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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (June 1, 1990)
h lust out Publisher Steppin’ Out Renée LaChance • • • • • ••••••• P • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ACKERUY Editor Mollie AB. Sidhe Calendar Editor U A T P PI Melissa Callison Entertainment Editor Sandra De Helen Staff Reporter $ \^ vV Anndee Hochman. r Jr é* * : a Lie - Voting to Advertising Director Yvonne Mammarelli Advertising Representatives Brant Fether, Connie Armour Production Director • • • • • C O N T E N T S Page T w o ...........;.................................... 2 E d ito ria l.................................................... 3 Letters........................................................4 A ID S 101 ..................................................5 Between the L in e s.................................. 6 Just B rie fs ..................................................7 Just N e w s..................................................8 just Youth 18 P ro file ......................................................18 Out About T o w n .................................. 20 Just Entertainm ent................................24 M usic.......................................................26 Books.......................................................27 Cinema................................................... 28 T V ............................................................ 30 Amazon T r a il........................................ 31 C lassified............................................... 32 Carla Jean Looney Typesetting Impact Presentations Proofreader Melissa Callison Graphic Inspiration Rupert Kinnard, E. Ann Hinds Distribution Diana Cohen Contributors Howie Baggadonutz Chris Eskeli Bev Mic kelson Wayne Harris Dell Richards Nancy Lyn Define Jeffrey Zur linden Lee Lynch Dr. Tantalus Jack Riley Ed Schiffer Rex Wockner Sandra De Helen The other epidemic: Addiction in the gay and lesbian community Printed on recycled paper. Just Out is published on the first day of each month. Copyright l$M) No part of Just Out may be reproduced without written permission of the publishers. The submission of written and graphic mate rials is welcomed. Written material should be typed and double-spaced. Graphic material should be in black ink on white paper. Deadline for submissions is the 15th of the month preceding publication. Out About Town is compiled as a courtesy to our readers. Performers, clubs, individuals or groups wishing to list events in the calendar should mail notices to Just Out by the 15th of the month preceding publication. Listings will not he taken over the telephone. Display Advertising will be accepted up to the 17th of each month. Classified ads must be received at the office of Just Out by the 17th of each month, along with payment Ads will not be taken over the telephone. Editorial policies allow the rejection or the editing of an article or advertisement that is offensive, demeaning or may result in legal action. Just Out consults the Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual on editorial decisions. Views expressed in letters to the editor, columns and features are not necessarily those of the publishers. Subscriptions to Just Out are available for $ 17.50 for I2issues First class (in an envelope) is $30 for 12 issues A free copy of Just Out and/or advertising rates are available upon request The mailing address and telephone number for Just Out are: POBox 15117 Portland. OR 97215 (503)236-1252 just out ▼ 2 ▼ June 1990 Besides being a recovering alcoholic and addict, I have also worked in the chemical dependency and mental health fields for 20 recently, I celebrated 11 years of living a years. I am much less comfortable with the clean and sober life. I do not claim idea of recreational drug use than I used to be. much credit for this miracle. There were many, many people along the way who helped There is a continuum in which use progresses to abuse. Drugs are used to medicate a and supported me, particularly during those constellation of intolerable feelings: fear and early days when it was so difficult for me to anxiety about sex and AIDS, guilt and anger imagine that there was life after alcohol and over one's inability to accept life and drugs. intimacy; the grief, depression and stress that I lived in San Francisco during the 1970s many of us feel who sec our friends dying when drug use was an accepted, unremarked- around us. upon aspect of the gay socio-sexual scene. Gay people often internalize societal Psychedelics, cocaine or speed helped create oppression and because of it suffer from low that rush of ecstasy experienced on the dance self-esteem. We often believe, consciously oi floor. Some drugs — coke, poppers, otherwise, those negative judgments of marijuana — seemed to ease the anxiety of ourselves. We don’t get to integrate sex and cruising and made sex more exciting and romance into our total lives like heterosexuals uninhibited. What dinner party was complete do. Our interpersonal activities are often without a few joints or white lines? concentrated into certain times and places: at Everybody, it seemed, got high. night, and in bars or at parties where alcohol Did that attitude obscure the damage being and other drugs are consumed. done by drugs in the gay community? By seeing in drugs possibilities for liberating For me, it was often easier to be gay while hedonism, did we overlook the potential for 1 was on drugs or alcohol. After I got off wretched excess? According to many in the drugs, I went through a painful process of health care field, drug dependency has trying to figure out what my sexuality meant become a major problem for gay men and to me. I looked for gay men who were clean lesbians. Research in the gay/lesbian and sober who serve as role models. What a communities of Los Angeles and New York revelation to discover that in sobriety I could create my own role model, one that was have shown that 30 percent are addicted to totally unique to who I was as a man, a gay alcohol (exclusive of dugs) as compared to man, a recovering man. about 10 percent of the general population. The emerging focus on chemical abuse in the Alcoholism and drug addiction is a gay community is part of our increased disease. The focus of recovery should be to attention to health issues in general. get off drugs and alcohol. Once the chemicals BY C H R I S T O P H E R ESKELI R Christopher Eskali are out of our lives we can begin working on the underlying reasons, and that is where the guidance of qualified, sensitive professionals and self help groups come in. We gay people are struggling to establish identity, to secure our personal integrity. There is nothing that robs us of these opportunities more than an addiction to chemicals. We, as individuals and as a community, are proclaiming to the world at large, “I am gay.. .1 am proud.” How wonderful to be able to add, “And I am clean and sober.” w Christopher Eskeli is coordinator of an alcohol and chemical dependency program at St. Vincent Hospital and Medical Center. He served as administrator in the first two gay/ lesbian treatment programs in the world. He is also in private practice in Portland.
