do you think anybody one of my favorite subjects because i came up when marijuana was really gathering popularity and thought nobody could get addicted and believed that if the system was telling me it was bad it was probably good and i see a lot of that denial all around us and even in some people who are recovering they think they can safely maintain with marijuana but doesn't usually work right that's the scary thing that i see is so many people who have relapsed i mean they've been sober for any period of time some of them a long time so many relapses are tried tied to pot they think they can just smoke a little bit and maintain yeah and as rampant as uh as crystal and alcoholism is i mean pot is so pervasive in the community and i used to think that there was a um that there was a difference between uh substance use and substance abuse and you know more and more i'm seeing that you know that's that substance use really eventually leads down the road to abuse it really is just a slippery slope and i think that pot in many ways starts people down that slippery slope well our enemies in the right wing have been the ones talking all the time about how you know smoke a joint and the next thing you know you're going to be a complete drug addict and i think it's made us wary of the anti-drug message because it was always linked with those same folks who were anti-giving us anti-gay messages and so not only pushing the edge of the envelope but also doubting and that's i think why it's so important why i wanted you here on this show because we're all gay and lesbian people here we care about the community and we're saying this is a slippery slope and i i think the truth of that message has to come out do you agree absolutely i mean marijuana is more like alcohol than any other drug in my opinion both because it's so widely available and it's socially acceptable there are people who use it on a regular basis and don't seem to progress either to have major impairments or to have problems there are so heavy social drinkers or regular social drinkers who don't drive under the influence and don't get into battering so at that level it's a value judgment you're you're you're physically and mentally having some effects but if they're not getting in the way of some major life experience it's up to you if you want to experience life on life's terms it's fine to stop but you know nobody's going to tell you if you're not having any problems that you i'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't use it for a value judgment but it does creep up over time and a marijuana particularly stays in the body for a long time it hangs out in the fat cells and even if you're off for a few days you're still not completely clear of it it takes people who've been smoking it for years six months to a year to get it out of their systems and especially now the pot that's on the streets is so much more potent than the pot of years before i mean they've perfected all these ways of growing it and breeding it or whatever they're doing that it's so potent and so it's going to change how long people are able to use it without seemingly having anything go wrong too because it's just not the same drug it was 10 years out there and i think that's very scary well i want to talk a little bit about recovery i mean we we seem to be pretty much in agreement that um the best thing to be a sober and of course looking from the other side of that wall at getting sober it doesn't look like it's the best thing to be it's hard to envision life without that but on the other side of the wall it's very much like coming out to me where you think i couldn't do this everyone will hate me it'll be awful then you do it and everyone says it was the best thing i did for myself you know was coming out and sobriety is like that too but it's hard to know is there something the community can do to help the individual i think our community is very aware of the impact that drugs and alcohol have had on certain friends we all have a friend that we can say yeah and they got sober and it really changed their life but those are the people who we really see that hit a bottom but there are lots of people who are functioning that really have that same level of drug addiction or alcoholism but they're just managing to move fast enough to keep it together and and i think in our community it's becoming more acceptable to be sober so it's getting easier for those people to look at their lives honestly and say wow maybe i better do something and and i think susan can talk about really where we're going with prevention and a new we kind of have this new we have a new commission yeah we do project yeah yeah we we believe that the community uh can take responsibility for our environment and start shaping it the way we want it to be some of that has to do with friends saying to friends i'm concerned about you on an individual level but some of it has to do with things like festivals and how alcohol is served in bars and clubs and so we're beginning something in los angeles called the community prevention council for the lesbian gay bisexual and transgender communities now clearly transgender people do not always consider themselves part of the gay community but they have some of the same issues in terms of discrimination and and we're open to them if they want to be a part of it so that's a very exciting project it's going to have a kickoff on uh march 12th and then at the beginning of gay pride week we'll be presenting some of the results back from a needs assessment that we're doing now say more about ways that the community supports drug and alcohol use i mean i you know one of the things that that we had talked about um was how uh how the the alcohol sponsors have so infiltrated into you know gay and lesbian events how you look at something like the age ride which is sponsored by tanqueray and