Addiction and sex work...

Thank you for sharing.

lots of prudes and hypocrites in this land of the free.

Yes, thanks for that powerful post and this was the sentence that really got to me:

"Taking clothes off for drugs turned into needing drugs to take your clothes off... "


I wonder what we should do as customers? Treating dances with respect is a given, but sometimes I wonder if I should be going at all.

*dancers

Alcohol has always been my drug of choice. I have been fortunate in that I can drink a few drinks and then just quit for the evening if I want. I have reached the point where I am very picky. I would rather spend $25 on one shot of really good whisky then the same amount on 4 or so shots of cheap stuff. I drink beer and wine at home or when I am out for dinner, but never in a club. I have never used any illegal drugs.

I do think it is a shame that we as a society look down our noses at people that do sex work. I can understand that sex workers can feel excluded and shamed by family members and former friends. I wish this wasn’t the case. I am aware that some dancers take drugs, I have no idea how common it is. I have known a few dancers I suspected were on drugs because of their erratic behavior from one visit to the next. Maybe many more are and I am just not able to detect it.

Now does the lifestyle of a stripper promote drug use. Or does using drugs drive some girls to strip so they can have money to buy drugs.

If we had a more open and honest attitude towards sex certainly would be one less stressor on dancers and might reduce the drug use.

I think many dancers do not use drugs at all.

@FishHawk: "Now does the lifestyle of a stripper promote drug use?"

___________________

Good question. My bet is "yes."

A very good share of your perspective PD. I think there will be a greater success rate to find out how to reach women before they choose sex work, instead of normalizing it. Sex comes with emotions that can be confused with love. Most other professions do not and people can separate their work life with personal.

A sex worker may choose to try it for a little bit, but as you stated down the rabbit hole they go if they stay too long!

I have tremendous sympathy for anyone caught in the cycle of addiction and destructive behavior, and I’ve experienced some family and friends having some real trauma as well as a death due to drug addiction, I am a firm believer in personal responsibility and have seen people that were in trouble start anew by taking responsibility for their own behaviors, and turn things around.

Thanks for the post PD.

Excellent post. I know about this firsthand. My SO and her son have spiraled downhill over the past few years. Her addiction started from chronic pain and his is just because he likes it. He’s been in and out of the hospital probably six or seven times in the last month or two, it’s to the point I can’t live with it any longer and have to cut my ties. I just hope I can make it through the holidays.

While every addict’s situation is unique, at its core it’s a biological brain disorder. The body simply craves the drug.

Yes, there are environmental and psychosocial issues which can influence the addiction, but addiction itself is chemical. That’s true whether the addict is male or female, stripper or physician.

This was an amazing insightful post - wow - well done...

===> "Taking clothes off for drugs turned into needing drugs to take your clothes off..."
===> "...but recognizing the link between addiction and sex is the first step. "

Idk Pole. I don't buy this causality argument. IME the girls most likely to strip also tend to have personality types which are naturally more prone to abusing substances in the first place. The temptations just become magnified when you add fast money and the widespread availability and use of drugs in many clubs.

If i went onto a club and asked my CF Tiffany why she said yes the first time that Diamond offered her a snort, I doubt that I'd hear some academic treatise like "Because I needed something to help me through the stigmatization and social acceptable degradation I unfairly experience every night as an exotic dancer." Instead, the far more likely response would be something like "Because I always wanted to try that" or "It looked fun."

I have known several dancers and their friends who became addicted, and I know of a couple deaths from overdoses. Drugs are part of the strip club lifestyle.

@jacklash: Exactly. Obviously not every stripper uses drugs, but the ones that do were most likely prone to it in the first place as clubs attract a lot of certain personality types. I don't think that someone who is adamantly opposed to using drugs in the first place is going to pick them up just because she strips.

Now I'm not saying that the stigma and mistreatment issues aren't real because of course they are and they can certainly be harmful in their own right. I'm just saying that the OP is trying to bootstrap two separate and distinct issues.

I will add though that, if anything, the stigma is far less now than it was 20+ years ago, yet the drug issues are far worse now. So even if common sense and Occam's Razor (the simplest answer is most likely the correct one) supported her contentions, which IMHO they don't, the opposing directions of decreasing stigma and increasingly prevalent drug use do not.

So, you are a hot looking 21 year old who uses drugs. What job are you qualified for where you can afford drugs and take them, both on and off the job ? Stripper, stripper, or stripper.

That’s the cause and effect.

@poledancer83

To answer your question:

(why are so many using. is it because the work really is so demeaning and bad that drugs is a common coping mechanism or is it that we are slut shaming people into needing drugs to "fit in"...)

So many are using, because it is a very profitable business and we live in a society that worships wealth and “behind every fortune there is a crime”.

“There is not just one cause: Although genetic or other biological factors contribute to a person’s vulnerability to drug addiction, many social, psychological, and environmental factors have a powerful influence on substance use.

Some characteristics, such as a lack of ability to tolerate distress or other strong feelings, have been associated with addiction, but there is no one “addictive personality” type that clearly predicts whether a person will face problems with addiction...”

“After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. policy of a war on drugs with over a trillion tax dollars and 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug offenses, our confined population has quadrupled, making building prisons the fastest growing industry in the United States.”

People continue dying in our streets while drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer than ever before.

The objectives of the American policy on drugs are to increased incarceration (specifically of minorities of black and brown color) and the raising of hundreds of billions of dollars of “hot money” by the selling of illegal substances, to enrich criminal (of any color) and “legitimate” (mostly white) organizations.

