A Queer in Recovery: Pride Gone Awry

Pride has been a complicated season for me over the years, and it still stirs up a genuine sense of intense discomfort. In years past, I have seen the month of June both sober and drinking excessively, and both have delivered me to the same destination: I dislike Pride. I think it’s because when I look at myself in the mirror, I don’t often find a lot to truly be proud of. 

I was drunk the day that I came out. The first time I ever uttered the words “I’m gay” to another human being was on the day of my 26th birthday. By that very same night, I was in jail and contemplating every moment that led me to that place. In those long hours that I spent in the drunk tank before my release, I knew two things: 

1. I had a drinking problem.

2. I was never going back in the closet.

While in many ways, I wish my DUI arrest was a wakeup call to my alcoholism, I can also say that I am grateful that my disease progressed the way that it did. It took me almost 10 more years of active alcoholism after that misdemeanor charge before I was truly convinced I couldn’t get sober on my own. 

I was scared of not drinking, afraid of what a sober life would look like. Would I lose everyone in my life and be shunned from social situations and queer spaces? Would I be able to cope with the horrible things that happened to me before I started drinking and the horrible things that I had done as a result of my drinking? Would I fail, again, at trying to quit for good? I was at the point where I didn’t want to keep drinking, but I didn’t want to stop, a game of bargaining and denial that I was losing on a daily basis.

By the time I checked myself into rehab, I knew without a reasonable doubt that this disease would kill me sooner than later if I kept drinking, and I needed that level of conviction in order to finally get help.

Similarly, I didn’t truly realize I was queer until one day I suddenly felt like a lightning bolt struck me from the sky. A lingering question had become an unmistakable truth, and I couldn’t think about anything else. Just like the fear of not knowing what a sober life would look like, I wasn’t sure what a queer life would look like. Would I be excommunicated from my family? Would my friends think I was gross? Would the LGBTQ community accept me? I was afraid.

Growing up, I knew I was different, and I felt that there was something wrong with me.

I felt broken, unsalvageable. I felt invisible; unlovable. I felt unwanted; ashamed. I didn’t have the language then that I do now when talking about the complex ways that external experiences conflate internal self-worth; I just knew something about me was bad. The idea of pride in myself was not only foreign; it was unimaginable.

I also was raised in a religious household, and with that came fear of God, fear of sin, and fear of being gay. I didn’t fit in with my church friends, and I didn’t fit in with my school friends. I was discontent, no matter how much I tried to change myself and my surroundings. 

I searched for something to fill the void, something that didn’t make me feel so different and unwanted, and alcohol became a miraculous remedy. I was fun, confident, and felt more included when I drank, and that worked for a really long time. When I drank, I was consumed with a false sense of pride. I became reliant on it as a form of social lubricant and as a way to feel more comfortable with myself, until I couldn’t uncouple my drinking from my identity. 

When I first found the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous at age 21, I was far from proud. I was living the dangerous life of an early addict, always in search of my next drunk with little to no regard to my personal safety. I was hiding from myself within a veil of inebriation, and I attended my first 12-step meeting with my head hung low and my tail between my legs. 

The people in those rooms were warm, welcoming, inviting, and inclusive, and I felt like maybe I could finally fit in. I found a place where I could restore my dignity and become truly proud of myself. While that first try at sobriety only lasted me a little while, I am still grateful for those early days of sobriety before the subsequent relapses, before the self-hatred returned, and before the shame took hold of me.

While I have gone through a lot of iterations of addiction recovery and embracing queerness, I find that I still struggle with feeling the “correct amount” of pride. 

After having been out of the closet for almost a decade, I have been able to dispel a lot of my acquired guilt around not being the child my parents thought they wanted me to be, the person my religion told me I needed to be, and the conditionally loveable human I thought I never would be. I am proud that I am queer, but I do believe that a degree of internalized homophobia still exists in me. 

Additionally, while I have acquired seven months of continuous sobriety, and I am a proud addict in recovery, I have a lot of shame around the fact that I am an addict at all. I don’t always want to be that person; I don’t want to admit that I cannot control my drinking, and I don’t want to have to face life on life’s terms and not have a way of numbing out the feelings. I also still carry with me fear of relapsing, which I believe is a healthy fear that keeps me planted in my priorities.

I frequently still feel uncomfortable in my own skin, and my emotions can grab a hold of me so quickly that it can make my head spin, but I have found ways in which I make recovery work for me so that I feel safe and affirmed, and subsequently proud. I have learned that part of being in recovery, whether it be from addiction, from religion, or from insecurity, is that I have to lead with compassion for myself first. Only then do I stand a chance at finding an authentic, genuine pride in all of my identities, my relationships, and my life. 

-An anonymous queer in recovery

Email a.queer.in.recovery@gmail.com for additional support and resources.