Substances & Sex: Before, During & After
Marie & Janet:
Think of substances like drugs and alcohol as gasoline. Then a conflict, a tiny trigger ignites it.
We rarely expect the explosion that occurs when someone's been privately drinking for hours, trips on a shoe, and spins out of control. There's no warning – it can be chaotic and damaging. The same is true when an abuser ruffies a victim to gain control. Or, imagine self-medicating to stay silent or cope with what happened, sending a survivor to the comfort of oblivion. The drug that temporarily takes the edge off is the source that causes us to drift farther and farther away from substantial healing. Substances are like so many veils we have cut through later to get to the truth, to the root, and find our way back to our true selves.
Substances are a big factor in victims' self-medicating to stay silent or cope with what happened to them.
Marie:
Every once in a while, you find a drunk who can be called a happy drunk. It's someone funny and outrageous, and then later they go away to sleep it off. More often than not, in contrast, the substance that deletes inhibitions releases bitterness or an argumentative side, also can release a rage that has been boiling deep below the surface. Alcohol and drugs can fan the flames of outrageous behavior and give the user frightening strength.
I knew a man who used to come home drunk and pull his daughters out of bed by the hair in the middle of the night. No one knew why. His wife slept on the bottom step of the stairs, so he'd have to go through her first to get to them. You can just imagine how much angst this all caused, and yet it was untenable even to begin to contemplate, in a good Catholic family, stopping this routine through a divorce or reporting this to any outside agency – EVER.
According to the World Health Organization, alcohol consumption is a significant contributor to intimate partner violence, and links between them are manifold.
According to Caron Treatment Centers, there was a study in 2004 that found:
...when compared with non-victims, rape victims are 3.4 times more likely to use marijuana 5.3 times more likely than non-survivors to use prescription drugs for non-medical purposes. Victims of sexual assault, including childhood sexual abuse, may use alcohol or drugs to numb or escape from painful memories.
Caron Treatment Centers, 2004
The shame and stigma of drinking and drug use, layered on top of the shame and stigma of sexual assault, make this a complex issue. The connections go back and forth between violence and addictions. Add to that the fact that addicts are easily targeted when under the influence.
Being drunk of high lowers anyone's impulse control and can open the floodgates to violent behavior. Substances can be there before the assault, during the assault, and as a coping mechanism long after the assault. Each needs a different response and treatment to unravel.
What about killing the pain of sexual abuse with alcohol or drugs? When the pain, whether it be the physical pain or the painful memories of sexual abuse, causes a person to numb themselves so repeatedly that they become addicted and unable to stop? Addicts are often ignored or shunned by society. How can they be encouraged to reach out and report? They will blame themselves for years to come unless they can open up to a devoted therapist.
Having been drinking or using before an assault shames and silences victims from reporting. The unwitting use of substances during an assault makes the sequence of events tough to talk about and sort through. The use of drugs to mask pain after an assault buries it. Then, it makes it that much harder to reach and diagnose depression or co-occurring anxiety; therefore, that much further away from healing.
Janet:
My anger at being married to a drunk, drug, sex and control addict overpowers the lady I was taught to be. He would come home for lunch, normal, and loving. After work, around midnight, he was mad about our life. He loved the bar, the women willing to unbutton their shirts and playfully tease him.
I tried alcohol in order to be one with my social group. I never figured out how to say “no” until I fell out of a car full of drunken friends, driven by a drunk driver. The group always waited patiently for me to vomit on the side of the road. Then, with kind understanding voices, offered something else, as if it would be a better or safer high.
I wasn’t drunk when I was raped, and I wasn’t high when I fought back my girlfriend’s brother’s friend when he tried to rape me. I wasn’t drunk when I married a drunk.
I remember the Al Anon meeting, the only meeting I went to, where I was told that I could not empathize with an addict’s pain. I-would-never- know-the-pain-that-addicts-feel. “Wait a minute!” I asked, “Doesn’t that mean my pain is less than an addict?” I added, “Then, if what you say is true, I can say, addicts have no idea the full spectrum of pain because they’re loaded!” Ok, I’m a jerk.
When my addicted husband didn't get what he wanted outside our home, he unleashed his drunken rage with forced sex. He'd wake me, my clothes hard ripped so he could take me unaware, thrilling him to the point of loving joy.
We were a young couple with a baby, in college, working and living just like couples did in 1968. Being told I was the one to hold the family together through his messy affairs, the violent sex, and the women in my bed when I got home from work, deeply scarred me. It was deep, sad, and much more damaging than any successful assault.
In my poem to Divorce, the first line is:
…YOU pushed me into the refrigerator while our baby slept and pressed your fist into my stomach while you, with hate and scotch on your breath, said i ruined your life.
Sexual violence is a serious problem that can have lasting, harmful effects on victims and their families, friends, and communities. The goal of sexual violence prevention is to stop it from happening in the first place. The solutions are just as complex as the problem.
The solution to what my girls and I had to go through is not on the CDC webpage on sexual violence prevention.
Hope? My hope was realized with my feet. I got help, I prayed to overcome my anger and carve a positive victimless path for myself. My girls have done the same. We survived the devil and can know the infinite pain survivors of addicts feel.
The shame of failure to keep my family safe was sickening. That shame closed off access to forgiving myself for succumbing to the addict’s charm. It left me weak and at the point of barfing on the side of the road.
Substances before the assault, during, and after as a coping mechanism, each needs different responses and treatment to unravel.
But what about the prince who seems so charming, so good, like the one? A threat might be misinterpreted as love and, the first acts of domination may be exiting until they’re dangerous.
According to then-Senator Joseph Biden, who pushed for the Violence Against Women Act, a law to punish violence against women,
The single greatest danger to a woman's health is violence from men.
Senator Joseph Biden, New York Magazine
Our powers of defense are not up to the sneak attacks from self-proclaimed changed men. First, they charm and cajole us into thinking they’ve changed. But soon, they bully and manipulate us into losing ourselves, our autonomy, and our basic freedoms. Our worst nightmare comes from perpetrators who think they can change. They say they have changed. We hope they can change.