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I was in immense, immense amounts of pain when I was at high school. Um, just huge amount. I was so confused and so terrified. I mean, I couldn't walk down a corridor without everyone yelling Gobbler and Mary and and everything. And and, um, when I found drugs, they, um they took the edge off everything, and they they just made everything so much more bearable. And, um, [00:00:30] I had a sense of that, you know, I could I could handle anything in the corridors and anything in the classroom for a long time and till I could get stoned again and when I could get stoned again. Then, um it took it all. It took it all away, and it made it somehow seem bearable because I could get away from it all. Um, so I kind of I really do celebrate the kid. Uh, you know, Hamish, when I was when I was, um 15, 16, 17 [00:01:00] when I started, um, smoking dope and drinking alcohol because I think it saved my life because if the other alternative which, of course, you see in, um well, I mean, I've heard of so much for young gay men as we just cut ourselves. And, um, I'm glad I didn't kill myself. I have a zest for life and a passion for life still today, which seems to have held through everything that, um I really wanted to survive I a quiet determination [00:01:30] at all or fight. And, um, I found it better to fight. And, um, to become, um, an angry young man. I was really angry and I could be bitchy, and I could verbally dress anyone down and cut anyone down. I think it's a lot a lot of where gay humour comes from. And it certainly was where mine was based. It was based on defending myself from these, um, kids in the hole in the corridors when I was walking down the corridor at school [00:02:00] because, um, I never knew what was I mean, I always knew it would. I never knew what was gonna come at me, but, um, I kind of always knew whenever I had to walk down the corridor, I would always know that I was gonna get hassled. And also there was other. Apparently, there was other gay kids at the school, but because I was so, um uh so isolated because of I was out. In a sense, none of the gay kids wanted to know me because they didn't want to get tarred [00:02:30] with the same brush. And, um and I was certainly, um didn't really want to know any of the perfect kids anyway because I had to be so staunch. So I was so isolated to fit so really alone not having let the the skills to be able to talk to mom and Dad about stuff or anyone else and just, um, yeah, got stoned. It was so much easier. [00:03:00] The thing is, I think, that our alcohol and drug use very much does mirror what goes on in society and does very is very responsive to environmental pressures. So that before homosexual law reform, the pressures on the individual encouraged alcohol and drug use. The social ghettoization encouraged alcohol and drug use right across our community. It's what you did. [00:03:30] You met your friends at the pub and drank. There was nowhere else to go. You didn't go with your friends to cafes, or I mean, there weren't many then, but to the to the other options. If you wanted to be yourself you are in a drinking situation after homosexual law reform that slowly whittled away. And so therefore, some of the pressures to drink and drug use with a maturing lesbian and gay population lost [00:04:00] some of its power. You see it still with the younger ones. Younger lesbians gaming are still coping with all the issues of coming out and integration of of their identity and behaviour, et cetera. And so I still drinking and drug using as much as ever. Well, I moved to Wellington when I was 17, and, uh, straight away it was I [00:04:30] was working in a hotel and, um, his fourth cooked salad hand and pot washer basically and, um, trying to get trying to get somewhere. And I met. I met, um, older men who were, um, taken by my my youth and innocence I get I don't know, they liked me, and I like the attention and, um and they they used, they drunk and [00:05:00] they got stoned. And one guy used to hit up. And it was when I found speed, and, um, I never used intravenously, but, um, I, um, would have speed and and a speed ball crystal methedrine it was It was really nice, but I don't. I mean, I got carried out of the house with my eyes rolled back and apparently IOD, but I don't remember anything about it. And, um, I was living [00:05:30] here, and there was a do in society. It was the only gay, um, as such. It was a Victoria club, which was supposedly for older men. And I went there too, though, and, uh, the do in society and the Dorian Society, you could pay $15 on the door, and it was an open bar. You could drink as much as you liked, and, um well, I followed suit. I drank as much as I liked and got laid. You know, it