How I survived Berlin Pride, sober.
Trink ,Trink, Bruderlein Trink. A brutally honest depiction of my first Sober Pride in the Capital of Escapism.
Disclaimer: personal development plays a key role in my work. As a Photography Artist I try and continuously share with the world what I’ve learned about myself. I understand that for some, this piece could be a trigger for moral superiority. I would like to assure you: I am not holier than thou. We are all on our own journey. This is my story.
Brother, where art thy?
Allow me to take you back to the year 2008. As an 19 year old student, I moved to the vibrant city of Groningen, a city up north of the Netherlands. At the time I spend a year traversing South America, in particular Argentina. Travelling alone in a pre-wifi age I learned to connect to myself, and figure out my personal boundaries. That changed when I joined a fraternity.
What started out like a personal challenge of being able to withstand a traditional hazing, turned out to be the start of a toxic relationship with myself.
A fraternity is a social pressure cooker. There are literally deadlines to make friends. Deadlines to make your mark. Deadlines to proof you worthiness. The first year I surrendered to that experience. We had a word for it, dichtgetikt, which is Dutch for ‘hammered shut’. I followed the advice of a third year prominent that recently got out of the closet as a gay man. The scandal. He advised me to wait. ’It is much easier to make friends this way — you can tell afterwards’. The logic is now beyond me.
I learned, at a tender age, that connection is like a game of musical chairs.
The music can stop anytime. And that the best chance of claiming a chair is to rise to prominence, to make sure that people know who you are, and that the fastest way to rise is to put others down. This went beyond friendly banter: devaluating remarks, looking for other peoples insecurities and exploit them for public humiliation. It was done to me. And I did it to others. It was our culture. We called it though love — instead of what it was, emotional abuse. And in order to deal with this flagrant boundary crossing of my personal values of support and connection, I had to numb myself with copious amounts of beer that I put on a fraternity issued credit card. My Beverage Automated System card has long since been payed off. My emotional debt would take a lot longer.
I drank to forget my sin of being my least authentic self. I danced to someone else’s song, to fight for a chair I did not desire.
Over and over again. Trink, Trink, Brüderlein, Trink.
Refresh your mind.
In my late 20’s I founded a company in Cape Town with my best friend Johannes Le Roux, called The Duchess. It was the world’s first Alcohol Free Gin & Tonic. At the time, it seems like a perfect business opportunity. It must seem weird to make a drink for sober curious women as bunch of mildly alcoholic men. But we did it anyway. It wasn’t until pre-pandamic January of 2019 that we launched a particular powerful campaign: ‘Refresh your Mind’ with the Duchess 0.0 G&T. We wanted our audience to re-imagine a known situation from a unknown — sober — perspective. We got a prominent billboard on in the Central Business District in Cape Town to share our message for personal transformation.
When I saw the billboard with my own eyes, I felt felt a weird sense of uneasiness.
Who am I to ask the world to transform their perspective, if I do not have the courage to do it myself?
In the following months, Johannes and I decided to ‘Refresh our Minds’ and faced reality for 3 months sober. It was a sobering experience for both of us.
Abyss.
In the following months, Korona hit. The boredom, the anxiety and fear triggered the worst in people. I saw a civilised society turn on itself in the name of self-preservation. It was painful to watch. So I turned on myself. To quench the uneasiness of being treated like a pariah, an undesired, a fellon, I sought out my inner circle. There I did not need a Q-R code for human connection. We drank. And we consumed. We tried to forget.
‘If you stare into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.’ as Nietzsche famously wrote.
In those years, we all had a lot of time to stare into the Abyss.
Public numbing.
Fast forward to a post-new-normal. People’s smiles were visible again with the masks gone. The bars were open. People treated each other friendly again like nothing happened. There was no public excuse for two years of mass cancel culture. It was like a whole society had gaslit itself. Since that experience, I’ve truly struggled in public spaces. In my minds eye I see a circle of musical chairs. The music can stop anytime. The crowd can turn on me at every moment. Which weirdly feels like dying. Yes, rejection feels like dying. ‘You do not belong here’ is what the voice in my head was yelling at me. ‘They don’t want you here!’ it would say. ‘You are not safe, run while you can!’ It would scream in agony.
I drank on public events, to forget that I don’t belong.
The crowd is my kryptonite. When I feel safe, the connection to her makes me brim with life. When I feel unsafe, I project my worst fear onto her. I have come to realise I binge-drink in situations where I do not feel safe. To numb the pain of what was the only possible outcome in my mind: public humiliation and rejection. Certain death.