Success for certain special interest groups is found in the rising of what is called the “Drug-Industrial-Complex.”, similarly to the “Military-Industrial-Complex” that made many rich during the Cold War.

In the formation and sustaining of a Drug-Industrial-Complex, drug war “costs” turn out to be “gains” for construction firms, private prisons, banks, certain businesses, criminal organizations and so on.

The “American Drug Industry” is highly effective domestically in controlling and eliminating superfluous people and enriching powerful sectors, and it's highly effective overseas in “American Colonies” in controlling and submitting the population being exploited by American corporations.

The Drug Industry in America makes all drugs legal (alcohol, tobacco and other substances) and illegal (marijuana, coke, meth, etc) so available in our communities, increasing the risk of repeated use.

There is no easy solution, but changing the system of values creating a society with positive social relationships, strong family relationships that provides emotional and psychological stability will reduce the risks.

I wish I knew the answer. Matter of fact, I have been reflecting on why I started going to strip clubs on a regular bases in the last several years. In some weird way, my brain is trying to rationalize that it is my way to get into the mind of 20 something year old girls who have troubled lives. I secretly want to learn why they choose such risky behaviors such as sex and drugs.

I say all this because my daughter died of heroin/methamphetamine OD 5 years ago at age 23. For many years, I did everything I could to assist her. Trying to understand her. Always there for her at the drop of a dime. 2 weeks before her death, she said, “dad, this is who I am. I love you for accepting me for who I am. I love that you try to assist me out of this, but it is who I am.” She also stated once just how addicting heroin and methamphetamine is. She said it took only only time and she was hooked “it’s that powerful on me, dad”.
.
Two weeks after that conversation , I buried her.

Wow, Nidan that’s a terrible loss. I feel for you. I can only imagine how much that hurt.

Nidan, I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your daughter.

Ditto on the condolences Nidan, though i wonder if you're doing yourself or these girls a favor by carrying that baggage into strip clubs. You might find it much more rewarding to volunteer for a drug outreach or recovery program, many of which are in dire need of additional help.

@rick. I am searching for an outreach. I may have found one over the last two weeks. This made me come to the deep thought as to why I started SCing. You may very well be correct.

@RickDugan's observations have always been mine as well that strippers are simply far more likely to have risk taking and novelty seeking personalities.

I have said that girls' concerns over being slut-shamed are a bit exaggerated these days. In most of the social circles where promiscuous behavior is common, it is very taboo to criticize women who are promiscuous. But I do think that strippers suffer from a special sex worker stigma that doesn't apply to promiscuous girls who sleep with men at bars and clubs. Sex workers are in an unfortunate middle ground where neither side of the political spectrum is really on their side.

But I don't think the stigma causes drug addiction and I don't think that stripping causes it either. I think that certain lifestyles just appeal to certain kinds of people and lots of times, certain behaviors tend to go alongside one another.

I'd be willing to bet that drug use is much higher among strip club patrons than it is among the general population as well if you adjust for age. So your average 40 year old man who goes to strip clubs is much more likely to be a drug user than your average 40 year old man who doesn't.

might be something there. I will admit being addicted now to getting that buzz from alcohol. and also from 420. and most definitely the drug of young pretty pussy.

My condolences too, Nidan.

Addiction is hard. I say this having escaped from nicotine (in my 20s, took 3 tries to quit), and alcohol. Best wishes going forward.

Oh, yeah, good post PD. Causing some thought.

I'm sorry I see this all the time. I'm a dancer and I'm sober. I feel if you need to get high to do this job than you shouldn't do it. When I was in my early 20's I drank a lot to do the job, but then I quit and have been doing it sober ever since. You should be comfortable with what you do with your body and if your not you should find another job or only do things as a dancer you can handle. Be a massage girl or shot girl they still make good money with-out taking their clothes off.

With all due respect to dancers addiction rates are off the charts in other professions as well. It isn't the profession or the fault of others, whether we want to hear it or accept it; thats just the way it is. Some people need drugs and alcohol to cope and some don't. No profession will turn someone into an addict if they are not predisposed to become one before they enter the profession.

Sorry for your loss Nidan and I know that words, especially from a stranger mean nothing, but from your brief statement it is obvious to me that she loved you very much and that you being there for her was very important to her.

Sorry for your loss too, Nidan.

No one group of people can be painted w/ the same broad-brush; obviously - but from the outside looking in, seems many of the issues/circumstances that lead many a dancer to take her clothes off for a living, also makes them more susceptible to drug use especially in an environment where i drugs are more readily available and in many cases tolerated.

In the United States, 70,200 people died from drug overdoses in 2017.
They can't all be strippers, or other sex workers.
The problem with drugs and addiction is much larger than that.

I've never met a woman who could engage in sex work while sober. Some dancers can do it but not hoes.

If there was less taboo and shame injected into both the customer and provider sides of sex work, these issues would become less severe.

It wouldn't be rainbows and lollipops, but it would be better.

We're still a long way from that.

The group I have called Beloved Latina Escorts, they have no problem delivering with one guy after another, in the front room, or in their mini-van. They don't need to be intoxicated, they just need to know that they are making guys feel like Kings. These girls are just totally bonobo.

SJG

SJG said "These girls are just totally bonobo."

Whereas you're totally ape-shit crazy.

Of course hookers act like they love what they do. How many men would pay if they were honest? And even in strip clubs, how many girls are really sober. They're not gonna tell you what they're on. And many are good at hiding it. As is there's really nothing posit a about sex work on either end.

With this group, Beloved Latina Escorts, they really like men. They don't make the kinds of divisions that most women do. They are women of the earth. From the Mexican state of Durango. It starts with how they treat their own Mexican-American working class.

SJG

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