ESCAPING ADDICTIONS

Sapphic Traffic / Lesbians Fight To Break Free

I recently kicked an addiction that involved spending up to two hours a day
sitting in stairwells, leaning out windows, perching on crowded balconies
and freezing my ass off in sub-zero temperatures. All this effort was for
the sake of consuming a legal narcotic. I stopped because it was killing my
creativity, my lightness and my happiness.

Unfortunately, addiction is all too familiar in the lesbian community.
Forms of addiction vary from blatantly obvious alcohol and cigarette
consumption to more nebulous cocaine-induced self-esteem enhancement dosages.

Fact: Homosexual women consume significantly more alcohol than their
heterosexual counterparts. We also have significantly higher rates of
addiction to tobacco and other drugs, and are more likely to carry our
addictions later into life.

Some of this may be due to our history. In the past, we were left with no
place to gather other than bars. Although the lesbian community is much
more diverse than it once was, our social lives continue to revolve around
alcohol. It is all the more difficult to avoid because we are targeted by
alcohol businesses that advertise in our publications and sponsor our
events. The whole partying scene that surrounds us is self-destructive. We
should not be self-critical of celebrating, but perhaps there are ways to
honour our strengths without hurting ourselves.

For many lesbians, addictions are a means of escaping reality and
concealing insecurities and are symptomatic of the stresses in our lives.
Every woman who comes out must embark upon a journey that is uniquely her
own. We learn who we are through self-exploration. Certainly, the lives we
are living presently do not in any way resemble the expectations that were
impressed upon us by our families, communities and society in general. Not
only have we had to choose our own paths -- we have had to build our own
roads. Forging our paths is what makes us unique. There is no history for
us to fall back on, so we make it as we live our lives.

But there are innumerable pressures that we undergo through this process:
coming out to our families, choosing not to be closeted at work,
experiencing discrimination from people we know and those we do not, as
well as enduring the continual stress involved in coming out repeatedly
throughout our lives. The very worst of these stresses is internalized
homophobia. We are programmed by society to embrace negative perceptions of
lesbians from an early age. It is tragic and inevitable that incarnations
of this prejudice make their way into the adult lesbian's self-image. We
have to fight for who we are every day. Why then do we choose the
self-destructive behaviour of substance abuse to mask our authentic voice?

Because alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana are socially condoned -- as is
cocaine in some circles -- we do not often recognize that we have
addictions. When we are addicted, we look for people who are dependent on
the same substances as ourselves. We are complicit, so we are not forced to
think that there is actually something wrong with our lifestyle. Whether it
is food or heroin, an addiction is a coping mechanism that masks feelings
of worthlessness. It defers self-actualization. In fact, one ceases to
develop when addicted.

Like other communities, we are typified by our history, customs, values and
social and behavioural norms. Lesbian culture has clearly defined
festivals, rituals, symbols, heroes, language, art, music and literature.
For our community to overcome addiction, we must become mobilized by our
culture and motivated by our strengths.