▼
Read more online at www.ebar.com
January 28-February 3, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 33
Sex, sobriety and safeword
Rich Stadtmiller
Rio Spooner (2nd right), Ms. San Francisco Sober Leather and cocoordinator of the women’s leather organization, Exiles, with friends at the Sober Kink meet & greet at Stompers Boots in 2015.
by Krissy Eliot
S
afeword, held at the SF Citadel every Tuesday, is a kink-friendly Alcoholics Anonymous meeting where people can speak freely about taboo sexual preferences. At first, it can seem like just another way for self-identified heathens to chill with like minds, which is common in San Francisco, a city rife with kinkfriendly cafes and bullwhip beach gatherings galore. But after listening to what these like minds had to say about their struggles with sobriety, I found that these sexually-specialized AA meetings transcend sex talk for its own sake, and the truth is hard to knock back. Addicts already harbor a lot of shame around substance abuse; kinky people experience that plus sexual humiliation, resulting in a unique kind of angst and struggle. Because standard, “run-of-the-mill” AA meetings don’t typically encourage sexual discussion, it can create a block on the road to recovery, and possibly send them careening in the wrong direction. Robbie, a recovering meth addict who has long attended standard AA meetings and recently attended Safeword for the first time, said that not being able to discuss sexuality openly at meetings can
make recovery difficult. “In the little preamble that they read at the beginning of each [standard] AA meeting, they want us to not talk too much about our sex life or sexuality so we don’t trigger other people to use—because so many meth addicts have sex and crystal meth intertwined as one while they’re using,” Robbie said. “It’s hard for a lot us to separate the drugs and the sex because they were one the whole time we were using, so sober sex for us at first is very weird. It’s like learning to be sexual all over again without the crutch.” Crystal meth, like kink, is popular in the Bay Area. San Francisco’s meth use rose in the first half of 2013 from 4,450 (2011-2012) to 4,936 (2012-2013), according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. And the reports of meth seized increased from 32.1 to 37.8 percent in 2013, accounting for the largest number of drug reports during those two periods. Alcohol abuse numbers remained high and heroin use fluctuated during this time, while prescription pills and opioids were very popular among adults 18-25. Robbie’s theory of addiction as a crutch is similar to psychologists of yore, who believed substance abuse was deeply rooted in sexual repres-
sion. Sigmund Freud’s drive theory describes addiction as a displacement for infantile sexual behavior –a way for people to cope with constricting social norms that inhibit their sexuality from an early age. Hungarian psychoanalyst Sandor Rado saw addiction as a substitute for sex, and said substances create an “alimentary orgasm” in the body. So if substances can function as replacements for sexual desire, to not address sex openly in meetings could mean ignoring or dismissing the source of the addiction. Meetings like Safeword would theoretically integrate addicted kinksters into a substance-free lifestyle because they’d be hanging with a group that holds them accountable. “One of the things I appreciate about the Bay Area kink community is that the groups I run with, whether or not they’re in recovery, typically play sober,” said Andy, a recovering alcoholic. “Because there is a cultural norm that identifies that kind of play as safer and more enjoyable.” According to Andy, sexual play spaces like Alchemy and The SF Citadel don’t encourage intoxication— but he says that elsewhere in the Bay Area there is “a ton of drug use” and unsafe sexual practices. “It’s weird for me, because in the AA groups I go to for gay men, I’m one of the only people who is not HIV-positive,” Robbie said. “The men I come across have just had sex with so many people and don’t practice safe sex while they’re using.” On a positive note, statistics show that new HIV infections and deaths of HIV-infected people in San Francisco have dropped over 17 percent between 2013 to 2014, according to the Department of Public Health. This could have a lot do with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approving the HIV/AIDS prevention drug Truvada in 2012. Despite the power and presence of this preventive drug, however, sexual support groups and the information they provide could contribute to STD prevention in a different way. “There are a lot of people who dabble in power exchange in a sexual situation who will never come to a public dungeon or may never be part of a leather organization,” said Rio Spooner, Ms. San Francisco Sober Leather and co-coordinator of the women’s leather organization, Exiles. “And those people, I think, are more likely to be using drugs or drinking while they play, because if you’re not part of a community,
you have no idea what community expectations are. You’re doing whatever you feel like or you’re drawn to. And one of the advantages of having a community in the Bay Area is that people do get a lot more education on safety and ways to play.” In an ideal world, we’d all be able to speak openly about anything on our path to recovery; But AA meetings are group efforts, put on by volunteers who want to create a comfortable space for everyone. Andy said kink-specialized meetings like Safeword are a cog in the wheel of recovery, and he recognizes that all AA meetings cannot realistically be as open as everyone would
like, particularly if a topic involving kink or sexuality is going to act as a trigger for someone else’s addiction. A certain level of empathy is involved to keep AA meetings positive for the sobriety of all. “A meeting that allows open discussion of sexual issues has a place in my recovery,” Andy said. “It’s not the only kind of meeting I go to and I wouldn’t think, necessarily, that we need to change all AA meetings to be like that.”▼ Readers can contact Krissy by email at thekrissyeliot@gmail.com and view her previous work at www.krissyeliot.com.
2017
BARE
tless) (as in shir
CHESRT
CALENDA
A ID S
th ugh March 10 ro th y a d rs org ry Thu @barechest. rhouse. Eve g e in w it o P ru t c a re m , 8p Semi-finals rg barechest.o
Rich Stadtmiller
Leather friends at a 2015 Sober Kink meet & greet at Stompers Boots in in 2015.
CE N TE R
G N I T I U R C E NFOROTHWE 201R7 BARE CHEST CALENDAR B EN EF IT IN G
ment A no commitis the orientation ct us. onta t firs step. C can make o to You . a difference
ES O U R CE PO S IT IV E R FU N D A N D CY EN G ER EM
Photo: Joe Chavarria
BCC17 5.75x5 ebar ad_COMPOSITED.indd 1
Mazza, Gerharter, Joe mr. Pam, Rick Wong es Scott Geras, Underhill, Bill Weaver, Tim photos by Jam en za. Background l Smith, Dennis Tyler, Stev hae Mic
Maz Photo by Joe
1/7/16 2:18 PM