Belonging, Substances, and the Search for Acceptance

I was no stranger to the world of substances. As a teenager, popping a pill and experiencing all the usual letters of the alphabet, I have to say I had some of the best times of my life. Looking back, I often wonder how different the world might have been without that influence.

In London, at the fruitful age of seventeen, I was one of London’s best female impersonators, working at Heaven nightclub when Sir Richard Branson owned it. I was no stranger to a pill or the other formalities that completed a social evening. Friends taught me the do’s and don’ts of taking substances.

There were rules.

Pills needed water. Orange juice would bring you down.

Ketamine complemented a pill—uppers and downers.

Cocaine killed pills.

GHB was never to be taken with alcohol.

There were also rules about looking after each other:

• If you get lost, we have a meeting point.

• Never leave the club without your friends.

• Always introduce your man or pull of the night so your friends know where you are.

• If you are unwell, someone stays by your side.

Substances were taken to heighten your mood and social state. You didn’t take them when you were angry.

No matter where I went, our friendship circles shared this outlook.

So taking substances was, well… normal to me.

Don’t get me wrong—we were all addicted, and I knew that. We never went out without pills or ketamine, and most of our money was spent on that alone. But the way I saw it, we were happy.

In London I was accepted, respected, and considered attractive. Validation came wherever I went.

Moving to Manchester, however, a harsh reality awaited me.

I would walk into bars and meet people, but the reaction was different. By the age of twenty-seven I had lived in Cuba, Barbados—where I’m from—and Panama. Different countries and different gay cultures always had their own rules and levels of acceptance.

But Manchester had something else. Something I didn’t understand until much later.

The first moment was when someone called me “Paki.” I didn’t even know what it meant and had to ask a friend. What shocked me most was that it wasn’t coming from the general public—it was coming from my own community.

At the time, I was writing for the LGBT Foundation and had my own column. I’ve been HIV positive for 23 years and have always been open about my status. In Manchester, that openness was unusual. This was before the law and public understanding caught up with the fact that being undetectable means the virus is untransmittable. U=U There was still huge stigma.

I developed a public presence—interviews, community engagement—and that’s when I began noticing the racism more clearly.

One night I walked into a bar and heard someone say, “Eww, what’s that Paki doing here?”

Substances became more frequent.

One evening, a friend said something that stuck with me:

“Don’t you realise we’re only wanted when we’re off our faces?” BETWEEN the hours of 1-6am when people relax their inhibitions due to substances or alcohol?

It was like people were interested only when we were high.

I wasn’t a reality—I was a fantasy.

I once acknowledged a guy in public and he shouted, “Never speak to me in public.” Work-wise I was fine. Personally, I had issues.

But I didn’t realise how much it was affecting me.

I started questioning my looks. I changed my behaviour, my clothes, even the type of drugs I used—moving toward harder substances just to fit into different groups.

I didn’t realise how much of myself I was giving up just to belong.

One day a reader approached me and said something that shocked me:

“You get to do what white people do.”

Confused, I asked what he meant.

He replied, “Do you see any people of colour in the Village? Indians aren’t allowed.”

He was right.

I was once refused a drink at a bar even after proving I was a local and worked at the LGBT Foundation. The bartender told the manager, “You can serve him then.”

That behaviour was considered acceptable.

The kindness I experienced in London felt very far away.

The moment everything truly hit me was after I was raped at a party.

I had gone there high but simply wanting to relax—expecting music, socialising, maybe sex. I ignored my intuition when I noticed the décor and atmosphere were wrong. I mean girl, a red hall ways with cheap tacky pound land pictures? It should have been a reason to leave.

Instead, I stayed.

Trusting them, I was drugged. Just before passing out, I remember someone mounting me.

When I woke up, someone stepped over me as if I were trash.

That’s when I said to myself: Manchester is different. The gays here are different.

Later, while working for Black Beetle Health—a charity focused on ethnic minorities within LGBTQ+ communities—I began to understand more about microaggressions and systemic disparities in healthcare and social spaces.

I spoke with others and saw so many similarities.

It wasn’t just me.

Many of us did things to fit in because that seemed like the only way to receive any kind of affection.

I was even asked to show my passport to prove I wasn’t from Pakistan because someone “hated them.” When I showed it and they saw I was from Barbados, they were shocked—as if dark skin could only come from one place.

Looking back, I’m mortified that I felt the need to prove myself just to be accepted.

Not fitting into your own community can send you down a very slippery slope.

I’m grateful that my experiences in London were so welcoming. To this day, though, I remain somewhat estranged in Manchester.

I love the city.

But the truth is, for people of colour, acceptance within the community here can be difficult—and it often doesn’t come from the wider public but from within our own LGBTQ+ spaces.

And that, I believe, is one of the factors contributing to why chemsex has become so prevalent.

Patrick Kitana Ettenes