Gay Men Take Drugs to Fit In...

Ueno, K. (2010). Mental Health Differences between Young Adults with and without Same-Sex Contact: A Simultaneous Examination of Underlying Mechanisms Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 51 (4), 391-407 DOI: 10.1177/0022146510386793

I have serious concerns about those members of the broader gay community, and those who study us incessantly, who are doggedly hell-bent on developing a deficit theory of transgressive sexualities. That is, that homosexuality should be conceptualised as a deviation of heterosexuality and further, that heterosexuality is accepted as the norm from which all other sexualities deviate. Therein, homosexuality becomes the focus either of intense research efforts to locate the source of our pathology directly, or through the even more nefarious process of trying to establish a causative link between homosexuality and mental disorder.

So much written about homosexuality in the academic and popular press nowadays, obsesses on how to prove the specious argument that gay men (allegedly) suffer from higher rates of mental disorder than their straight counterparts do. Moreover, if that argument is true, that must mean that gay men are inherently vulnerable to suffering with mental disorder. That there is no substantive evidence to support such a preposterous causative link does not seem to deter the oddball confluence of reasonable scientists, gay rights advocates and self-proclaimed homophobes, from insisting that it must be so.

To be gay is to be mad, drug-fucked and suicidal…

In this article, Ueno (2010, p.392) does not seek to overturn the argument that same-sex attracted people are so incredibly drug-fucked because of their alleged vulnerability to mental disorder but rather, he pleads for greater understanding of the complex intrapsychic, interpersonal and social factors that can lead a same-sex attracted person to choose to misuse psychoactive substances. Thus, while substance misuse might be motivated by stress, strain or discrimination, it can alternatively or simultaneously be motivated by the desire to act out, show off or fit in (2010, pp.392-393). This is particularly the case for younger same-sex attracted people, that is, those under the age of 25 (2010, p.394).

In the present study (2010), data drawn from 1492 young adults surveyed in Miami-Dade County, Florida, about 93 per cent of whom were aged between 19 and 21 (p.395), did indeed confirm that same-sex attracted people were more likely than their straight counterparts to report ‘depressive symptoms and drug use’ (p.402). However, instead of jumping to the typical conclusion that this must mean just that, the author (2010) noted that…

1. Several underlying factors (victimisation, discrimination, negative life events, chronic strains, lack of social support, and impoverished psychological resources) each contributed to the higher incidence of reported depressive symptoms in the same-sex attracted participants (n=64) (pp.398, 402-403).

-and that-

2. The higher incidence of drug use among the same-sex attracted participants was primarily accounted for by the peculiarities of their self-exploratory attitudes and network norms (2010, p.403). Therefore, it is more plausible that a ‘sex and drugs’ subculture, and not any underlying psychopathology, entices same-sex attracted (young) people into a chemically enhanced lifestyle (2010, p.403)…

‘The findings for drug use therefore challenge the existing literature, which emphasizes the importance of stress mechanisms for explaining sexual minorities’ greater mental health problems across various outcomes. The emphasis on stress processes is based on an assumption that sexual minorities’ elevated stress exposure and resource deficiency manifest in a variety of mental health problems including drug use (Meyer 2003; Ueno 2010). Previous findings provided indirect support for the assumption: Sexual minorities are exposed to stressors to greater degrees than heterosexual people (e.g., Garofalo et al. 1998), and stress exposure is positively associated with drug use in the sexual minority population (e.g., Ryan et al. 2009). Direct tests of mediation, however, have been conducted only in one study that included drug dependence as one of several disorders in a dichotomous measure of “any disorder” (Mays and Cochran 2001). The present results thus cast doubt about the importance of stress mechanisms specifically for the drug use disparity’ (2010, p.403).

Ueno (2010, pp.403-404) wraps up this article with the interesting aside, that although the drug use behaviours of same-sex attracted people are heavily influenced by their self-exploratory attitudes and network norms, that does not negate the possibility that they might lack responsibility for those behaviours. In other words, same-sex attracted (young) people could be drawn into the sex and drugs subculture in a dissociative funk, that stems from their extreme stress (2010, p.404). If they know not what they do, then impoverished capacity would render individual agency defunct and cast them back into a psychopathological pit.

The tendency to madden gay men remains…