Re-refresh my mind.
My heyday of drinking are long behind me. So my tolerance for alcohol has drastically changed. Since 2022 I’ve binge-drinked on a few occasions. I’ve started to feel increasingly uncomfortable with being with this state of (un)awareness. I had problems with my ability to read the room. The overcompensation. The occasional black-out. The disassociation from my feelings. The hanxiety. The shame of acting out. The lack of integrity with my own values. This is not who I am, I realised.
I’ve learned the hard way that the solution to the problem of shame is never more shame. I did asked myself ‘What kind of man do I want to be, and how can I take responsibility for him?’
So I invited myself again, to refresh my mind. This time to the Olympics of Escapism: Berlin Pride.
I’ve tried a few parties this year with a Refreshed Mind — house parties, festivals, boat parties, pr-parties and a wedding. And the truth is — most of them felt like torture. I felt naked, armed with bottle of sparkling water. In my mind, each of these events represented public rejection and humiliation. Certain death. And without the the secret elixir to numb my continuously screaming amygdala, I felt helpless. Code red, drowning in a mixture of superficial breathing, cold sweat, increased heart rate, tense back, pressure on my chest. My body and mind primed to flee, flight or fight. In my mind, this sober summer has been a marathon of anxiety therapy. Being so close on the edge of the abyss continuously has been mentally exhausting.
What used to be enjoyment had become work. Hard work.
I needed a break. Mostly from myself. So I decided to escape to Berlin with a friend. Berlin is known for its long tradition of escapism. In the roaring 20’s it was the magnet, the city of vice, as the masses looked for ways to escape the reality of a society in financial ruin. This was recently outlined in a beautifully produced series on Netflix ELDORADO, named after the famed queer nightclub. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Berlin has become the home of Techno and 24 hour clubbing, made popular by nightclubs by the likes of Berghain.
Anatomy of gay crowds
Before I continue, there is something I would like to share about gay crowds. Every gay man learns at a tender age that there is a part of himself that is unwanted, undesired. I learned how to wear a mask successfully to survive my teenage years in accordance with external expectations. I lied, to survive. The truth is, I believe, as gay men, we are secretly ashamed of who we are.
When you put lots of people with the same unresolved shame in one room, unfortunately the outcome is not more acceptance, no matter how many prides we throw.
I personally believe most of us are still in survival mode. I know I am.
Role of Neuroception
My aha-moment came when I read about Neuroception in the book ‘Do the Work’ by Dr. Nicole le Perla. She mentions that Neuroception is a six sense in our Autonomic Nervous System that operates outside of our conscious awareness. It asses our current environment in two boxes. Safe — Unsafe. When it deems a situation unsafe — our body activates the parasympatic nervous system. It sends out signals to to make our heart pump faster, activating stress responses like higher cortisol, raising our body temperature, making us sweat. We literally see the world differently: giving us tunnel vision. We grow dead-eyed. Our voices get an unnatural tone. We filter the world through a lens of possible threat.
Neutral faces become hostile. A fearful face becomes angry. A friendly face is suspicious.
It sounded all too familiar.
Collective cure.
What does this mean? It explained why I’ve had so much trouble to make friends sober. I always thought the inability to form true intimacy is because there is something wrong with me. Or if I could not own it, in order to cope with the shame of being deficient, I would project this on others. Looking for someone to absorb the shame for me.
It turns out that my struggle to make friends sober is a product of my nervous system stuck survival mode. I had to live through this hellish experience every time I faced a crowd or a human interaction.
I was expecting the worst outcome, and it now makes perfect sense to me why I needed a strong sedative, which was not only widely available, but even encouraged to me by society as a collective cure.
Trink, Trink, Brüderlein, Trink.
Role of Co-regulation.
So why is it so difficult to snap out of survival mode? This has to do with co-regulation and its effect on group dynamics. When we feel safe, it is reflected in our eyes and our body language. We are fully present. This energy and state are transferable. We naturally attract others, just as we are naturally attracted by confident, present others. The opposite is also true. When we are stuck in trauma response, our nervous system misreads the environment and we mirror the automatic state of those around us.
This is what makes us human. And sheep.
Awkwardness repels. It signals to others you are a threat to their social position. Even though I am aware of the dynamic, I would sometimes catch myself being afraid to be associated by others that signalled lack of confidence or low hierarchy. What does all of this free-floating anxiety mean for a room full of traumatised gays in survival mode?
