HOMOVISION REHAB with THE SWARMITE: FREEDOM

In some quarters to admit “being in therapy” is as shaming as owning membership to the Jan Moir Fan Club, so you may wonder why people seek it, pay for it and continue the process of on-going examination. However, coming out as “being in therapy” is the new celebrity ring-a-ding these days, going into REHAB is so over it seems, unless your recording contract insists on it. Look at Amy – now what WAS that rider? :- I won’t go to REHAB unless it’s in St Lucia, I insist on working with the producer that worked on Back to Black to create my next album (that is 3 years late), I can drink beer every night and not eat anything. Alright then, I’ll go.

In order to experience freedom we need to sacrifice something including the freedom to be reckless in our lives. You may think that having a freedom flag mouse mat (very Nineties!) to cruise on while you lose 6 hours on Gaydar, is the freedom to be who you are but REAL freedom comes from inside – not from a flag. To find that freedom, a sense of balance and a guilt free wake up call is the reason many smart gayers choose therapy of any kind as a route to change. In decades gone past it was all about “accepting yourself as a homo”, now it’s about “accepting yourself as a crack addict”, a serial debtor, a codependent, a boozer or someone who just CAN’T find a relationship to keep. I blame Thatcher.

Until Thatcher brought in Clause 28 and Capital Gay Newspaper (with REAL NEWS in, not half dressed shots of twinks drinking tequila we see today) – said “unless you get out on the street, Thatcher will close the Gay Bars). It was the month of Mad March 1988. Until that time I had never seen 36,000 gayers and their str8 friends in one place, but I remember looking back on the march when we reached Piccadilly Circus, all I could see as far as the eye could see was US. Now that’s REAL freedom, and instead of controlling gays Thatcher was actually responsible for the 60,000 people who turned out for the 1988 Summer Gay Pride March that same year. Yes we marched then, not celebrated, for many HOMOVISION readers may not know that battles have been fought on their behalf.

In the late eighties and just after, you only “had therapy” if you were close to someone with AIDS, had AIDS or had received an HIV+ diagnosis and told you were about to die. Until this time we were affected by no other diseases aside from the dis-ease of being a gayer, the need to listen to torch singers and watch Streisand films. We had no other mental health issues. In 1998, a decade on, I was invited by EUROPRIDE (that year in Stockholm, Sweden) to present my own series of seminars I started in London in 1994 called QUEER LOVE QUEST, to be the first Gay Personal Development Programme ever to be part of the official festival itinerary. The tide had turned and other gay issues like homophobia, aging and addictions were being addresed. Thatcher had long gone, Nu Labour was the flavour, combos had arrived and our freedoms began, but without the attack by Thatcher, we would still be simpering and apologising for having a decent haircut.

Many forms of therapy exist, but the purpose is the same, FREEDOM from the past and present habits, resentments, toxic shame and guilt. Watching ITV’s Loose Women the other day I was shocked that half the panel saw therapy as “self -indulgent “. Codependency has often been described as a pattern of behaviour where you lose your own sense of self while caring for, parenting, worrying, rescuing or taking too much responsibility for others. Along the way we have been told that others come first, so I can see that within this context caring for yourself would be “self-indulgent”. Prompted by certain gay activists we have been told for so long that we are just like straights now and should not have “gay issues” anymore, we are just humans not defined by sexuality. Unfortunately the “issue” is still that you can’t walk down an average street holding your partners hand like straights do in complete freedom. Until we can do this with ease we have no cause to wave a flag. Until we can safely get off a bus and not hear homophobic abuse from feral youth or be beaten to death for standing our own ground we will not feel free. Yet in order to handle these outside interferences therapy can teach you to feel free from attack, free from the judge and jury in your head and free to live in the world of extras. I call it this because when you reduce a habit, or change an unhealthy routine you find extra time, extra interests and extra pride in yourself.

REHAB is seen in much the same way that many witness a gastric band. A last resort. Celebrity Rehab is now all about nervous exhaustion, pill addiction and can’t cope, no one goes in for booze anymore, except The Hoff. Fashions change. Some progress there I guess but until we get a grip of the journey we take to get to Rehab we will always need a rock bottom to wake up. Harm reduction is the new mantra, therapy is a speed-bump to harm reduction, not a self-indulgent exercise. Self indulgence is lost weekends in a K hole, half the night on Gaydar, losing your phone and buying another on a CC without knowing or caring what you owe. Self indulgence is not just a gayers charter but we have more loose change in our pocket with less responsibilities and a lifestyle that insists – not that it’s party as if it’s 1999 – but to party till we are 99.

So while you fiddle with your mouse mat consider where you feel FREE today – are you going to sit back in 10 days time while a silent vigil takes place in Trafalgar Square, to fight against energies that hate your very existence? Are you going to stand in a bar or make a stand in a square? While you ponder that, consider the 36,000 that marched that winters day in 1988 for the right for you to feel free. Take ACTION, the most powerful drug available to man.

If you need a life clear-out, chem free weekdays and higher esteem check out http://www.theswarmite or http://www.twitter.com/mygaytherapist or the new HOMO REHAB Fan Page on Facebook. It would be rude not to.