Gay, Joyous and Free

Coming to terms with my own sexual identity as a lesbian was at the heart of my alcoholism. I knew from a very early age that I liked girls in the same way that boys liked girls. Growing up in the ’60s and becoming a teen in the ’70s was not yet a safe time period to reveal my true sexual orientation. Alcohol offered me an illusory relief—a way to drown the secret, sinful feelings and keep them down under. This became a vicious cycle: each crush on a woman was doused in booze; each bout of drinking jumbled my thinking and found me confusing benign friendly gestures by female friends as something more, perhaps even romantic. I would “act out” sexually and quite promiscuously with men I met in bars, all the while fantasizing about women—and the drinking progressed.