LGBTQ youth and alcohol (a revision of sorts)

So I'm writing this post to first apologize for using this venue to vent my frustration and create what could be interpreted as slander. The previous blog, though my honest opinion, was a bit
extreme and way more hetreophobic than I intended. If you didn’t catch it before I made it “friends only”, that might be for the best.

Here’s a personal tale one that you can choose to discard or not.

I came to Lincoln in August of 2005 as a soon to be 19 year old freshman in
college who had never been drunk before in her life. Within the first weekend of my college experience,
I picked up a flyer for club Q. My first month of college flew by and before I
knew it I was of age to go to a drag show, my first ever, at the Q. Club Q was
unlike any other place I had been to it was essentially like gay pride, but any
night of the week. There were more gay people of all ages than I had ever met,
and I felt very safe. As I progressed
through college I became fairly involved with the on campus gay organization
QSA, and made many dear friends.

Many of my freshmen friends started to drink, and though at first I was reluctant I
eventually joined in. The first time I got drunk in my entire life, was
sometime in November. I was provided with two Smirnoff ice’s, and a ride to
club Q by an older member of the UNL QSA. Yes two Smirnoff ice’s were all I
needed to be drunk. It was fun, though I
don’t remember much of it. My inhabitations about dancing had disappeared,
however. My freshmen year progressed in
this similar manner. Many times I would have a drink or two before hand and
then attend an event at the Q with some of my friends. When we wouldn’t go to
the Q we would try and find a decent house party that we felt safe at or maybe
even just drink in the dorm rooms. My
friends and I weren’t the only ones doing this; partying for minors is rampant
in Lincoln,

Throughout the rest of my college career I progressed in a very similar way. My sophomore
year, I lived off campus, only had class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So I
basically spent the majority of my time drinking at my house with friends.
Alcohol was almost always provided for me by someone else in the LGBTQ
community. Someone whom I trusted, and someone who thought of me as someone
they could trust not to do something stupid. Every time we would drink it would be binge
drinking (4 or more drinks in a row by definition). Binge drinking was the only
type of drinking I was ever exposed to in Lincoln. Every house party I went to regardless
of the demographics of people who attended would do this. For the most part I
didn’t do anything stupid, I’ve never gotten an MIP or a DUI but I did several
times go places, and not remember ever being there. I also destroyed my GPA
because I had no idea how to party, study, and maintain a job at the same time.

My junior year, I turned 21 much earlier than the rest of my close friends so I be
default became the provider of at least 60% of the alcohol that was consumed. I
thought we were always being safe, someone would DD, which most of the time
meant someone would be sober enough to drive there, and then whomever was the
most sober would drive back. This year was also a year that I was closest
to freshmen. I would host an array of “safe” priming (pre-drinking) events
before heading to the Q which was the only place at the time 19-20 years could
get in, and the place that we enjoyed going. The second half of my Junior year
everyone else had turned 21 so instead of Priming at a house we would walk
downtown and have drinks and then stumble into the Q. One night one of my
friends who was not even yet 19 got in and got a wristband. Later that night we,
upon request of the Q staff, removed this individual after they found him
passed out drunk in the VIP lounge.

Senior year. I had also moved to a different
place off campus where it was easy to have very large parties. Yet somehow I managed to graduate. My two
roommates from senior year however didn’t have as much success. It wasn’t until
about halfway through senior year I realized that being wreckless drunk every
weekend wasn’t how I wanted to spend my life. I could quickly see some of the
people that I was closest to using alcohol as a way to escape depression, work,
and reason to sleep around and it terrified me. I would still frequent the Q but my
prospective of this friendliness had shifted. I noticed way more often when my
friends would complain about getting hit on or worse by straight men, and it
bothered me in ways it hadn’t before. I attribute this to both the fact that
few of my friends shared this realization with me, and that the Q was way more
crowded than before. It’s easy to be frustrated at a crowd of people when you
and your friends are no longer the drunkest there.

So why the confessions?

Alcohol was the primary source of socialization for my friends and me. When I stopped
drinking I, by default, became less social. Which in turn made me want to drink
more because I was depressed; sad cycle right? When I would go to the Q and not
drink I would repeatedly hear, “But you’re such a fun drunk.” I, like many GLBTQ people, used alcohol to
lower my inhibitions. Even though I may
have had a great time in the moment, I have often regretted it later. After a few months of having seemingly no
social life, I started to drink again vowing to count the number of drinks I have
and monitor myself as frequently as possible. I think I’ve been pretty successful at knowing
my cues now (i.e. when I start getting more touchy than normal with people I don’t
know I need to stop drinking immediately). No one taught me how to do this I just
learned by making a complete fool of myself in public for a couple of years.

Now as a graduate student, I see the cycle repeat itself and even though I’m
currently not a part of (since I no longer am the one purchasing alcohol for
freshmen) I know it exists to this day in an even larger scale. I have heard
repeated stories from the young kids on campus about how drunk they get every
weekend, and how they do the similar social activities that I did. Some of them telling the story aren’t even 19
years old yet. It makes me worried that they are doomed to repeat the college
path that I had. Maybe they will end of graduating on time like me and can
consider themselves lucky. Or maybe they
will end up like my roommate from last year and need to go through rehab.

I know that Lincoln has high binge drinking rates for all demographics and
therefore it is not just a GLBTQI issue.
I also know that the GLBTQI community doesn’t have the type of support
system that straight individuals may have.
Since we stress the idea of the GBTQI community as a family, aren’t we
responsible for this?

I want to know:

Do you personally think it needs to be stopped?

How do we go about convincing people that you can have sober fun, even though the rest of their role models in this community
prefer to use alcohol to have fun?

If you think it doesn’t need to be stopped, how do we go about creating education about drinking in moderation?

`

Here are some links about LGBTQA peoples and alcoholism

http://www.cspinet.org/booze/collfact1.htm

http://www.drugalcoholaddictionrecovery.com/?p=15