Jakalope, a 16-year-old gay teen, writes honestly about a problem familiar to a lot of gay teens: substance use.
There was a while, when I was feeling really lonely. I live in a rural community, and gays are more or less at the bottom of the food chain.
I didn't have anyone to talk to about anything really. I had a few straight female friends, but no matter how hard they tried, they just didn't really understand. So somewhere mid-year i turned to drugs. Cannabis, in fact.
Somewhere deep down I knew that it wouldn't fix anything, but I just wanted to escape. I mean, drugs had been something I never wanted to do, but it just worked out that way. Like I was having a really bad day, and a lot of my friends where away on an excursion, so I was a loner all day. And then at recess as I was walking someone was walking past me, and they spat at me and said 'f***t'. Usually this wouldn't affect me much, but I had already had someone else try to trip me up and do the same thing earlier.
Then a few minutes later I ran into a friend who was about to skip class to meet up with another friend. So I tagged along. When we met up with the friend we ended up going to a block of flats [apartments], which have a rather despicable reputation - drugs, booze, wild parties, loud music etc. When we got there, we went up to a flat and the inhabitants were all high.
I felt a lot of peer pressure, so we all got high. And then I started making it a kind of a habit. Not an addiction (I wouldn't have the money for that), but I'd blow off school whenever, if I could go there.
Luckily me and my friend pulled each other out of the habit, but shortly after that things got very difficult for the both of us (for different reasons), and it's been a trial not to slip into bad habits.
A recent study done by University of Pittsburgh researchers and published in the Journal Addiction found that, "The odds of substance use for lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are on average 190 percent higher than for heterosexual youth."
If you think you have a problem with alcohol or drugs, consider talking to a GLBT-friendly counselor. You can also contact the National Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Addiction Professionals or Gay AA for more information.
