I Keep Promising Myself This Weekend Will Be Different…
From the outside, your life probably looks pretty good. You moved to London for the freedom, the opportunities, the community, the men and the chance to finally be yourself. You’ve now got a career and a wide circle of friends - maybe even a place of your own.
You might be the person everyone else turns to when they need advice. Or the one who friends or colleagues feel like they can really, really talk to.
People would probably describe you as successful. Maybe some people might even envy you. And why wouldn’t they? Because to the outside world, it looks like you’ve cracked it.
But inside, you’re the one who’s cracking. Cracking under the pressure that nobody else sees. The pressure from just how much effort it takes to hold everything together.
They don't see you promising yourself that this weekend will be different. They don't see you opening Grindr because you can't bear another evening alone with your own thoughts. They don't see the drugs, the Selfridges bags all over the place. They don’t see the endless doom-scrolling, the gym sessions that have stopped feeling enjoyable, the porn that seems to get more extreme as the months go by, the endless, soulless hook-ups that often leave you feeling even lonelier, or the work that quietly fills every spare hour.
They don't see how often you're trying to outrun something you can't quite put into words. They don’t see how lonely and empty you truly feel.
"This Is The Last Time"
You've said it before. You’ve kinda lost count of how many times you’ve said it before.
No more coke.
No more k.
No more staying up all weekend.
No more spending money you don't have.
No more deleting Grindr only to reinstall it a few days later.
No more waking up wondering what the fuck happened.
And each time, you really mean it. You promise yourself that next weekend will be different.
Then Friday comes around, or you’re having a difficult day at work. Or you’re feeling bored and a bit horny. Or your boss gave you a talking to. Or the barista just looked at you funny.
And it’s as if last weekend never happened. The promises get forgotten. You tell yourself that this time you’ll be “good”, you’ll know when to stop, you can just say “no”, or you can just have a few drinks. That it’s not really that big of a problem. That you’re in control. Or maybe there isn’t an excuse and you just think “fuck it”.
But this time you have to call in to work sick on Monday. Or maybe your weekend is beginning to start earlier - “Thursday is the new Friday!”.
Except it’s not.
Most people don't use drugs because life is going well.
I sure as shit didn’t.
I’ll take that back a little bit. In the beginning, they can be fun. They can help us dance all night. Ease the comedown or just chill. Give us a bit of Dutch courage before we ask that cute guy out. They can make those little inner critics shut the fuck up.
The same can be true of compulsive sex, shopping, exercise, work, food, social media, porn. They all give us little hits of dopamine, and I don’t think there’s anything inherently “bad” about that.
But what if they start serving another purpose?
Each offers a brief escape from feelings that maybe we don’t want to sit with. Doubts. Loneliness. Sadness. Pain. Fear. Shame. And man, it feels good to not have to feel all that for a while.
But the thing is that relief never lasts. Those feelings come back. And then we add new feelings on top of them. From cheating on our boyfriend even though we love him. From what we got up to at the chillout. From what people might think of us if they knew what we were doing. From ending up all alone, again. From believing that what we’ve done somehow makes us a terrible person. And before long, we're using again to escape the very feelings our using created.
But I Can’t Be An Addict Because…
Many of the men I work with don't fit people's stereotype of addiction. They don’t look like, you know, “addicts”.
They're intelligent, funny, kind, dependable. They hold down demanding jobs, their friends admire them and their colleagues respect them. They’ve still got their homes and they pay their bills. They’ve still got all their teeth.
But the damage usually starts long before addiction becomes visible to anyone else. It might begin with the sense that every weekend feels like a battle for you. Or with the silent terror that someone will discover just how much you’re struggling. Or with the creeping sense that maybe you’re starting to lose control. Or the shudder of shame about what you got up to. Or the realisation that you've crossed one of those "I'd never do that" lines you once swore you'd never cross. You’ve become a master of illusion, presenting one version of yourself while hiding another.
And living with that…well, it gets fucking exhausting. Trust me.
The Drugs Aren’t The Main Problem
If you’ve gotten this far, I’ve a hunch that some of what I’ve written has hit home.
Maybe you're starting to wonder whether your using has become something more than "just a bit of fun". Maybe you're realising that something needs to change before it gets any worse.
So it's time I shared something with you... the drugs aren’t the main problem.
If they were, you and countless others (including me) would be able to stop. To “just say no”. To walk away from it all.
But it doesn’t work like that. Something pulls us back, sometimes over and over. It’s got its hooks into us.
So maybe the question you now need to ask yourself is "Have the drugs started taking more than they give?".
Because they have given you “solutions” to your problems. They helped you survive loneliness. To numb your shame. To give you a sense of connection when you felt invisible. To silence the relentless voice telling you that you’re not enough. But now the drugs have turned into a new problem.
And you see that. You’ve spent years trying to control and manage your using, to cut down, to only use on certain days or at certain times. To not use alone. But none of it’s worked.
And there’s now a part of you that desperately wants to just stop. But you’re left feeling confused and frustrated about why you can’t “just stop”.
So maybe it’s time to fully face reality. You’re not someone who can “just have one”. That this time won’t be any different to last time, or the last 20 times. That it’s not gonna get any better - and it’s probably gonna keep getting worse and worse. That the voice that tried to convince you otherwise has become so powerful, you can’t dismiss it by yourself.
And when that reality finally dawns, that's when something different can begin.
Something Different
People usually come to therapy because they want something different in their lives. Oftentimes, they don’t quite know what that might look like, but they know that something needs to change.
My role as a therapist isn’t to tell you what that “something different” should look like for you, nor to tell you what to do. And I’m not going to label you as an addict - that is your decision.
But neither will I sit with you in collusion. When working with addiction, part of my role is to help you break through denial. Realising that you've become addicted can be painful. It's something many of us don't want to face. I get it. None of us dreamed of becoming addicted when we were little. There’s a lot of shame and stigma around the words ‘addiction’ and ‘addict’. My own journey with the terms included resistance. But today, referring to myself as an addict, even though it’s been many years since I used, helps affirm the reality - that if I start using again, all bets are off.
I’m not going to sit across from you and simply tell you to stop using. Or to delete Grindr (or Scruff, Recon, Hinge etc.). To not go anywhere you might find temptation. My role is to help you figure out what works and what doesn’t. What keeps you safe and what puts you in harm’s way.
Therapy isn’t, however, just about changing behaviours. It's about understanding what they have been doing for you. And once we know that, we can do the deeper healing work.
Over time, drugs stop being the only answer because you'll find something different - new ways to soothe your worries, to allay your fears, and to begin letting go of a shame that was never yours to carry.
A New Way To Live
Recovery isn't simply about not using. It’s about not needing to escape. It’s about living rather than just getting by or stumbling through.
Your weekends will no longer have to be recovered from.
Being alone will no longer have to feel unbearable.
Pleasure will become something you’ll experience rather than chase.
You’ll feel more moments of genuine happiness.
You’ll feel comfortable in your own skin.
The harsh ways you talk to yourself will begin to fade.
Fear will no longer be calling the shots.
You'll begin to experience the kind of connection you've been searching for.
You'll stop feeling quite so alone.
You’ll realise that it wasn’t just you that didn’t get the handbook.
Maybe you've reached the point where you don't want another promise that this weekend will be different. You want your life to be different.
I know that place. I've left it behind myself, and I've helped many other men find a new way to live. I'm here to help you do the same.