News :: GLBT
Gay author plumbs the depths of addiction in ’America Anonymous’ by St. John Barned-Smith
contributing writerWednesday Dec 24, 2008 Benoit Denizet-Lewis is trying to start a conversation in a place where no one seems to want to have it.
Denizet-Lewis, a 33-year-old Jamaica Plain resident, is addicted to sex, and he wants to talk about it. But addicts usually only discuss their addictions in 12-step programs in anonymous church basements.
In America Anonymous, his new book about the struggles of recovering addicts from all over America, Denizet-Lewis delves into the lives of eight addicts, and looks at as his own recovery in an attempt to spark a real conversation about addiction out in the light of day.
The subjects of the book come from across the country: men and women from the streets of Southie, in treatment centers in Palm Beach, on drug corners in Harlem. Old, young, black, white, straight, gay, they’re a diverse crowd, but they’re all addicts trying to make good overcome dependencies that threaten to take over their lives.
Denizet-Lewis is a contributing writer for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and also writes frequently for Out and The Advocate about identity, gay culture, gender issues, and masculinity.
He argues that with 23 million Americans dependent on alcohol or drugs, 60 million addicted to cigarettes, millions more unable to stop gambling, compulsively overeating, or engaging in unhealthy sex and porn use, addiction is one of America’s biggest public health risks.
"But recovery is the American way of life, too," he writes.
In a recent interview with Bay Windows, Denizet-Lewis talked about putting the book together.
It was an intensely challenging experience for Denizet-Lewis, who had to deal with his own sex addiction while researching the book.
In the thrall of his addiction, Denizet-Lewis says, "I wasn’t calling back friends, wasn’t going to therapy, wasn’t taking my dog for a walk, my whole life, practically all day, was consumed with sex addiction, and you know, that is what sex addiction can look like."
"It’s like completely blowing off every other thing in my life, for the pursuit of sex, which in the end, leaves you feeling shameful, empty, sad, lonely, depressed."
"If you want to talk about what was challenging was writing a book about addiction, so thinking and reading and writing about addiction all day long, and then having to worry about my own recovery at the same time," he says. "Having to go to my own recovery meetings, and do all the work I need to do to have a sane life, and a happy life, so a lot of days, I was like, ’this is too much addiction.’"
Denizet-Lewis traces his addiction to his childhood.
"Drug addicts, sex addicts, and gamblers, had trauma growing up, and that trauma often takes the form of sexual or physical abuse, but can just as easily can take the form of emotional abuse, neglect, or parents who really didn’t give their kid what the kid needed," he says.
While Denizet-Lewis suspects his addiction stems from a basic emotional neglect as a child, two of his subjects, Janice and Kate, were raped or repeatedly molested as children. In group-counseling sessions, Denizet-Lewis writes in his book, as many as half of attendees admitted to being sexually abused, and almost all had suffered emotional abuse.
It’s taken a long time for the medical community to come around to this way of thinking, Denizet-Lewis says. "Scientists used to pooh-pooh the idea for sex or food addiction, that we should call those addiction, they said this is just more of a sign that America is addicted to calling everything addiction."
"One of the problems, is we can’t agree on what we’re talking about. I chose to take a broad definition of addiction, because I know that sex addiction for me is as addictive and destructive as heroin is for a drug addict."
But many people don’t share that same view. When trying to track addiction, Denizet-Lewis says, "We don’t agree on what we’re talking about. We can’t grapple with what is and isn’t addiction and who’s to blame, and is it genetic, and why can’t people pull themselves up by their bootstraps."
Nevertheless, he says, "A lot of [scientists] are coming around. These [diseases] affect similar pathways, play on dopamine, and affect similar pleasure centers in the brain, so a lot of these scientists have come around to the idea that some of these other behaviors - especially sex, especially gambling, and food, can be just as addictive, just as destructive. But there’s still a lot of pushback."
Denizet-Lewis also says that growing up gay was a factor in his addiction, and can be for many addicts. "It’s inherently traumatic to grow up gay in this culture," he says. "Obviously it’s becoming better for kids growing up gay but ... we learn how to [keep] secrets, to compartmentalize, and often times, our first sex experiences are shame-filled."
Many other factors can cause addiction, says Denizet-Lewis. Some of the subjects in his book, like Bobby, a heroin addict from South Boston, grew up in an environment surrounded by drugs, addiction, and poverty, a virtual siege that was itself a major traumatic experience, but one that can be common - and self-perpetuating.
"Addiction is our costliest health problem," Denizet-Lewis says. "Studies say addiction costs anywhere from 300 billion to 500 billion dollars a year, and has staggering consequences for our public health system and criminal justice system, but we don’t see it as our biggest public health problem."
But the bottom line, for Denizet-Lewis, is that addiction is still something America can’t discuss with any real subtlety or compassion, and it needs to. "Unless a celebrity goes into rehab or appears on Oprah, we don’t talk much about addiction in this country," he says. "We certainly don’t talk about it as a public health problem, and we don’t talk about it in an intelligent way."
"People in recovery have been talking to each other in church basements, unlike other illnesses that were stigmatized," he says. "AIDS, various forms of cancer, how did we begin to destigmatize those? People who suffered from those came out of the closet and demanded something be done about this. [When it comes to addiction], the actual people who could demand we talk about this aren’t demanding about this."
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