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I’ve Loved You For So Long

Out June 2nd

I’VE NEVER REALLY BEEN GOOD AT BEGINNINGS OR ENDINGS, BUT I SUPPOSE MY NAME IS A GOOD PLACE TO START. I’M PAUL O’DONOGHUE AND AT THE TIME OF WRITING THIS I’M COMING UP TO FIFTEEN MONTHS OF SOBRIETY; WHICH TO ME IS STILL ABSOLUTELY BONKERS TO THINK IT’S BEEN NEARLY FIFTEEN MONTHS SINCE I LAST DRANK ALCOHOL. >>>

...I believe there are many factors that contributed to what I considered problematic drinking (and other party favours) but what others may not consider problematic because it is the socially accepted norm in the community. For some you don’t even have to have an issue with alcohol or substances to want to quit and live a teetotal life and for others their life becomes so unmanageable that there’s no other way but to live a teetotal life. I believe I’m somewhere in the middle, in the grey area. So, I’ll begin with a little bit of history.

They say trauma can cause memory loss and although I’d say most, if not all, members of the LGBTQIA+ community have experienced our fair share of trauma, it’s one of the reason’s I feel I don’t recall much of my childhood. I know that I grew up in a warzone. I know that certain smells and certain sounds used to trigger dissociative coping strategies and for all I know they still do, although not so frequently. This I believe is down to how I was raised. Two parents that drank, argued and fought. I’ve had homophobic slurs thrown at me by a parent from when I was in primary school. I’ve watched a parent being gaslit and belittled so much that they needed to drink to soothe their pain. I’ve watched psychological and physical violence unfold regularly. I was used to walking on eggshells (metaphorically) and to always behave and say the right thing. I’ve been beaten because ‘I needed to be given a real reason to cry.’ I’ve had to call an ambulance for a parent who was threatening to end their life. And this was all before I even began high school. This all happened behind closed doors, where I was meant to be safe and loved. I tell you this because I believe this was the beginning of my path to addiction and referring to Gabor Mate; “not why the addiction but why the pain.” All of these abusive actions growing up I believe created a desire in me to numb the pain. To self soothe and find a way to release the emotions I had been taught since birth to bury beneath my skin and forget about.

*Before I close this paragraph, my parents did separate properly when I was a teenager and one of them now has over thirteen years of sobriety under their belt.

Although I’ve had other addictions and coping strategies throughout my life, I’ll do my best to stick to alcohol and drugs. I would say most people, like myself, started drinking in their early teens and for me that progressively got worse as I got older. By my late teens I had already started using ecstasy, meth and hash. When I then turned the legal drinking age and started venturing out on the gay scene, I became marveled with the lifestyle of drink, drugs and drag queens. It became one of the first places I really felt accepted and understood by so many others who had walked similar paths. I found a sense of community and belonging that I had never found before. I heard a drag queen say one night that a gay weekend starts on a Thursday and ends on a Tuesday and for the next lot of years that became my reality. Keeping up with that lifestyle meant more drinks, more drugs and more detriment to my mental and physical health. I don’t want to tar us all with the same brush, but I know from experience that there’s a massive issue with alcohol and drugs within the LGBTQIA+ community that we often turn a blind eye to, because it’s accepted and expected. This should not be the default for our community, there’s so much more to us than booze, pills and spliffs.

By my early twenties I had swapped out the hash and brought in cannabis to replace it in my roster of drugs. My primary drug then slowly shifted to cannabis and this will probably open the great cannabis debate of ‘it’s just a plant’ and ‘it’s natural’ and ‘it has loads of health benefits.’ Blueberries have loads of health benefits but I’m not slamming £70 to a £140 worth of blueberries down my throat a week. It really did take over my life. I couldn’t function - eat, sleep, socialise without it. The only thing I could do was go to work and even that was a struggle at the best of times. For a while I do believe it helped alleviate symptoms of my anxiety and depression. Then I needed more to get that relief and in return it gave me back my anxiety and depression tenfold. It was too late at this stage to walk away from it as I was caught in a cycle of self-soothing and then getting the symptoms tenfold that caused me to self-soothe once again. It ramped up to an everyday use and although my partying continued, a joint was the only thing to bring me down from ecstasy, MDMA or cocaine high. It became something that I needed to always have in supply. It completely took over my life. Every waking thought centered around cannabis. I became a stoner, and I wore that badge with honour. As if it was something to be proud of. At the end of the day, it’s a drug and if I change the word stoner to drug addict it slowly becomes much more impactful and troubling.

