Wezz
I am on a call with Wezz, who has reached out to us to share her recovery journey and her experience of treatment. She was a Community Member at Phoenix’s Glasgow Residential Service and, since graduating her programme, has resettled in Scotland.
I do the typical English thing and talk about the weather, it’s raining a lot in London, I ask about the weather in Scotland and how she is copying with the cold in Glasgow. “It doesn’t bother me, the HRT medication that I am on gives me hot flushes, and that keeps me warm and my heating bills low.” She jokes.
I ask her to tell me a bit about herself outside of her experience of addiction and recovery, about her hopes and dreams.
“Nothing too crazy, everything I want is achievable. I would like to have a family of my own, I’m passionate about being a mum, bringing up life and shaping a human, I would like to be married one day, and of course, stay sober.”
“I’m very creative, I would love to be an interior designer, with my own brand and range of furniture.” She turns the laptop round so I can see her sitting room; it’s got art and floral decorations on the walls, to give a stylish and homely look. She is currently living in Phoenix’s supported accommodation but has put her stamp on the place and made the space her own.
“It’s been Wezzified” she tells me laughing. “From a young age I used to stay at my friends’ houses and their parents would come home, I would have re-arranged all their furniture, proper cheeky – but they always loved it”.
We talk about rehab and the life changing journey of self-reflection and discovery that it offers. It’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t been through the process.
“[Rehab] is almost like being reborn. You get time and space to process difficult memories and trauma, grieve for your younger self and start the healing process. You learn a lot about who you are, confronting yourself with complete honesty is humbling. And then there are the skills you learn and tools you gain. I’m not sure how I ever lived before rehab”.
We agree that it is a life changing process that should be much more widely available.
Wezz tells me about her early life experience, and how from the age of 4 she started to feel different and at odds with in herself. “I didn’t like wearing boys’ clothes” she says “my mum used to dress me the same as my brother and I hated it.”
As she describes more of her childhood experiences, I understand that many have been difficult to process. She tells me about some of the abuse, neglect, and racism that she experienced as a child.
“I used to tell people that my Stepdad was horrible to me, and no one would believe me, that was a common experience throughout my childhood. As a child I was punished for acting out, rather than being understood as a child that was really struggling”.
“School was hard, I felt uncomfortable with who I was, I didn’t know what it was I just had a feeling of being trapped. I knew that I liked dressing up and make up, people would call me gay boy and every other homophobic slur that you can imagine. I came out as being gay at 14, my dad kicked me out, from then on, I lived with my auntie”.
“I was living as a gay man and that allowed me to express myself more, but now I understand I should have come out as Trans, but there was no understanding back then”
We talk more about the trauma that Wezz experienced as a child, suicidal thoughts, and feelings of disconnect and abandonment since an early age were initially nursed with self-harm, until the age of 18, still feeling isolated and lacking support, Wezz sought comfort in alcohol.
As her drinking spiralled her life fell further apart, she accessed community treatment and the fellowships, but at that time she didn’t relate.
Her addiction took her to sex work. She was vulnerable and often in high-risk situations where she experienced sexual abuse. Frequent blackouts made it difficult for her to make sense of her experiences and understand the full extent of what had happened to her. Her addiction culminated in a suicide attempt and hospitalisation which ultimately started her journey to recovery and eventually led to her placement at Phoenix Residential service in Glasgow.
We talk about her time in treatment.
“I have never felt so seen and included in my entire life, I have so much gratitude and am so glad that I made the decision to go to Phoenix”.
As somebody with lived experience myself, I value integrity when raising lived experience voices, I am always conscious to honour people’s experiences and support them to share their story in a way that they want it to be told. I’m mindful that being overly enthusiastic about Phoenix and our services might be perceived as insincere or contrived, to be anything other in this case would not be true to Wezz’s sentiment.
I ask her what it was about the service that made her feel so included.
“They educated me, and I educated them, they've never had a Trans Female client before and they were honest about that. I am history in the making!” She laughed. “I never felt discriminated against once, never felt misgendered, never felt different, even though everything was new to them.
They weren’t sure of exactly what support I would need in the beginning and that was totally ok. They have done awareness and other training since then to better their approach and understanding which makes me feel so happy because that's what it's all about, knowing that we don’t hold all the answers but having an open and inclusive approach.
When I was in the service, I told my key worker that I wanted to go to Pride. He made that happen, he ordered Phoenix Pride branded t-shirts, and I celebrated pride with 50,000 other people in the streets of Glasgow.
Treatment taught me to look at my past experiences and draw strength from them. I have woken up for majority of my life in the wrong body, but still I got up and survived and that takes strength and courage.”
I ask Wezz how she feels about raising awareness and challenging stigma of substance use and gender identity. I assume people are naturally curious about Wezz’s experiences, and I wonder if being expected to continually educate takes an emotional toil.
“Nothing will change if we don’t use the power of our lived experience, it’s a choice, but I feel it’s my duty. I don’t expect everyone to understand, some people are innocently ignorant, because of their own life experience and what they have been surrounded by, they don’t know much about gender identity or substance use, being open to learning is the most important thing. I don’t mind answering people’s questions, I try to always be open and honest, even if I do feel like Wikipedia sometimes.”
As Wezz relays a story to me about being called a role model during her time in rehab you can see the look of pride spread across her face, I have only been on a call with her for a short while, but I am already starting to understand that she is contagiously authentic, I get the idea that people would feel reassured by her receptiveness and admire her courage and strength of character.
I thank her for taking the time out to share a part of her journey with me and telling me about her experience at Phoenix. I come away from the conversation feeling inspired by Wezz’s character, her hope for a more inclusive society and by her personal commitment to activism and education of trans rights and inclusion.
Suggestions for how to make recovery services more inclusive
Research in both Scotland and across the United Kingdom (UK) suggests that Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) people are more likely to use alcohol and other drugs and develop problematic or dependant use than the general population.
Here are Wezz’s suggestions to make services more inclusive to the LGBTQ+ Community:
Pro-actively stating that services are Trans and LGBTQI+ Friendly/Informed.
Hiring a diverse and inclusive workforce.
Services and organisations being involved in LGBTQ+ events such as Pride, celebrating awareness days and months.
Working together with LGBTQ+ charities to call out inequity of access to healthcare and other vital services.
Diversity of representation in comms and storytelling.
LGBTQ+ training should be mandatory.
Language Matters
The Anti-Stigma Network aims to call out stigma by highlighting discriminatory attitudes, policy and practise and championing and amplifying examples of inclusion. Use of language matters within in all these areas and there is a general consensus about the words and phrases that may in certain contexts propagate stigma. However, language is complex and intent and context can change meaning. Therefore, for those reasons you may see words and phrases on our website that appear at odds to this consensus. As we collectively develop our understanding around stigma and language we believe at present it is better that people speak freely than fear speaking at all.