This has two important consequences:
We keep each-other in survival mode through a perpetual feedback loop. Without any mercy.
The blind leading the blind. This is what we face on the dance floor every weekend.
The road to Berlin.
With that in mind, I explained the situation to someone close to me. ‘There is no way in which I can face that crowd sober. Maybe I’ll take some xtc — to take the edge off’ I uttered, imagining the weight of undesired emotions crushing down on me. Which I now know is story of inevitability of public humiliation and rejection. The fear of dying.
‘I feel confident to take drugs responsibly, people change’ I said, more to myself than anyone else. The person close to me did not respond in kind. ‘We will see about that’ he spat out, mercilessly. It felt like a punch in my gut. I took a moment to recover mentally and reminded myself it is human to project your own limitations on others. I did not need to take this personally.
More important, the reason I did take it personally was most likely because — deep down — I must have believed I wasn’t up for the task.
In my mind I thanked him for not believing in me. It pushed me over the edge to do something truly courageous.
I decided to partake in the in the Olympics of Escapism, as myself.
Cure for imperfection.
I’ve spend the past years in a fast track to find a cure for my many imperfections. Mostly through the works of some of the greatest minds in modern psychology. Looking back I’ve practiced a lot of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, mostly by myself. In CBT people focus solely on the issue: ‘addiction’, ‘depression’ or ‘anxiety in crowds’ and try to change the relationship with their thoughts. You see, I’ve always tried change. Shadow work. And the problem is that my desire for change comes from a place of severe inferiority. A place of fear. ‘I need to change, because I am currently not good enough.’
This meant I spend most of my in the danger zone. I could run out of chairs at any moment.
The first time I heard about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as form of psychotherapy, I felt a lot of inner resistance.
‘Accepting myself? What? How can I change if I accept myself?’ My mind scoffed.
‘You have to be crazy to accept yourself. You are an awkward mess Stefan. How can you possibly accept yourself? What if you would accept yourself? Everybody else would reject you. Trying to be yourself? Why would you choose a life or rejection?’ CBT Is focussed on eliminating bad feelings, which funnily enough is the core of every addiction, whether it is smoking, sex, alcohol — or all of the above. In a reaction, ACT invites people to open up to unpleasant feelings, learn not to overreact, and to avoid situations where they are invoked.
Bingo. I thought. What if the cycle of trauma can be broken by an act of true courage?
An act so defiant, against every fiber in my body, that it could create new neural pathways instantly? What instead of avoiding a situation that would provoke a wave of anxiety, I would put myself in the most excruciating situation of rejection that I could possibly imagine, a trigger fest of biblical proportions, sober, and survive?
Could I cure myself?
Challenge accepted.
So I showed up at my hotel in Berlin Mitte on a Friday afternoon. ‘Yes, room 213 please. My friend is joining me later.’ I showed up, 1–0 for Stefan. My first act of defiance: join the local CrossFit for a work out. It was the 20:00 class and it was only me and 4 others. There was one person in that class I felt particularly attracted to, a namesake. And there is something about doing 50 burpees that gets you out of your head, in your body, and spark your confidence. It turned out the feeling was mutual.
We exchanged some flirtatious looks and an had an innocent locker room conversation.
I was brimming with sober confidence on my way back to the hotel. I had my mojo back. 2–0.
Witch Hunt.
That night went the Coven bar in Berlin Mitte. Both my friend and I realised I dressed like Bavarian farmer with my blue checkered shirt, shorts and high white socks. It looked so bad it look curated. Let’s call it an accidental look. The bar was called the Coven. Instead of a bunch of witches, we met the Mitte Gays: a subset of gays living in Berlin Mitte, or rather, being able to afford Berlin Mitte.
Gucci folk, sleek hairstyles, perfectly trimmed beards, black silk blouses with perfectly curated golden necklaces ordering perfect Espresso Martini’s.
You get the drift. I was rather invigorating and intimidating at the same time. When we arrived the bar was full. My second act of defiance: I asked for an Alcoholfrei to which the bartender looked at me with a slightly judgemental face. I flinched for a second, and after taking a deep breath myself, I accepted his limits as his own. 3–0. As I moved around in the dark, gloomy crowd I was reminded that I had nothing to sedate myself with. I watched the perfectly groomed DJ enjoying his show.
‘You have to get more serious in the gym, look at your twinky arms, you look like a washed up twink.’