I spent most of my twenties in a blackout or a drug fuelled coma (I literally used to be able to sleep for a good 24 hours after a heavy session). I decided I wanted to quit alcohol because that would help cut out party favours, but I remained a stoner. I managed to cut out harder drugs for a very long time but struggled to cut alcohol out permanently, however it was greatly reduced. I was doing stints from two to six months alcohol free before going back to it again and this went on for a good two years. Then we got COVID-19 and lockdown. I noticed my cannabis use ramped up, I decided to quit that, and I literally swapped out cannabis for alcohol. I realised I couldn’t do reality raw, and this was the first time I properly started looking for recovery groups targeted for the LGBTQIA+ community. The reason why I wanted a specified group is I didn’t feel like AA or a twelve-step programme with God as their centre was for me. Despite growing up in a Christian household I’ve never really had faith and I’d be damned if sobriety was going to enlighten me that much – spoiler alert, I still haven’t found Jesus. I was able to come across things like Gay AA in the South and across England but none in Northern Ireland. Speaking with different organisation I really couldn’t find a lot to support our community with alcohol and substance abuse and so that planted the seed for QRS.

I wish I could say I quit once and that was me done. Unfortunately for most that’s not the case. Recovery is a journey and this means it’s not always linear. I’ve had too many ‘never agains’ and ‘day ones’ but I believe the more you try to quit the easier it gets and eventually it will click but you need to change your mentality to your relationship with alcohol and drugs. I was sick and tired of being hungover, on a comedown, in a green smog and knew that something had to give. I’ve been sober nearly fifteen months but I’d say I’ve been in recovery for a good four years. It starts with the thoughts of questioning your relationship with alcohol and drugs and then taking little breaks and then as I said it just clicks. I genuinely believe (and I don’t advocate for this) but each lapse or relapse I had taught me something new. It didn’t undo the progress I had made but added to it. Give me new motivation and a stronger belief that I could get sober and finally I did. I have scattered dates but between December 2021 and January 2022 I quit hard drugs (again), alcohol and cannabis.

A lot of people in recovery would normally find it taboo to say this but for me I can honestly say never again. I know what a life of drinking and drugs leads to, I mightn’t have had a full blown rock bottom but I had many little ones and I could see it from where I was. I wanted to take back my life and start living again and I feel these last few months I’ve accomplished that. I started going to the gym back in June 2022 and lost over three stone. I know I would never have committed to the gym as long as I have to maintain results if I was still drinking/using. My diet has gotten better because I don’t crave hangover food as much. I’ve been able to travel to one of the places I’ve wanted to go from when I was a teenager and see Japan during the beginning of Cherry Blossom season. I’ve been to my first Disneyland. My relationship with my partner has gotten deeper and stronger. The friendships and family in my life have gotten deeper and there seems to be a real genuine connection there. I’m more confident, I look and feel younger. My mental health has been the best I think it’s ever been, so much so that I’ve been able to stop my medication. I’ve gone on a solo retreat, something I would never have dreamed of doing. Basically, every aspect of my life has gained something from when I stopped drinking/using.

Be under no illusion that it hasn’t always been rainbows and sunshine, there’s been quite a few rain clouds too, especially in the early days and then around the sixth month mark. It’s easy to grow bored in your sobriety which can be a slippery slope for some. This is when I reached out for additional support. I tried AA and as I had mentioned previously in the article it wasn’t for me. I tried another organisation and I still drop into their meetings when I can but it’s not an LGBTQIA+ specific space. I tried this as it was already established and ran in the same format I wanted for QRS. QRS stands for Queer Recovery Support and it was established to offer peer support and a place to keep yourself accountable. I would advocate for complete abstinence however I believe harm-reduction has a seat at the table. We meet weekly online and once a month we do a sober social activity in person. I find when we get sober in the LGBTQIA+ community it’s easy to feel ostracised from the community, this is a chance for us to establish a queer sober community and stay connected with each other. Johann Hari states that the opposite of addiction is connection and I believe that it’s so important to have sober connections when you’re getting sober. When the bar and drug scene is all you know it’s hard to meet sober people, so if you’ve been questioning your relationship with alcohol and/or drugs and you’re not sure where to start, why not reach out and drop me a DM on Instagram or email me for how to get involved.

Instagram: @qrs_belfast

Email: qrs.belfast@gmail.com