Coming over and coming out

Illicit drug use can often lead to difficult conversations with parents, families and communities — or it can mean people have large parts of their life that they never talk about. For people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, the issue is even trickier, especially when parent and child don’t speak in the same language! Here is how 3 women from 3 different backgrounds put their family and their drug use together in 3 different ways.

Molly’s story: There aren’t the words

I have never directly told my Russian mother what drugs I use. She only really knows what drugs I have used if I happen to have said it, in English, to someone else, in her earshot.

My mother isn’t a closed-minded person, but she does worry, like mums do. Most of the time when I have mentioned drugs, she has responded with mild curiosity, and begrudging acceptance. Sometimes she has even surprised me by saying that she has liked a certain drug (she got a lot done on meth) or that she wants to try nitrous (I’ll surprise her one birthday).

Since I started getting more involved in drug user activism, she has been nudged to learn more, and — bless her socks! — she will occasionally send me articles, such as on decriminalisation in Portugal. And yet I still can’t bring myself to directly tell her about my drug use.

I think partly it was leaving my birth country at an innocent age. I grew up never hearing about anyone’s drug use, unless it was a problem. Someone in the family had died of a heroin overdose before I was born, and that was the only person I knew of who used drugs. The only word that comes to mind in my native tongue when I try to describe someone who uses drugs is narcomaniac — literally meaning ‘someone with a mania for narcotics’ — and it brings up images of someone out of control. It’s the sort of language that we fight against: it puts the drugs first (narco), the behaviour (mania) second, with the person nowhere to be found.

In English, I readily use person-centric language, but it doesn’t exist in my native tongue as far as I speak it. It’s not that I can’t translate the phrase “people who use drugs” but language isn’t just about knowing the words. Language has so much to do with feelings, implications and hidden meanings. Even though I know all the literal translations of the words for “I did some coke on the weekend”, when I say it in my head in my native tongue it sounds serious and medical and dangerous.

If I had stayed in Russia, I probably would have slowly learned while growing up that some of my parents’ friends take drugs, or some people from school. We are everywhere, we are normal. But I didn’t stay, so my home country still seems drug free to me, except for the tragic stories. So, I’m afraid to tell my family, because I imagine that they will imagine that I will become a tragic story.

But my story isn’t tragic. Sure, I’ve had some touch-and-go moments in my drug-using life, but now, I am comfortable with my drug use. I use drugs to unwind, to connect, to create. Fuck, even when I use drugs because I feel so awful about the world that I can’t look out the window, I am comfortable using drugs, because the other option for me isn’t ‘cheering up and getting on with it’, it’s ‘feeling awful without any chemical cushion’.

I refuse to feel shamed for managing pain in a world that is so often painful. So I feel comfortable with my drug use. I just wish I could tell my mother that.

Amelie’s story: Ski is to surf, as wine is to mushrooms

My dad sits back in his chair and laughs. It’s a good laugh, it comes from deep in him. When he finishes, he leans in and looks around sneakily. “OK” he says, “So, tell me... What are mushrooms like?”

I’m confused. Of all the ways I imagined this conversation going, from rage or anguish to disappointment and tears, this was certainly not one of them. I look down at my phở and stir my tofu into a messy whirlpool. “Good”. I pause. “Incredible, actually. Dad, they’re the best thing I’ve ever done for myself”.

I had decided to come out to my parents a few weeks before, but it had taken me time to muster the courage. I was a law student, aceing every class, publishing articles, volunteering in my spare time. I was ‘functional’ to an extent that stigmatisation doesn’t even permit us to imagine users can be. On weekends, when I would relax with friends and indulge in mushrooms (or acid, or weed, or MDMA) and I would enter these other realms, I felt fulfilled. It was an essential part of my routine and success, something that kept me grounded and in line with my values and spirituality, something that brought me wisdom, connection, community and perspective in the midst of the chaos of law school.

There was nothing destructive about it. I felt pure about my use and thankful for the experiences it brought me. I still feel this way.

It had reached a point where not telling my parents felt like lying. I devised a plan, hunched over a colour-coded mind-map, brow creased, considering contingencies, planning escape routes and researching responses to potential questions they might throw at me. I prepared like it was an exam.

And all the while, I imagined my mother crying “how could you do this to us?” I imagined my father shouting “do you even realise how hard we worked to get you here?” I imagined myself apologising over and over and trying desperately to explain how drugs were compatible with a happy, healthy life, and that they could, in fact, be helpful.

I imagined pointing frantically to all my external achievements and accolades as proof that I was thriving, and in the midst of the disarray, involuntarily distancing myself from the core truth I actually wanted to share with them: that I was happy. And to me that was more important than any scholarship or publication.

