From The Advocate: http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2013/03/21/op-ed-why-arent-we-talking-about-alcoholism
LGBT people are highly prone to alcoholism. So why isn’t anyone talking about it?
BY Mark Rosenberg
March 21 2013
Every time I log onto a gay news or media outlet, the majority of the articles are focused on legalizing gay marriage. While I am single, with no prospect of getting married in the near future, I wholeheartedly believe that every American, gay or straight should be able to legally marry in this country. It does, however, seem to me that all of our focus as a community is put on gay marriage and very few efforts our put into some of the other problems that plague us, most notably, drug and alcohol abuse.
Why don’t we talk about this more when it is such a huge problem with LGBT’s?
I know first hand of what dangers drug and alcohol abuse can do to someone, because I am an alcoholic who has been sober for four and a half years. Alcoholism is a disease that plagues LGBT people, however very few of us speak out about it and even fewer gay news outlets report about it. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, roughly 8% of all Americans use illegal drugs and 20% binge drink. However, when compared to their heterosexual counterparts, LGBT people are twice as likely to binge drink and five times a likely to drive while intoxicated. At one point, it was widely speculated that one-third of the LGBT community was alcoholic. Those statistics are rather staggering and yet, you very rarely hear anything about the subject.
It makes it difficult for me to put my philanthropic efforts behind legalizing marriage equality when I hear these kinds of numbers. Again, I fully support the cause, however, I much prefer helping those who cannot help themselves. In the past four plus years, I have seen and heard things behind the closed doors of AA meetings and detox centers that would make even the most strong-willed man weak in the knees. With so many people in our community suffering from this horrible disease and so little being done about it, it makes me wonder how these men and women, who are in such bad shape would even begin to care about legalizing marriage equality. While same-sex marriage is probably not on the top of their priority list, men and women who suffer from alcoholism and drug abuse see every part of their lives affected by the disease—their relationships, their jobs, their housing. And yet, there are so few people like them who speak about about the disease, nor do they offer any help via media outlets or news reports.
I believe the reason for this is simple: people don’t want to speak about a problem within the community because they believe it will reflect poorly upon them, and the community as a whole. Either that or we’re too cowardly to look at the real problems within our community because so few people talk about one of the biggest problems our community has.
Continue reading at: http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2013/03/21/op-ed-why-arent-we-talking-about-alcoholism
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