There’s no one-size-fits all approach to recovering from addiction and trauma, yet traditional approaches to recovery often don’t make space for LGBTQ2S+ people’s specific needs. Sex and sexuality, especially, are under-discussed topics in recovery. When they do come up, it can be in stigmatizing and cisheteronormative ways that further marginalize queer and trans people.

Author and educator Vanessa Carlisle is working to change this. They’re the co-author with Stephanie Covington of Awaken Your Sexuality: A Guide to Connection and Intimacy after Addiction and Trauma and an accompanying workbook.

A queer and non-binary survivor with 27 years’ experience in sex work, Vanessa’s perspective on recovery is informed by their own journey, as well as their lived and professional experiences. I talked to them about how we might change the conversation on recovery to make more space for inclusive, pleasure-centred and trauma-informed perspectives on sex and sexuality.
 

How do you define addiction?

There are many ways of defining addiction. The one I always return to comes from my co-author Stephanie, who calls it “the chronic neglect of self in favour of something or someone else.”
 

How do you define recovery? What might someone be in recovery from?

Abstinence is an important part of traditional definitions of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous and associated 12-step programs, but I don’t require it to consider someone in recovery. People can be in recovery while abstaining from one thing and still engaging with other substances or behaviours.
 

Some of the things we might be in recovery from include substances, toxic relationship dynamics, overworking or from any number of mental health issues that are attendant to life’s difficulties. Trauma recovery is part of a lot of people’s recovery processes. The possibilities for what counts as recovery are as infinite and individual as the people who are choosing them. Only the individual really knows what feels like recovery to them.
 

How do sex and sexuality tend to be treated—if at all—in recovery programs, communities and culture? How might this affect queer and trans people?

Sex and sexuality are silent issues in recovery. When they do come up, there can be a tendency to pathologize using sex and relationships as a place of comfort and connection, and to pathologize any form of non-normative sex. For example, having multiple partners might be considered suspicious in traditional recovery because it’s seen as adjacent to sex addiction.

Recovery spaces often reflect the beliefs and issues that are inherent to carceral systems like the hospital, the asylum and the prison, with inequities similar to those affecting LGBTQ2S+ people in the health system. I’m based in the U.S., where most recovery houses are still gender-segregated along binary lines. Queer and trans people need to work harder to find inclusive recovery spaces and communities.

More positively, there’s a growing world of non-traditional, non-12-step forms of recovery, like queer sober houses or recovery groups specifically for people who are in the process of changing their relationship to chemsex, or for sex workers who were using drugs as part of their performance persona. I’m hopeful about us having more options than we used to.
 

What myths about sex and recovery does your work challenge?

The myth that sexuality makes recovery harder. Traditional recovery encourages people to have no sexual relationships during their first year of getting sober. While this can be beneficial for lots of people, it can have punitive consequences. People can feel shamed for having sex, or like they can’t talk about falling in love if they’re only six months sober. 
 

Also, abstinence is an unrealistic expectation for many of us. Most people aren’t going to abstain from sex for a year just because their sponsor told them to. People are likely going to have sexual feelings, and those feelings might be a place of healing and self-knowledge for them. Instead of assuming that people want to live in shame about their sexuality, I assume that we want to live in pleasure, connection and relaxation, and that recovery can include this.
 

Why is it important for people in recovery to address their sexuality?

Sexuality is an important issue for anyone to address. I don’t know anyone who’s had a smooth path from childhood to adulthood in the areas of sex and sexuality. Every one of us has had bumps on that road, whether those are traumas or embarrassments, confusions or lack of information.
 

Many people in recovery have been inundated with shame, and sex and sexuality are one of the places where shame collects and gets stored. For some people, the most advanced part of recovery will be shining a light on what’s going on with their sexuality. Others might experience sex and sexuality as foundational to who they are. Sexuality will be bound up in their recovery process because it’s an integral part of their daily life.
 

What might come up about sexuality and past sexual experiences for a queer or trans person in recovery? 

Trauma can come to the surface when we start doing healing work. This can be very disorienting or discouraging, because we might end up feeling worse than we did before we started a recovery process.

When this happens, it’s a sign that these experiences are ready to be seen, heard, understood and processed. It’s manageable, normal and healthy. But it’s also uncomfortable. It can make you want to stuff it back in a box and ignore it, which can make you want to avoid your own sexuality. When you start feeling better, you’re able to understand how much pain you were in before. This can be overwhelming even when you’re having positive experiences in the present.
 

As a death doula, you’re practised at sitting with grief. What forms of grief might come up for someone in recovery who is engaging, or re-engaging, with their sexuality?

If we’ve experienced sexual trauma, we might grieve the loss of freedom or confidence that we had prior to experiencing trauma. We might also grieve the harm we have caused, and choices we have made in the past that we would not make again, that have had painful consequences for others.
 

