Pride is a time to celebrate your equality, reinforce your validity as a queer person, and enjoy celebrating the start of summer with your friends. For some, however, it can also become an excuse to party even harder than your average weekend bar crawl.
“Come on, let’s do a shot…it’s PRIDE!”, might be something you hear your friend say, and if you have a tendency to lean on “liquid courage” as an emotional crutch or social lubricant, that may be all the invitation you needed to hear.
Gay culture has always been strongly correlated with alcohol. After all, it was gay bars that became the meeting spots for those in the queer community to find each other, dating way back to the ’50s and ’60s. Alcohol brands have been marketing to us for years (much to the dismay of some Bud Light fans!), especially during Pride Month. It’s hard to imagine a gay pool party sans booze, unless it’s specifically a sober event.
But Pride can be a reason to take drinking even one step further. “Watch us get blackout drunk for Pride at 10 am!” one TikTok’er says below, before various partiers share which color of the rainbow their shot will be.
There’s nothing wrong with letting loose once in awhile, but as queer people, we need to be especially mindful about whether or not we’re putting ourselves at risk this Pride season.
On Tuesday, a report was published from the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health, sponsored by the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which included data about the LGB community (unfortunately, transgender and nonbinary individuals will not be included until next year’s study, according to CNN).
Not surprisingly, the survey illuminated more data that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people suffer greater mental health and substance abuse issues than the general population, including the shocking fact that a third of all bisexual people and gay males said they had a problem with a substance use disorder in the year before they filled out the survey.
Mental health and substance use challenges can be even more difficult for women and people of color who are members of the LGB community, the report also found. Lesbian and bisexual females were also more likely than straight females to say they had been binge-drinking and about twice as likely to have been heavy drinkers.
So how do we know when we’re crossing a line? For one thing, if you’ve ever wondered if you have a drinking problem, there’s a good chance even asking that question means there’s something there to look at. Taking stock of any negative consequences after a belligerent night out is always a wise thing to do (for real though, how many times are you going to lose that cell phone?). Do your friends tell you that once you start drinking, you don’t want to stop? If so, maybe it’s better to not cross that threshold to begin with.
The SAMHSA survey identifies binge drinking as “consumption of four or more drinks on the same occasion for females and five or more drinks on the same occasion for males on at least 1 day in the past 30 days.” Heavy drinking is defined as “binge drinking on five or more days in the past 30 days.”. Actually counting drinks instead of mindlessly throwing them back can be a sobering act (pun intended), but it’s an important gauge determining if you’re taking Pride one step too far.
And of course, if drinking leads to dabbling in drugs to help you keep the party going, that may also be a red flag that alcohol and you don’t mix well.
Pride is meant to be fun, but we have to remember that as sexual minorities, we “experience unique stressors that can contribute to adverse substance use and mental health outcomes,” according to the recent report.
Stigma, shame, and struggles with self-worth are all factors in our queer experience, and even if we think we’re just having fun, they can rear their ugly head and impact our decision making.
Part of Pride is taking care of ourselves. If you find yourself feeling down and depleted after the party’s over, there might be a better way to celebrate.
Related:
7 signs your drinking may have gotten out of control in the pandemic
Staying up late and drinking because you’re now working from home?
GlobeTrotter
See, that’s why I stopped going to Pride parades years ago. It was fun at first, I used to go with a bunch of friends, we’d drink, do hand-stands and stupid stunts, get some food and find a nice green spot somewhere in a park to have lunch and maybe even pile on top of each other just for fun. But then Pride started getting more weird and extreme every year, to the point where it turned into a long and exhausting parade of addicts indulging themselves in the most extreme behavior imaginable, and I’m not talking about just drugs and alcohol. I get the impression that Pride nowadays has less to do with celebrating gay culture and more to do with an irrational compulsion for shock antics and vulgar exhibitionism. It’s so obvious and tiresome.
RIGay
I wholly agree! Just look at this recent Pride celebration at the White House where the Trans activist felt it necessary to go topless. What a brainless twit!
I live in Rhode Island and we used support and work at Providence Pride – personally, through my corporation or through community organizations. Leading up to it, everyone would say “It’s for whole families!” and then you see things that look like they were ripped out of the Folsom Street Festival in SF! And all of that would make it onto the nightly news. “Today’s Pride celebration – here’s young teens with rainbow glitter on their faces. Here’s a guy gyrating his torso while dressed in a rainbow jock strap and couples openly fondling each other”.
Gosh! Where does the Right get the idea that we’re all pedo’s and groomers, and we wonder why the Right want to kill us?
Great. Pride celebrations. Go for it. BUT… treat them for what they are – a giant Rave for adults only.
As I say, I don’t care what flag you want to fly, just don’t be an a$$hole about it.
inbama
With acceptance, it could be that those who can assimilate into the larger culture do, and this leaves events like Pride to the QT+, drag queens, etc.
In NYC, Pride Inc. has once again banned LGBT cops from marching together in uniform because some members of Alphabet Soup are triggered by the sight of police.
Given all the hate that’s been stirred up, I hope they’ll be safe.
abfab
@bama.
Your hate seeps thru every pore of your body. Another one of your thoughtless, tired talking points.
And the thing is, even if you do venture out on PRIDE DAY, it’s just one of many. How would you know what goes on in the streets?
Your entire trip here hinges on blanket statements……………all filled with bullshit and distain.
”this leaves events like Pride to the QT+, drag queens, etc.”
wooly101
It always amazes me that gay men who constantly go to the gym trying to mold their bodies into perfection turn around after and drink and do drugs.
Kangol2
A small subset of people overindulge, but the majority of Pride celebrants know when they reach the time-to-chill point, and as people mature this percentage grows. But it’s good to post articles for those who might not be paying attention, though it’s less likely they’ll read this than if Queerty made a TikTok, Snapchat or YouTube video about it. (Queerty, are you on that?)
Seth
Thanks, grandma, for the warning. Please don’t wait up.
inbama
There are still some of us who watched our best friends and loved ones ignore all warnings and end up as panels in a quilt.
Instead of insulting someone as “grandma,” maybe you should be grateful that anyone cares.
dbmcvey
And there are those of us who use our past to try to bludgeon people into silence.