Internalised Homophobia (Sorry for the long post - someone asked ;)

tl;dr

I grew up in the 80's and 90's when there was still a lot of ambient homophobia and from as young as 10 I got the message that there was something wrong with people like me. My dad would say stuff like "AIDS is god's revenge on poofters" at the dinner table and my stomach would twist in knots. It's fair to say I probably developed serious self esteem / self hatred issues at a young age.

When I "came out" onto the gay scene as a young adult in the 90's I discovered all the clubs and all the partying and NYE 1995 I tried escstasy for the first time. I thought "they lied to me drugs are actually great". I continued with my college education and partied on X during term breaks.

THEN I decided for some reason to defer college for a year and get a job in a gay bar. I think I wanted to piss my parents off and the world at large for hating on gays (no not all of you did obviously). Working there was INTENSE. We took MDA just before our shifts and got more drunk than customers we'd refuse service to. It was a non stop party and heaps of fun.

What I didn't realise though was that in addition to being a lot of fun drugs also ease emotional suffering and in hindsight I began to use them to self medicate my childhood trauma of being exposed to homophobia. I never made it back to college and I tried crystal at the age of 23 and discovered (again in hindsight) it was particularly good at subduing emotional suffering.

I'm almost 50 now and still a very regular crystal user and it's no longer to self medicate it's because through sheer force of will I shaped my crystal journey which yes included many attempts to stop, lost jobs and a bit of homelessness into something awesome (for me). I found my own self esteem and decided I just liked crystal too much and didn't want to stop and I don't owe anyone an apology for that.

I don't recommend this to particular approach to anyone though unless you want to dedicate decades of your life to it and enjoy the highest of highs balanced by the lowest of lows and risk career, family and friends along the way (all of which I enjoy close relationships with now btw)

The moral of the story would be using drugs as a solution to an emotional problem is a bad idea. Drugs are for having fun, self discovery etc.