you see that there is a tremendous amount of support from the different alcohol companies in this community and one way i think of you know the community dealing with the issues of drug and alcoholism is you know is to look for the sponsors to look for other people to sponsor their events right it's not just tangerine you look on the back page of any of our magazines absolutes there you look on the back page of the lesbian news and it's stoli they know that we're a big market i guess for these products that's unfortunate but they also came in at a time and offered money to agencies to be able to to sponsor them to do events that that have become very important and and i don't think it's and it's funny being the one from the recovery house but i don't think it's necessarily them as much as we have to have an alternative if we're gonna accept that money if we're gonna say yes tanqueray come and bring what you bring we also need to have a responsibility to provide non-alcoholic for those who who choose not to drink i think we we can say most all of them have a counterpart that is a non-alcohol beverage and to say bring that with you too i i having to raise the amount of money that i have to raise to keep us going i'm i believe that it's great that we get that money i think it comes on our part to figure out how to have it become more responsible and say to people we're not telling you to drink it's kind of more of the education tanqueray doesn't sponsor it so that everybody will become a tanqueray drinker i really don't believe that i believe they want to help us and yes they get something out of it but i think there's other people we can bring in okay guess what susan i don't agree well i i think they do want everybody to uh to see them in a positive light and uh brand loyalty gets established and so but i'm not a toe i i would prefer it if the community didn't accept any alcohol subsidies at all just like i think that tobacco subsidies are not a good idea and we haven't talked about tobacco which is another drug of abuse and people it's interesting because people are beginning to be so critical of the tobacco industry now that we know what they know and what they didn't tell us well the alcohol industry knows that something like 90 percent of the quantity of alcohol gets consumed by a small percentage of people who are likely to have problems it's not just a neutral thing their their market share comes out of the heavy drinkers and they want people to think that it's a normal part of life and so anyway that's a little bit of a soapbox but i do agree with kathy it isn't an all or nothing thing i might advocate that we not accept alcohol subsidies but i'm willing to say if we do let's not sell ourselves cheap let's put it in small letters not above aids ride not in a typeface that's as big as aids right or something like that and let's have like kathy said too other products uh things like sparkling water the san francisco gay pride festival last year had calistoga as a sponsor we don't want to ignore the fact that when other beverages are available people go for them and it was very successful in san diego gay pride limits the sale of alcohol to a beer garden and people have to keep their containers in that area so there are ways to do it in a progressively more responsible and healthy setting apart from an all or nothing right well the anti-tobacco movement got a big boost once we started saying you know what even if i don't smoke secondhand smoke can kill me and i think there needs to be more consciousness about the impact of other substance abuse on the lives of people who are not abusing on the victims of domestic violence on the people you know on the taxes that we pay for you know just to clean up accidents um and all that sort of thing or i mean i know of a a horrific accident that happened during some of our worst reigns this year up near santa barbara where a gay man who was impaired drove and killed somebody and his his friendship group his family of choice was in terrible denial i know somebody who did raise it with him and had talked to him and you know was able to say at least after he died and and he killed someone in the act at least i said everything to him that i could so right see i think that's my thing about the alcohol and it's with anything we take the if we want if we're going to take the money we can set up parameters for taking that money and if we say give us a space that is alcohol free if you're going to do this for us if you're going to build this festival we want part of it to be so that people who choose not to be around the alcohol can be in the same environment um so much of the socialization in this community has some form of alcohol with it and it's everywhere and until we start making it okay for those who choose not to drink to have the same space and to feel just as safe as those drinking do in that space we're we're not going to get there because if i have to give up socializing if i stop drinking then i have to give up socializing and that's the only way i get to go be gay why why am i going to stop and so that's why i really think this this whole prevention thing once we get it going and can get it out there we will open the doors for people to stop or to look at their behavior more because right now there's not a lot of alternatives if you're not out except maybe at night or on the weekends when you can go be social here we don't have a lot of alternatives for you yeah you know one of the things just getting back to what we as a community can do it's one of the things i think that we can be better at is that policing ourselves and one of the one of the interesting ironies i find in life is uh when you look at something like for instance the gay men's health crisis uh their morning party they have every year in new york uh that you know there was uh an article about the rampant drug use