Alcohol use is an integral part of the gay world. According to some estimates, the rate of problem drinking is about three times higher among gays than in mainstream society, but few researchers have examined this phenomenon in depth. Thomas S. Weinberg's ethnographic study provides new insight into the role of drinking in the gay male community. Weinberg utilizes interviewing and participant observation techniques in a variety of drinking-related settings in the gay subculture of "Paradise City," the fictitious name of a large western city where he carried outhis research. Emphasizing drinking as social behavior, Weinberg explores the ways social contexts--such as bars, love relationships, and reference groups--affect individual drinking patterns and concludes that drinking is intimately entwined with friendship networks and extended families in the gay world. Weinberg is concerned not only with alcoholism but with variation in alcohol use and changes in alcohol use over time. He employs the concept of "career" to explain why and how an individual's drinking might either increase or decrease over the course of his lifetime. Letting his informants speak for themselves, Weinberg directs attention to their own perspectives on the meaning of their drinking behavior. After creating a typology of drinkers, including self-defined as well as researcher-defined alcoholics, Weinberg considers alternative explanations for gay problem drinking. He thoroughly explores the gay bar scene, its importance in gay life, and the way that interactions within the bar environment affect drinking and risk-taking, specifically as they relate to HIV. Weinberg also looks closely at self-defined gay alcoholics and considers three alternative explanations for gay problem drinking: the alienation thesis, the influence of parental role models, and reference group theory. He rejects the alienation thesis and the influence of parental role models because these causal factors were not borne out by his statistical correlations. Instead, Weinberg finds the most powerful explanation in reference group theory, which links individuals' behavior to the norms of the social groups they identify with. Finally, he arrives at a processual model of gay problem drinking based on his data analysis. By comparing alcohol use in the homosexual and heterosexual communities, Weinberg provides a new perspective on gay problem drinking that will interest sociologists, psychologists, and clinicians, as well as concerned lay readers in the gay community. He cites examinations of large-scale survey research on tavern attendance and drinking, ethnographic studies of bar behavior, literature on special groups, and studies of marital interaction in alcoholic families, concluding that gay drinking is a special situation that only reference group theory and a processual model adequately address. The closing chapter contains policy recommendations for reducing alcohol use in the gay community.

The History of Gay People in Alcoholics Anonymous documents and honors the ways thousands of LGBT people have carried Alcoholics Anonymous' message. This illuminating chronicle includes interviews and documents that detail the compelling history, recovery, and wisdom of gay people in AA. The book examines the challenges AA faced as the fellowship endeavored to become a more inclusive and cohesive community. The first-person accounts narrate the important work of influential gay and straight AA members that led key events in AA’s history. The author includes material on the steps and traditions of AA, and on becoming an ally to LGBT people on the road to recovery. Topics in The History of Gay People in Alcoholics Anonymous include: the gay origins of AA’s Third Tradition a comparison of treatments for alcoholism and homosexuality compelling portraits of sober gay life in the 1950s and 1960s the debate in AA over meetings for gay alcoholics interviews with members and co-founders of the first gay AA meetings the history of the first gay AA/Al-Anon conference interviews with pioneering gay addiction professionals the history of AA pamphlet “AA and the Gay/Lesbian Alcoholic” Alcoholics Together, and why a parallel AA organization for gay alcoholics formed in southern California strategies AA’s gay members developed to make their meetings simultaneously safe and public—and why some of them are still necessary today much more The History of Gay People in Alcoholics Anonymous is an enlightening book for members of the LGBT and heterosexual recovering community, alcoholism and addiction professionals, as well as physicians, counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, clergy, historians, sociologists, educators, students, and anyone interested in learning more about AA or this aspect of the community’s history.

The Reader's Guide to Lesbian and Gay Studies surveys the field in some 470 entries on individuals (Adrienne Rich); arts and cultural studies (Dance); ethics, religion, and philosophical issues (Monastic Traditions); historical figures, periods, and ideas (Germany between the World Wars); language, literature, and communication (British Drama); law and politics (Child Custody); medicine and biological sciences (Health and Illness); and psychology, social sciences, and education (Kinsey Report).

Growth and Intimacy for Gay Men: A Workbook is an educational workbook for gay men that covers a variety of topics, including family of origin, addiction, self-image, dating and relationships, AIDS and multiple loss, and spirituality. Each chapter provides an overview of the mental health concerns of gay men, as well as exercises the reader can do to facilitate his personal understanding of the issues covered. While the book is written in nontechnical language, making it useful to the general public, its wide selection of workbook exercises makes it useful for psychotherapists and counselors working with gay men. Growth and Intimacy for Gay Men is written to the reader--with brief examples from the author’s work as a clinical psychologist helping gay men. A central goal of the book is to normalize the feelings and experiences the reader has, as many gay men feel like they’re the only ones with their feelings or experiences. The book’s problem-solving approach addresses: family of origin--provides exercises to identify and examine gay men’s role in the family, examine their childhood perceptions of being different, and help them map out family patterns and dynamics self-image--includes self-image assessment questionnaires and written exercises that challenge the reader to look at how they’re affected by societal perceptions addiction--explores why gay men are vulnerable to addictive behavior and offers strategies for change and self-assessment exercises dating and relationships--covers the unique challenges faced by gay men, with exercises for single as well as coupled men AIDS and mental health--provides exercises to help the reader examine the impact of AIDS on his own life and to assess the impact of multiple loss and prolonged grief Readers can do the workbook exercises on their own, or therapists can assign chapters and exercises as homework, with clients bringing the completed assignment to therapy for more in-depth exploration and discussion. By providing informative chapters and useful exercises, Growth and Intimacy for Gay Men becomes an avenue through which gay men can understand their identity, experiences, and goals.

Fifteen million Americans a year are plagued with alcoholism. Five million of them are women. Many of them, like Caroline Knapp, started in their early teens and began to use alcohol as "liquid armor," a way to protect themselves against the difficult realities of life. In this extraordinarily candid and revealing memoir, Knapp offers important insights not only about alcoholism, but about life itself and how we learn to cope with it. It was love at first sight. The beads of moisture on a chilled bottle. The way the glasses clinked and the conversation flowed. Then it became obsession. The way she hid her bottles behind her lover's refrigerator. The way she slipped from the dinner table to the bathroom, from work to the bar. And then, like so many love stories, it fell apart. Drinking is Caroline Kapp's harrowing chronicle of her twenty-year love affair with alcohol. Caroline had her first drink at fourteen. She drank through her yeras at an Ivy League college, and through an award-winning career as an editor and columnist. Publicly she was a dutiful daughter, a sophisticated professional. Privately she was drinking herself into oblivion. This startlingly honest memoir lays bare the secrecy, family myths, and destructive relationships that go hand in hand with drinking. And it is, above all, a love story for our times—full of passion and heartbreak, betrayal and desire—a triumph over the pain and deception that mark an alcoholic life. Praise for Drinking “Quietly moving . . . Caroline Knapp dazzles us with her heady description of alcohol's allure and its devastating hold.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “Filled with hard-won wisdom . . . [a] perceptive and revealing book.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Eloquent . . . a remarkable exercise in self-discovery.”—The New York Times “Drinking not only describes triumph; it is one.”—Newsweek