That was the voice in my head. Another one: ‘Look at these guys, they are all laughing at your Bayrische outfit. Who’s idea was it to bring a farmers outfit to a Berlin-gay-cocktail-techno-bar?’ ‘You need to take better care of your skin, you look like Schmiegel from LOTR’ ‘You are not worthy of any attention here, you belong in your hotel room, alone!’ I could hear my inner critic yell at me relentlessly. I succumbed. I needed to get out, so I went out and bought a pack of Marlboro Lights and a Radler 0.0 at the Späti, the German evening store, around the corner, to ease the pain. 3–1.
Water everywhere.
It helped for a moment. Smoking a cigarette and asking a stranger for a light gave me something to do that would not feel desperate. Legitimate interaction. I looked around on the terrace. Everybody seemed to be enrolled in a vivacious conversation. Not me. I was dreading the last of my cigarette to smoulder away, which would force me to find a new thing — to do. I felt like I was drifting on a vast salty ocean. Water, water — everywhere, but nothing to drink. Instead of running away again — I allowed myself to stand there. Just — stand there. It has been long believed by the medical community that the Autonomic Nervous System was out of reach for conscious thought — hence Autonomic.
I checked in with my heart rate. High. Very high. My breathing. Shallow. My back. Tense. My chest. Pressured.
‘Ok’ I thought ‘You are tense, that’s understandable’. I took a deep breath and I said to myself: ‘You are safe’. I felt a short tingling sensations shoot through my spine. A release of some sort. It turns out — I was in control after all. 4–1.
Dancing shoes
Outside I struck up conversation with Peggy, a pretty Hamburg Mädel that decided not to go to the parade the next morning, because she was in her period. ‘Wow’ I thought. ‘Boundaries, beautiful.’ My friend, Peggy and I ended up on the dance floor. Now there was more room as the Mitte Gays had flocked out to the night venues. I could feel myself calm down. My 3 hour anxiety therapy was starting to paid off. We joked about my Bayerische outfit together with our newly found friends. I felt a weird sense of pride being the colourful sheep at the party. I made a conscious decision to own it. ‘I celebrate my colourful outfit.’ 5–1 for Stefan. As the music became more danceable we started shaking our hips.
Dancing is my favourite way to activate my rest and digest nervous system. It makes me feel super sexy — because hips don’t lie.
And neither did the change of energy in the room. People watched us having fun, and I could see their tense faces ease up a little, as we exchanged animated glances. Co-regulation at its finest, I realised. Present. Good enough. Fun enough. Sexy enough. Enough. 6–1.
Grabbing a drink.
I used to meet people for drinks. We would enjoy our beer, sit across from each other and talk shit. Trink, Trink, Brüderlein, Trink. It was fun while it lasted. I realise my tolerance for shit is a lot lower — sober. And what I need is to get more into my body for a genuine connection. So my meeting was as follows: let’s meet at the Museum District Calesthenics Park for a workout together, and then have a coffee afterwards.
I’ve learned one thing. Doing things together creates a different way of being together.
Georg Wolff and I went Spartan! 7–1. Sitting all sweaty and pumped-up sipping espresso’s is a great way to break the vulnerability boundary that I thought only alcohol could do. His girlfriend is a talented artist — and we talked about the next steps. He spoke about his visions for his new career horizon and his self-limiting beliefs. It was an incredible mutual exchange of meaning, vulnerability, moral support and acceptance. We both laughed when we calculated we’d only known for 3 hours in total. Score: 8–1.
Bloodbath.
I knew that all of this was a far cry from the dreaded bloodbath I had to face this afternoon. The Berlin Pride Parade Float. 1.000.000 participants in and endless stream of gender neutral beer bottles, perspiring bodies and fluttering rainbow flags. We met up with a big group of my friends acquaintances at the local Späti. Big arms and abs everywhere. I was a little flustered. But by now I knew the drill. Walk to the fridge, pay for your Alcholfrei, und Trink, Trink, Bruderlein Trink. To make myself not feel completely lost, I lit a cigarette (8–2). After I finished it, I was forced to lit up some conversation, trying to act normal. ‘Act normal Stefan’. There were few exchanges of ‘Where are you from’s’, ‘What do you do’s’ and ‘How long have you lived in Berlin’s’.
There is one thing about being sober. You can see each micro-expression in peoples faces. Each signal of unease.