that at that type of an event and it's just it's very interesting that you have an event whose purpose is to raise money for aids and aids care and aids prevention but yet there's such rampant drug use and we know all the you know the problems with drug use and and what it leads people into doing so you know what we need to do is police ourselves better and say you know at this you know that this isn't acceptable that we can't have these types of events well like any other victims who are in pain i mean we use it as an excuse and this community is not well and is not great on its own self-esteem as a community i mean we reflect the individuals in the community and i am i guess i feel more uh i feel more strongly about alcohol-free places i mean i think that anti-tobacco folks have been really appropriately obnoxious about it and they've been very successful and we have changed a mindset about it out there because we've said you know i want a law that this doesn't go on here and i want it you know pushed further and further and further which we've managed to do somewhat with alcohol if we did that in the community if we were harsh about it socialization is different from addiction right if you want to go somewhere and socialize and you want it to not have alcohol there for you that's something we can do as a community you know i think you told an interesting story about um conflict with the neighborhood too far if it's part of that but the other part that kind of really shows that you can do it in west hollywood i i really believe there are more 12-step meetings than any other city around and what happened is the 12-step meetings grew coffee houses grew and it's really interesting that now we have i bet there's a coffee house for every two bars well that's part of it so many people became sober that one coffee house opened and here's an alcohol-free place where we can go socialize and be with our people and it took off and so now there's another one so it can happen and and people need that i think we've done that part but it needs to be on much greater levels i don't what else can we do well um just talking about organizations i think if an organization would like to make a contribution have an event that doesn't serve alcohol you know once a year or as often as you have one that does if you're not prepared to go all the way uh lesbianism has adopted a policy that they don't serve alcohol at their events uh and so there are a lot of of i kind of you said a few minutes ago i don't know if you meant it sheila but our community is somehow sick or something i think there's a lot of health hanging out there are a lot more organizations where people find self-esteem and we're we may be a little fragmented in that now there are groups for the lesbians in film and tv and there are you know the the gay librarians or scientists or the the atheists and you know so we don't all get together maybe like in the beginning people had that unity but wherever we are there will be some substance abuse issues and people who are able to to deal with them in some way will be making a contribution well maybe we ought to see as an aspect of our community support if we can't engage individuals and i don't know i i was thinking of you know of a pledge kind of thing to to do something or to say something or to go somewhere or whatever to help someone else get off whatever they're on because i don't know that people do it alone it's really hard to do it alone i mean that to me is the value of knowing that there's somewhere to go at the end of this program i want i've asked each of you to bring names and phone numbers and as you know watching in places that are not los angeles these phone numbers uh can still be called because some of them are going to be national numbers um but there are places i would think everywhere that uh that we have community now that that can help or at least we'll have the referrals for the people of where to go for help um i think the important thing for that people could do to take your message there is forever if you're going to go out with friends make a commitment that we're going to go out and do a non-alcohol night we're going to go out this weekend and it's three or four people let's go out to dinner and do it without alcohol and as you start to see the differences in conversation and in how your evening unfolds or your afternoon or your day then you can get a perspective of what the alcohol or the drugs are doing and then you might say oh because until you can at least get with a few friends and agree to do it together like you said alone it's not going to happen very often but as they agree to kind of do it okay we're going to try this the more that happens or somebody will say yes i'm having a dinner party and we're not going to have alcohol and and get to see what those kind of events can be like without it then then some change will start to happen but it's very true it's not going to i don't think it will happen alone well it's an it's a different situation with crystal um at least it seems to be and this is um from really what you have all said uh that the the the value of crystal goes to um really lack of inhibition sexually primarily though not only because you were talking about self-esteem the ability to to be more vocal in public etc how do we how do we help folks see that maybe those that valuing that activity and needing a crutch in order to engage you know satisfactorily in it is something they they need to leave behind that's a really really difficult that's a that's that's a very difficult one because because it really does require i mean i think a lot of um of soul searching and a lot of uh of introspection um and to some extent it requires a great deal of uh of one-on-one on one of one-on-one work um you know i think that it is um uh it's much easier for us to uh you know to be supportive but it's