was pretty much what [00:06:00] what we did. We were just gay men. I mean, I didn't have any role models that said that, um, that there was any other way to live life. I didn't exactly, um, in the environment that I was living in, it wasn't particularly, um, I didn't see other people doing life any other way. And I met people and tried to formulate relationships based on, um, being off my head. So, um, none of them really came [00:06:30] to very much. I guess so. II. I, um, just worked and lived and worked and lived here and got more promiscuous and did more dope. And, uh, a friend of mine suggested that maybe, you know, there wasn't a gay escort agency and that maybe we should do that. So we tried that for a while, but the cute ones, the nice ones, I'd give it to them for free because I didn't really care. And the really, really awful ones, I couldn't [00:07:00] do it. Surprise, surprise. And, um, I just thought they revolted and cheap and tacky. I remember my 21st birthday was a job. You know, I stayed at the royal around, and, um, and Oriental Bay around there. And, um, I was 21 and I was in the bill for dinner, and the amount of money I made that night was $510. I can remember thinking, Fuck, I made [00:07:30] it. I thought I've made it, you know, because I could get that much money in a night. But it was my 21st birthday, and that was my 21st. You know, I thought that was pretty sad as well, but it's part of me. Thought it was sad. And the other part thought I made it. And then a few months later, I got my 21st present from my parents, and I thought, God, I really didn't mean that much to them. In a sense, it sounds awful to say it, but I kind of didn't really feel like, um, [00:08:00] I was that important. I'm the youngest of six kids, and mom and dad always used to go and visit everyone, and they never visited me. And, um, I mean, I used to think it was because I lived in the city and not many of my family did. But really, it was because I was gay and they didn't really want to be witness to my lifestyle. So they didn't come and visit things like that. But just, um, I've only learned about since I, um, stopped stopped. [00:08:30] Um, stop churning out and stop. Um, getting stoned. Um, come and clean. Well, when I first tried to give up, I gave up everything. Cigarettes, coffee, tea, sugar, kind of all or nothing. Kind of a guy, a bit of a perfectionist, and, um Well, It was a month of absolute nightmare. [00:09:00] And, um, I was just mad trying to be in control and, um, I don't know, The emotional stuff that comes up straight away is just horrendous. I don't know where it all was, but it just started to come and and I found myself just emotionally a wreck, trying to find anyone to help me take the pain away. They say that alcoholics and addicts don't have relationships. We [00:09:30] take hostages. And I think that was pretty much apparent in my when I first tried cleaning up. I'd latch on to anyone to help me, Um, help me, Just help me God. And, um, for the first six months of recovery after rehab, I just cried all the time at meetings, I'd go to meetings and I'd try and cheer, and I'd just cry and cry and, um, are so vulnerable. I was just [00:10:00] so vulnerable. I didn't know how to. I didn't know how to live. And people would go for coffee after a meeting or, um or just trying to be in social situations. And I wouldn't know what to say. Take away all the dope talk and the bitchiness and the the old behaviour. And I didn't have anything to say anymore. I felt so useless and so less than so, Let it lists another game in in some ways. Um, and I had to remove myself pretty much from [00:10:30] gay culture because, as I understood it at that stage, I now know that it's different. But there wasn't really anything that was, um, that wasn't centred, focused around alcohol and drugs. Well, it certainly hadn't been my experience. And most of my friends were, um, not alcoholics and drug addicts, but they were people who were, um, socially involved in in alcohol. So for the first three years, I couldn't really go, didn't I mean, I just had to, [00:11:00] um, go to recovery meetings and try and learn about myself. Learn about, um, the parts of myself that weren't full of self obsession or self righteousness or, you know, it's really strange. Early recovery is bizarre. You spend most of the time trying to get over yourself, but at the same time trying to work out who you are. It's really, really lonely being a gay man in recovery. Initially, I did some research about a year ago, two [00:11:30] years ago now on the experiences of lesbians and gay men who went through treatment services in New Zealand, and it was not very good the outcome of that. It wasn't very, very, um, optimistic. Most of the services, though claiming