Two speakers argue that gay men's addiction struggles stem from systemic shame, not personal failure. They trace this to the AIDS epidemic trauma and religious institutions like the Mormon and Catholic churches, which taught gay men to hate their own bodies. Recovery requires unlearning these deep cultural messages.
It's challenging to, to be a person, I think, in addiction and recovery and not take that burden on, right? Say like, it's all my fault. I think it's so much bigger than that. It's systemic. It's cultural. You know, as much as our shame is personal, we as gay men hold cultural shame and societal shame and trauma as well. AIDS epidemic being one of them. Religious shame is like top of the list. Mormonism and Catholicism are so radically horrible. They are. Yeah. Radically horrible. Just the, the, the, the distance that it creates between people's relationship to their sex and their, their own bodies. It's just abhorrent. And the, the amount of unlearning that needs to take place there is massive. So— Unlearning. That's right.
A lot of unlearning.
