People like me aren’t supposed to ask for help when we have problems. Black people are supposed to be resilient and strong. According to the Bisexuality Report (Open University, 2012) Bisexual people are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol than straight, gay and lesbian people. Biphobia and racism inside and outside of LGBT+ communities can also lead to worse mental health outcomes than others in the groups above (Bi’s of Colour report 2015).
When I’m told by well meaning people to “Pray on it,” or “Get support from the family and church,” this advice is not so useful for me. I’m an ex-runaway who fled their family of origin almost 30 years ago. Most churches in the U.K are not welcoming towards LGBT+ people, and if by chance they are one of the few queer led congregations, they definitely are aimed at lesbians and gays only. Detox and Mental health services in the NHS have little experience or willingness to learn about the intersections of ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion: one size fits all is what I’ve been offered in the past, but their little boxes of recovery can’t hold all that I am. So I looked to group support in 12-step groups.
I’ve attended three 12-step groups in my life: Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Survivors of Incest Anonymous (SIA), and Overeaters Anonymous (OA).
Alcoholics Anonymous is an organisation I had heard about in media growing up, but I had never heard of the other two groups until I was floundering around in libraries for information, long before the internet really existed. The AA groups I attended were always overwhelmingly straight, white and male. S.I.A and OA were very much straight, white and female. I was usually the only black person in the room, and I was often made to feel unwelcome, but I persisted with each group, sometimes over the course of years, until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I exist at the intersection of many marginalised identities. People who are in the cultural majority often find it difficult to understand why this affects everything I do, including how I heal and work through issues. In most 12-step groups, differences are ignored in the most part, and the baseline is simply a “desire to heal”. But I can’t heal if white straight people talk over me, ignore my hand when it’s raised in meetings, or laugh when I share about how oppression affects me.
In the last AA meeting I attended, I shared about racism I’d faced in previous meetings I’d attended in various locations in London. As I left the building, a white man approached me and said, “Maybe we should all wear boot polish next week, then we’ll be the same.” He walked away quickly after my retort of, “I can’t believe you just said that!”
At many OA meetings, people had the tendency to hug each other before leaving. As a survivor of sexual violence, it has taken me decades to be comfortable with hugging people I don’t know well, unless they ask if it’s okay to do that first. At the end of my last OA meeting, a man launched himself at me with arms wide and a big grin on his face. I stepped back and said, “No thanks.”
The man looked at me with eyes wide in shock and said in a very angry tone, “I wanna hug you. I’m not gonna hurt you!”
At a different OA meeting, someone brought their dog, and left the animal free to wander around the small room. When I asked them to keep their dog away from me, as I’m scared of most animals, I was met with an aggressive white woman spitting words at me, and stating I was at a ‘dog-friendly’ meeting, and I should ‘get used to it or just go’.
These outbursts left me scared and upset. We all have different ways we interact with the world, but because of how I look and am perceived, it’s assumed I can handle everything thrown at me without a word of complaint; the ‘Strong Black Woman’ trope is alive and well it appears. I’m rarely seen as a human with feelings, but just a jumble of stereotypes. Also, I’m nonbinary.
Disbelief, silence, a lack of respect toward boundaries, sexism, biphobia and general racism before, during and after meetings, were an everyday occurrence in the groups I attended. London is a multicultural city, but when I went to meetings, I may have well been in the most isolated rural settlement. There was nobody to speak to about my problems I encountered in meetings, as 12-step groups don’t operate with a system of leadership or even culpability. I simply found myself alone and unwanted everywhere I went. I no longer attend any group and it saddens me, because I can see how much they have helped white people; I can see the potential that could exist for me too, if I wasn’t the person I am. But I know I should never feel forced to change or ignore who I am, in order to get the help I desperately need.
Written in Shadows 