Lez Keep It Real

Sounds like the beginning of a punch line, doesn’t it?

Lesbians and alcohol go together like cookies and milk, peanut butter and jelly, Britney Spears and chaos … you get the picture.

There have been studies about this. And alcohol is very prevalent in the lesbian social scene. Unless you have a handle on it and drink socially (and responsibly), it can easily go from healthy to habitual in no time.

Just ask Jennifer Storm:

Blacking Out, Beginning at 12
by Jennifer Vanasco, 365Gay.com

The first time Jennifer Storm blacked out after drinking too much, she was 12 years old. She thought she was going to a roller skating rink with some older friends. Instead, they took a detour and wound up drinking in a friend’s car.

They were her first beers, and what started out as novel and exhilarating became horrific when a 28-year-old man in that car attempted to rape her.

Storm doesn’t remember everything that happened that night, because she blacked out. In fact, she doesn’t remember a lot of her adolescence, which was spent in a haze of alcohol and drugs and punctuated by her unhappy mother’s death, the suicide of a dear friend, and her own self-mutilation and attempted suicide.

Her life was made more complicated by her romantic feelings for women that she was struggling to hide, because she had learned to be ashamed of them.

“It was much easier to play heterosexual when I was drunk,” Storm said. “I had boyfriends, but it was so uncomfortable, that when it was necessary to engage – I mean sexually – I did have to be really drunk.”

In her new memoir Blackout Girl, Storm details the darkness of that time and her fight to save herself.

Her story is heartbreaking – and illuminates an issue in the lesbian community that is not yet widely studied, and is barely talked about: lesbian alcohol and drug addiction.

“The elephant in the living room is alcohol,” said Tonda Hughes, an expert in women’s health issues and a professor in the Department of Public Health, Mental Health, and Administrative Nursing at the University of Illinois. “Smoking and smoking cessation problems get a lot of attention, because smoking is a social taboo. Alcohol isn’t.”

Lesbians are at greater risk than heterosexual women for alcohol addiction. Hughes’ research shows that 44 percent of lesbians worry that they may have a drinking problem. In a paper called, “Substance Use and Abuse in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Populations,” Hughes writes about a study that concluded that lesbians report alcohol problems at three times the rate of straight women. Another study she mentions notes that lesbians “reported more drinking days and more binge drinking” than straight women.

Read the rest at 365gay.com

For those of you who logged on expecting to find a Come Out & Play post on Friday, I’m sorry to have disappointed you. I was on my way to Boston, MA for a weekend trip with my brothers. We basically drank beer, watched basketball and … well, drank more beer and watched more basketball. It was a lot of fun. Though I don’t drink that much on a regular basis, every now and then it’s good to let lose. Responsibility and moderation are the keys.

While I’d never consider myself an alcoholic, there was a point in time where I did rely on alcohol as a way to deal with my own sexual confusion. It was during college, so I guess that made it seem like I didn’t have a problem since EVERYBODY in college drinks. Luckily, I realized I had an issue and did something about it after I graduated. My best advice for those who are struggling with the same issue is this: seek out a therapist. A drink may help numb the pain but it can’t give you any feedback. Plus, you don’t have to deal with any hangovers.

Jennifer Storm, alcohol and lesbians, lesbians and alcohol, 365gay.com