My mother’s response was similar to my father’s. She brought her hands together and bowed her head so that her nose rested lightly against her thumbs. She closed her eyes and was silent for a moment. When she emerged, she asked me, “Are you safe?” I said “yes”. She asked, “Are you happy?” I said “yes”. She asked, “Do you want more dumplings?” I said, “So much”.

My parents are immigrants who moved to Australia from Switzerland in their 20s. There has always been a cultural fault-line running through the heart of my family, a chasm between them and I. They speak French, German and Swiss-German before English. I’m a writer who, even as a child, craved parents who could recommend books to me or read my stories and fall into what I was trying to evoke. There are jokes we can’t share, cultural references that miss the mark. I inherited a collection of English expressions that were always slightly off — I cracked myself laughing — and that took me years to untangle and relearn correctly — a blessing in sheep’s clothing.

They ski, I surf. They eat raclette, I’m vegan. They drink wine, I eat magic mushrooms. To a large extent, I think my parents’ reactions to my coming out were a manifestation of our cultural rift. Swiss people are, above all, a pragmatic people. They have direct democracy, a system whereby citizens vote directly on issues rather than for leaders who then make those decisions on their behalf. Admittedly, women didn’t get to vote until 1971, but things have improved since then. Abortion and euthanasia are legal. And we have progressive drug policy.

The so-called ‘four-pillar model’ that underpins Swiss drug policy (prevention, treatment, harm reduction and law enforcement) is very similar in design to Australia’s ‘harm minimisation’ policy (supply reduction, demand reduction and harm reduction) but it goes further. What is more, when the progressive policy was challenged and went to a referendum in 2004, 70% of Swiss voters said ‘yes’. In 1986, Switzerland became the first country to have an injecting centre — and now has 13. It has had needle vending machines in its jails since 2004. Heroin-assisted treatment (where pharmaceutical-grade heroin is provided daily as part of an opioid treatment program) has been available since 1994 — including in jails. The Swiss model has served as an example for many countries and has shifted attitudes towards drugs in the minds of even the most conservative Swiss.

I asked my dad how much of his response was related to his heritage and he told me it was impossible to say. We are all complex mixtures of the things that have happened to us, the human sums of a lifetime of living and learning. Maybe the mark of a good drug policy is whether your children feel safe enough to tell you what’s going on in their lives. Not just the fact that they’re using, but that they’re loving it and they’re growing because of it. Maybe the test is whether they feel safe to come to you for help if they need it, or simply to share their joy with you on the best days. Or maybe, as my dad says, he’s just “a cool dude with a good attitude”. I laugh at that, and he continues “So, when are we taking mushrooms together?” 

Verity’s story: My (chosen) name is my shield

My name is Verity. I am a person of colour and a drug user. My lived experience as a drug user has provided me with the opportunity to work for national and state-based peer organisations, such as NUAA.

I am currently employed at NUAA, however, I will soon be moving on from my role. Through NUAA, I have had the privilege of connecting with and consulting community members from all walks of life to inform the work I do. I particularly enjoy working with other users from different cultural backgrounds and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. I draw on the insight I gather from the drug-using community, and my personal lived experiences, to represent and advocate for people who use drugs — to advocate for our human rights and challenge stigma and discrimination.

The work I do for NUAA is interesting, fulfilling and meaningful. However, I am not immune to the stigma and discrimination that is directed at us. Being a person of colour and an immigrant, hiding my lived experience of drug use from my parents is a priority for me. As a result, I have never been able to tell my parents exactly what I do and where I work despite how proud I am of my work. Being an immigrant means there is so much at stake for me when coming out to my parents. There is the guilt around the fact that my parents gave up everything to give us a better life in Australia and coming out as a drug user does not fit into their story.

I also have to deal with the stigma and negative stereotypes about drug users from the country my parents are from, on top of those common in Australia. Educating my parents requires a huge emotional investment with no guarantee of return. My parents are not fluent in English, so there is an additional challenge when trying to explain my experiences using neutral and non-stigmatising language.

Coming out to my parents is the last and hardest frontier. But I did not want that to get in the way of me being part of the drug-user community and working for peer organisations. I control who and when I am out by using the alias Verity. This allows me to talk about my lived experience publicly and use it to advocate for my community while protecting myself from stigma and discrimination. It is also just fun having another name to go by because it allows me to redefine myself.

Drug user stigma and discrimination can get in the way of us engaging with, and advocating for, our community because we fear that exposure of our lived experiences will result in criminalisation, loss of privacy, stigmatisation and discrimination. However, there are lots of ways I have managed these challenges while still using my lived experience to engage and advocate for our community — using a different name is just one of them.

Stigma, discrimination and not being out about our drug use doesn’t have to stop us from engaging with peer organisations and our community.