Several Common Bonds: Addressing the Needs of Gay and Bisexual Men in LGBT-Specific Recovery Housing

ABSTRACT

Recovery housing is a promising way to augment the substance use continuum of care, but we know little about the experiences of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community who live in them or about residences specifically for them. Within the LGBTQ community, gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) often experience co-occurring syndemic conditions (e.g., trauma, depression, HIV) that present unique recovery challenges. Using qualitative data gathered from residents living in a recovery residence specifically for gay and bisexual men and from community key informants, we examine the experiences of men living in the home and factors that facilitate operating it. Findings highlight the need for residences that can address syndemic burden among gay and bisexual men in recovery and identify programmatic and community-level factors critical to operating residences for this population.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual minority stress
• syndemic
• substance abuse
• recovery
• recovery residences
• gay and bisexual men

Acknowledgments

Work on this article was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R21DA039027). The funding agencies had no role in study design, in the collection, analysis or interpretation of data, in the writing of the report, or in the decision to submit the article for publication. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIDA or the National Institutes of Health. In addition to their funders, the authors would also like to thank Mathew Gorman of Eudaimonia Recovery Homes and Jason Howell of the Texas Recovery Oriented Housing Network for their support of this research. Preliminary findings from this study were presented in a poster at the 2016 Addiction Health Services Research conferences held in Seattle, WA.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse (R21DA039027)