it's it's it's very difficult for uh for the person who is involved in the whole crystal quote-unquote lifestyle to do it unless they unless they have professional help and i think they really need to have a psychotherapeutic intervention and and intervention with somebody who knows about drug addiction and about crystal addiction i don't think that that um you know just supportive friends is enough alone i i think it's definitely beneficial but i also have to say that finding a group of people who've been there in terms of self-help yes with with 12-step or some other form of self-help it is so different for someone to be in a room with other people who've been there and hear from them some of the same things that they never told anyone and so they know that you know that's true that they really have understood it that um if you try to do it alone and don't get that kind of support it can be very difficult but if you and certainly if you combine the two it's the best of all but if if you don't have the money or or can't immediately find a place uh to get the skilled therapeutic help find some folks in recovery and hopefully some of them will have used the same drug so they'll have some of the same stories the other thing that that i just think is very important to tell people is that when you stop you're experiencing withdrawals even if it's not a physical symptom that your cravings and your discomfort are part of the withdrawal and they go away because it's so tempting to think oh this is life without it i don't want any part of this right and just as there is there a meetings out there there are cma meetings crystal meth anonymous meetings for people where they can go and get that support and be surrounded by people who've been through what they've been through and i think the other part with crystal and and being the sexual drug that it is is the importance that we need to give people the space and we need to give gay men the space to talk about what they did give up sexually or what their minds are telling them that they had to give up sexually and crystal's allowing them to do something that they think they had to give up and then we have the message out there about safer sex safer sex well what if i don't have safer sex you know what if i slip up what if i'm just tired of being safe and i go we we don't have the space out there from for men to tell the truth and so then crystal and or alcohol is a way to block those feelings of oh i didn't do it right you know and one of the things that the van s house in our getting guys to give up crystal is for them to tell the truth about what crystal allowed them to do and then to engage in the conversations about healthy sex and that they're not the only ones who who had these ideas they did and and to give them the freedom and the okay to talk about it i i don't believe with all the work we did on safer sex we ever gave men and or women the place is to talk about how difficult it was or if we didn't do it perfect whatever that is for the individual and so then one more time we have a reason for drugs and alcohol to block those feelings of shame and i think it doesn't matter i mean i if you're sober or whatever if you can find somebody that you can confide in those secrets that you're beating yourself up for around sex and that and with crystal that you can eventually get to a place where you will be able to have enjoyable great sex without crystal but not until you talk about the stuff you've done on it because it is it creates such a fantasy i mean i to try to just stop and think okay now great no crystal how am i going to have sex this weekend i i really believe most guys would just choose to go get loaded again i mean i think that's true i think they would we've got to give them the space to talk about it and tell the truth where this drug lets them go and and then how you can build a life without it and that's true of any substance i mean i it's heightened perhaps but a lot of women have histories of childhood sexual abuse that they don't even have a clue exist much less having the memories and men have those experiences we we started out learning about women but now we know men do too and whatever the shame um the fact that that they're not the perfect mother or that uh they don't they're not able to be superwoman or that they've been on welfare and don't know where they're going to get a job or any of the things that we think are so unique to ourselves again in sharing with somebody else and hopefully eventually with a group or being able to come out about it it's healing and then well what was the big deal you know well i guess that's why i compared it to coming out because of my own you know relief really at and in an unexpected way of telling the truth and it's the same with people who've talked about childhood sexual abuse and finally it's not a confession so much as what you said it's it's saying your story and having other people go i get it i've been there i understand and i think that's been the beauty of our community because we've been so ghettoized too that we've had to do that you know to hear each other's stories and and to say i've been there i get it well i want to thank the three of you very very much um for being here today and um and especially for telling the truth and trying to kind of elucidate what is really a pretty hidden aspect i think of our community it's the one that we all know but we don't talk about too much and today we talked about it um and if you're out there watching and you think that this may in any way be about you and you have even a random stray thought that you might like to do something about it we're going to publish some phone numbers at the end of this show i want you to make that call because the healthy life and the sober life is a great life and you can get used to it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so you