Stories of Hope: ‘my sexuality had everything to do with my drug use’

Queer Kentucky was built on a foundation of community. And as an organization that lives and breathes community, we are acutely aware of when our members are hurting. LGBTQ+ people are succumbing to substance use disorder at an alarming rate and Queer Kentucky is determined to loudly discuss this topic through a series of stories of hope and recovery. We hope to instill hope into those who think they cannot come back from the dis-ease of addiction. You can recover…we can recover.

By Jim Bridge

My name is Jim and I am an addict.

I’ve been in recovery continuously since September 11, 1986. I got clean at the age of 19 and I’m 56 now. I don’t know if I ever had any real choice about whether or not I was going to become an addict, there’s still some debate on whether or not it’s got anything to do with genetics, in which case then I probably didn’t, but I know for certain that I never had any choice about being gay.

I knew I was gay sometime around the age of 4 or 5 and knew very early that this was SOMETHING VERY BAD that I was likely going to Hell for, and genetic predisposition or not, I can tell you that my sexuality had everything to do with my drug use. I was so far in the closet you couldn’t see with me with a flashlight and I lived with the overpowering fear that someone might find out I was gay, which probably is what led me to adopt the arch-masculine persona of the total metalhead burnout that exists today, minus the burnout part. When I was using, everyone knew how I was going to die and I lived with the mindset that it couldn’t come soon enough. 

I got clean at 19 but didn’t actually come out until I was 25, just shy of 6 years clean. I had immersed myself in Narcotics Anonymous, held multiple service positions, sponsored people, worked the steps, but had never opened up or even confided in anyone about my sexuality. I was never going to come out, ever, until literally one minute before I came out.

I had been living with the fear of what would happen if “they” knew, what “they” would think, what would happen to me, living with this fear that coming out would destroy me and I would lose everything, when in fact I was already very much alone because all of my friends were growing up, getting into relationships, living their lives, and not obsessing over whether or not I was gay.

12 Step recovery is focused on finding and relying on a higher power that will help us in our recovery, something we’re supposed to be able to rely on even in the worst of times. The biggest problem with this, for me, was the simultaneous baggage I had of feeling damned for being gay and my resentment towards whatever this whole God thing was for making me gay in the first place, since it wasn’t my choice to begin with.

So, one Friday night after a meeting, sitting home on my couch alone and suicidal, because I figured at this rate I was only going to get lonelier, I had something of an epiphany. For the first time it genuinely occurred to me that I was actually supposed to be this way, and my resistance towards it was actually my fighting whatever this Higher Power thing’s will was for me all along. It happened as sudden as a gunshot and in that moment I knew I had to come out. Spoiler alert, I don’t actually believe in God, but the whole principle still rang in my head like a bell.

I’d love to tell you things worked out brilliantly from there, that I got my honorary boyfriend and my complimentary season pass to P-Town, but I had many years of struggle to go through from there. A good portion of the people who I thought were my friends turned away from me. I was going to NA meetings in Connecticut, which at the time was not exactly a bastion for queer recovery. One of the primary symptoms of addiction is that we have a disorder that speaks to us in our own voices and mine was telling me that these people didn’t understand me, that I was unique, which is a very bad and potentially lethal headspace for any recovering addict to find themselves in.

There were queer AA meetings, and after trying to find identification with people who had never experienced what I was going through in NA, I eventually migrated over to the AA queer community. I wasn’t comfortable with myself and was finding it virtually impossible to be comfortable in a room full of people who couldn’t identify with me.

In the years since I’ve been back and forth between NA and AA, I’ve always identified more strongly with the NA concept of addiction and recovery, whereas AA’s focus is just on the drinking, which is really just another substance, one that happens to come in flavors and is legal. I moved to Louisville about 6-1/2 years ago from the Eastern Shore of Virginia, where I’d been working for about 3 years. The Eastern Shore is pretty desolate, it was an hour and a half to the nearest cineplex, we didn’t have a gym or a Starbucks, and we definitely didn’t have a queer community.

People often ask me how I wound up in Louisville and my answer is usually “poor life choices.” I met somebody out here through a hook-up app, had great sex, and started a long distance relationship that eventually brought me out here. Our relationship ended as I was preparing to move here and I decided to make the move anyway, because I figured at least there was a queer community here and I wouldn’t have to drive six hours just to see a concert (true story.} 

I started attending the gay AA meetings here in town and, after a short period of feeling like the shiny new toy, gradually became very disillusioned with them. I’ve had great difficulty forming connections with many of the members, finding them to be very cliquey and insular. Fellowship is an extremely important part of recovery and, despite many attempts, I wasn’t finding it. When I arrived in Louisville, I just wanted to be around other gay people again, but after a few years I found myself just as lonely as I was in Virginia, probably more so, because my Connecticut community was no longer a six hour drive away.

It got so bad that I stopped going to meetings altogether for a period of several months, somewhere between 3 and 6, I don’t exactly remember, and nobody reached out to me to see if I was okay. Not one single person. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be, and I’m honestly still a little burned by it. I know this isn’t everyone’s experience, but it was mine. I tried several more times to find a place for myself in those rooms and have ultimately decided that they’re just not for me. I’ve often felt like I was sitting in a room full of people who traded their barstools for seats in an AA meeting, and aside from not drinking anymore, didn’t see a whole lot of difference. 

I still go to meetings, just not those meetings. I learned a long time ago that I didn’t just come out once, I’ll be coming out for the rest of my life, and because of recovery, I can be who I am authentically everywhere and not worry about whether or not people are receptive, because if they have a problem, it’s their problem. I go primarily to NA meetings these days, I’ve found the fellowship open and welcoming, and there’s a surprisingly large LGBTQIA contingent among it’s members.

I’m still a metalhead, regardless of whether or not it was an identity I adopted when I was 13, it’s still a genre that speaks to me. I have a solid community consisting of both straight and queer people and I know I wouldn’t have any of it if I wasn’t clean. One of the great things about living in Louisville is the sheer quantity of meetings available here in different fellowships. You don’t have to believe in anything to belong, I’m basically an Atheist who leans towards “heathen”, all that’s required is a desire to stop doing whatever it is that you’re doing. I often say that the best things that have ever happened to me and the worst things that have every happened to me happened while I was in recovery.

The difference is that the bad things would’ve happened anyway and I wouldn’t have gotten to experience any of the good things. It’s not a perfect life, but nobody’s really is, and at least I know what’s NOT going to kill me today.