Literally. Every. Moving. Pore. All perceived of course by the beholder/ ‘Will these person like me?’ ‘Should I have spend more time at the gym this morning?’ ‘Will they just abandon me when they find out what a loser I am?’ ‘He refuses to make eye-contact. He hates you!’ I could feel my courage in sinking in my shoes. (8–3)
I found myself following the crowd. I remembered Jordan Peterson Rule #1 in his latest book. Stand up straight and up your shoulders back. Check. Again, I wanted to desperately run away. Instead, I remained in formation. The rest of the group struggled to stay in formation. There was a lot of back and forth on the road. There was a bit of tension around the pace we had to walk. For some this was a Spaziergäng. For others a Marathon. I decided not to get involved and enjoy the little music available from the US Embassy truck, who were definitely over the decibel limit.
‘I do feel a bit tired, but there is nothing that a small line of coke won’t fix.’ I heard someone say. I felt a punch in my stomach.
A moment of panic. ‘I need to fix myself too!’ it raced through my mind. Thousands of faces. I was trying to asses multiple threats. Is that what I was doing? Fixing? ’Is he just tired, or does he look angry?’ ‘How can I appease?’ ‘Should I stare back?’ ‘Should I rather smile back?’ ‘Is this the right moment for a small talk?’ ‘Just act normal Stefan’. My mind was in overdrive. I could feel myself slowly drifting away — I was checking out. Defiance score: 8–4. I was looking for a big balloon in the shape of Lion as my friend was carrying the group totem. ‘There he is.’ I thought to myself. It was nice to have a short conversation with a friendly face in the crowd. It put me at ease. 9–4.
After 20.000 steps, 4 liter of sparkling water, 10 banana’s and a bucket of strawberries — this Berlin Pride thing looked more like a Wellness retreat.
So why did it not feel like a Wellness retreat?
Monkey mind.
Perhaps because of the sheer amount of banana’s that my monkey mind just would not shut up. I felt boring. Uninteresting. I felt I added very little value to the group. I felt like a parasite. Unwanted addition. And I could not shake it. (9–5) I discovered another pattern. I felt compelled to do something outrageous to break the negative though train. I put one of my last banana’s in the zipper of my rather short jeans. I thought it was performance art. The others agreed. It finally broke the ice. And led to very interesting conversations and friendly banter.
Again, there I was standing under the bridge, surrounded by people in loud, animated banter — that I wasn’t part of. With a banana in my zipper. I felt uneasy, stupid and angry. Uneasy for being alone in the crowd instead of connected. Stupid for believing I’d be able to actually enjoy this instead of feeling unsafe. Angry at myself for not being more fun instead of feeling sorry for myself. I allowed the feelings to sink it. I was seething. Seething at myself for feeling all the wrong feelings. (10–6)
I felt struck by lightning. I took a few steps forward and I allowed the midday sun to illuminate my face. And my mind.
I was feeling all the wrong feelings.
For decades, I had made a distinction between good and wrong feelings. Am I suppose to tolerate how I feel right now? Am I supposed to be ok with feeling alone, unsafe, sorry for myself? I’d rather die. These feelings do not belong to me. I am not supposed to feel alone — because feeling alone is accepting rejection. How could I accept rejection? I’d rather die. I am not supposed to feel unsafe — feeling unsafe is accepting rejection. I’d rather die. I am not supposed to feel sorry for myself. Kindness will keep me from changing! I’d rather die. (10–7)
There it was. The final destination of my undeniable thought train.
‘I’d rather die.’
And I was. Slowly dying on the inside. Surrounded by outgoing, friendly faces I was fighting a battle I had no clue I was fighting. Someday — someday — I’d be good enough to receive the love I’d denied myself my whole life. For decades I had chosen to ‘rather die’ than to accept unconditional love for all parts of me.
Sometimes I feel alone. Sometimes I feel unsafe. Sometimes I feel compassionate towards myself. Instead I trapped myself in and endless feedback loop of free floating anxiety. Without mercy.
I’d rather die.
Its harshness stared me in the face. My eyes teared up as the gravity of my lack of self love made itself abundantly clear.
‘I’d rather live’ I thought to myself. ‘I’d rather fucking live.’
Something happened. I felt a crack. A weight dropping from my body — all at once. Similar to the day before, I could feel a tingling sensation shooting from the base of my spine, a force that opened up right underneath the shoulders. But it was much stronger. Much more engulfing. It felt like my mind just ‘dropped’ in my body. In that moment I chose the courage to face rejection over fear of experiencing it. I chose, as Nietsche wrote, Amor Fati. To love my fate regardless of how I felt.
A coward dies a thousand times before his death.
William Shakespeare, Julius Ceasar.
It turn out, I did not die after all.
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Thank you for reading.