Another form of grief is that which can accompany finding places of solace and belonging in adulthood that you didn’t know existed, like queer relationships or communities you didn’t have access to when you were younger.


Grief can sometimes arise when we become more able to touch and engage with our own bodies with kindness and curiosity. Pleasure can come in during this process, but it tends to take time to grieve what came before.
 

What advice or words of support do you have for someone in recovery who is also living with the after-effects of sexual violence and trauma?

There isn’t a moment of completion in recovery. There are ongoing moments of change. Confusion, discouragement and frustration are all part of a recovery process. Fun, pleasure and intimacy are part of it too, and will come with doing the work.
 

Your pathway to change will involve different decisions and experiments. A conundrum of recovery is making yourself do things you don’t want to do. This can be really difficult for people who have experienced trauma and violence. Recovery can feel bad in the beginning because your nervous system usually can’t tell the difference between being forced to do something and making yourself do something.

Don’t be afraid to just try things, even if you’re scared.
 

If someone in recovery is looking to reconnect with their sexuality, where should they begin? 

Two practices I recommend, and that we write about in Awaken Your Sexuality and the accompanying workbook, are:

1) Awakening the senses: Dedicate five days to focusing on each one of your senses. On the first day, focus on your sight. Notice what you see, and what pleases you, seems beautiful or piques your curiosity. On the second day, focus on your hearing, then your senses of smell and taste, then sense of touch. On the fifth day, pay attention to interoception, or sensing inside your body. Throughout the day, check in with your body on the inside. How are your throat, stomach and lower gut? Where do you feel muscle tension and where do you feel relaxed? If you have a disability that impacts any of your senses, adjust this activity so it meets your needs.

In order to arrive at sexual feeling, we need to have feeling in the rest of the body too. Tuning into your body through the senses can be a way of noticing your inner state and cultivating what brings you pleasure.
 

2) Interview yourself: Asking ourselves questions can be an opportunity to connect with what feels good and rediscover ourselves sexually. Some of the questions I like to ask are: Who do I find attractive? Who am I with and what happens in my fantasies? If I don’t have fantasies now, have I ever? What would it feel like to try? What kinds of activities do I have curiosity about? What feels erotic to me?
 

As someone with decades of experience in sex work and advocacy for sex workers’ rights, you bring a nuanced perspective to how queer and trans sex workers might relate to sex and sexuality. What would you like to say to sex workers in recovery?

Sex workers need sex worker-safe spaces. Sex work is not a conversation at all in mainstream recovery spaces, and that’s unconscionable. In these spaces, sex work can be associated with substance use, out-of-control sexual behaviour and addictive behaviours. Sex workers tend to feel safer in harm reduction spaces, which is great, but we need as many options as anyone else has, including in recovery spaces and communities.

If you’re a sex worker who finds that sexuality is where a lot of your pain and issues are, you need specialized support to make your living and also have the sex you want in your personal life. Getting sober opens up a whole new world of conversations and a whole new world of clients, but it’s a big transition. You need to be able to move between worlds.
 

What kind of supports do people tend to need when doing work around sexuality?

People usually tend to need one-on-one work with a practitioner like a sex therapist or a sex and relationship coach they trust, especially if they have histories of trauma. They need supportive communities, like a sex education group or therapeutic group.

I also recommend that people who are doing sexual recovery find a trauma-informed medical practitioner, like a gynecologist, a urologist or a trans-specific healthcare provider. It’s not top of mind for a lot of people to get good medical care for these parts, but it’s an extremely important aspect of finding a sense of connection and care in the body.
 

What advice do you have for people who are looking for recovery communities where they can talk openly about sexuality?

Find a room that feels good to be in. You don’t have to settle for a straight support group. You can find a group, even if it’s online and most people are in a different city. Start by doing basic searches for what you want (e.g., “queer recovery sexual issues Montreal”). You can also search 12-step directories for groups in your area, or big databases like Psychology Today to see if any therapists are running groups that could be a fit for you.

You might have to get creative and take social initiative by forming your own group, like the example in Awaken Your Sexuality about a sex worker who formed a peer-led group specifically for other sex workers in recovery.
 

What can we gain when sexuality is an intentional part of recovery?

The forms of pleasure that become available to you when you get intentional about recovering your sexuality are infinite. Pleasure and aliveness exacerbate, grow and feed each other. When you’re able to be curious without shame, and experiment without too much attachment, you can grow in so many different ways, in your skills and in your capacity to enjoy what they bring to you.

The ability to connect intimately and intentionally with other humans can become deeper than you ever imagined. You can experience sensations in your own body that you’ve never had if you’re willing to keep trying new things.