a tolerance and they believing that they were tolerant, had still not extended to homosexual clients the services that they had offered heterosexual clients. For example, heterosexual [00:12:00] clients would be offered the opportunity to bring their husband or wife in to involve their family. Homosexual clients really were invited to bring their partner in heterosexual clients could bring friends in. Homosexual clients are often not invited to bring friends in heterosexual clients are much more comfortable and at ease in groups. When there was any kind of group therapy that went on, homosexual clients [00:12:30] were invited into those groups and were expected to talk about themselves to expose themselves to a group of people who are not gay. And this was very threatening for many when it came to looking at what happened after treatment when they went back into the community. Heterosexual clients were more often than gay clients invited to in involve employers or their sexuality. somehow was part of the [00:13:00] aftercare programme that was developed and the monitoring that went on for homosexual clients. The fact that they'd be going back into gay bar or into into the kind of perhaps gay centred lifestyle they've been in before didn't feature as part of the aftercare planning. So there was, um, a discrimination that went on not a deliberate one, but one out of ignorance. And so even here in the nineties, in a country which is more [00:13:30] tolerant than many to its gay and lesbian folks, New Zealand, especially in the liberal humanities, we could still find that gay men would not receive and lesbians would not receive the kind the the the same quality of treatment opportunity as what heterosexuals, I think also being clean and, um, choosing to live clean means that it's, um, sometimes difficult to have relationships with people. [00:14:00] Um, I mean I. I have to, um, my maintenance is that I still go to meetings. I still go to recovery meetings 10 years down the track. There's plenty of people who I've seen, um, in rehab or met through recovery, who don't, um, do meetings anymore. And, um, over the um, drunk or get stoned again. Or they, um they get killed, [00:14:30] they die, and, um, or they choose other other ways of living. And, um, trying to establish a relationship with, um the limitations that I have placed on me because I'm an addict, um, is is often difficult. There's the, um, the stuff like I have to I have no choice but to be completely honest with, um, [00:15:00] loved ones. I. I don't It's not a choice. Um, resentments are luxury. Uh, judgement judgments are a luxury luxuries I can't afford. Because if I go there, if I get involved in and all that sort of crap, it just isolates me again. And, um, as someone in recovery, that's very, very dangerous. And as a gay man in recovery, it's, um it's suicidal. So there's certain things [00:15:30] that I can't, uh, I can't do. And I have to be really mindful of, um, I'm also extremely vulnerable because, um, uh, you know, I'm I'm a very sensitive person, and, um, trying to, um, develop relationships and things means that you know, you have to you get bruised, so you have to be very careful. Uh, I have to be very careful about how I go about things, [00:16:00] and that doesn't necessarily change. But I don't I don't also think that that's, um, just for for gay men in recovery. I think that that's for gay men, Period. If you are alive, is valued enough by society. If you feel good enough about your sexuality, if you're able to integrate that with the other things that you want and get out of your life, then alcohol and drugs will find its right place. [00:16:30] And that may be no use at all. And that may be just a moderate use. But if you're really going over the top, then something else in your life ain't right. When I work with with, um, gay men who have got into alcohol and drug dependencies and where things in their life have got really chaotic and I see them as a counsellor, the alcohol and drug part of their story is dealt with, usually quite quickly, [00:17:00] and then they get off that because that's not what it's really about. It's about despair, or it's about loneliness. It's about grief. It's about fear. It's about distress. That's what it is that they want to work on and talk about. And it's in the resolution of those things that the alcohol and drug use then falls into place. And for many of them, they say, Oh, I don't need that don't want it Others say I can't control it. I don't have the confidence of controlling it. I'm [00:17:30] better without it. And others are able to return to a moderate use because the issue, the reason why they had to develop a dependent relationship on it, has has gone.
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