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RuPaul is having an excellent 2024 so far. Season 16 of Drag Race began in January and has had its trademark drama and celebrity guest appearances. Later that month the show won Best Reality Competition at the Emmys, where Ru also became the most decorated Best Host in the awards’ history with his eighth consecutive win. And just last week he released a memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings. This book is unequivocally RuPaul’s most searingly honest to date. Or at least that’s what the reviewers who were able to look away from the gorgeous cover photo say. Seriously, Ru is out of drag (even sporting facial hair!) in the black-and-white stunner, while staring directly at the camera, and by extension, us. Swoon! RuPaul sat down with Alex Cooper at the Call Her Daddy podcast on Spotify to discuss the memoir, in a conversation that covered his 30 years of drug use:
His first experience with hard drugs came when he was 13 in the form of a pill called a red devil. While RuPaul said he doesn’t remember the effects of that particular drug, he noted, “I wasn’t afraid of drugs.”
RuPaul said that in all the years he was a drug user, he “never shot up.” However, in his 20s, RuPaul “dropped acid every weekend.”
“Every weekend. Four hits of acid every weekend,” he said, before describing the experience of the drug. “It was the proof I had that this world is an illusion. That everything you think you know about solid objects or what people are is a lie. I had that suspicion before I dropped acid, so when I dropped acid, it was like, ‘Yes, this is it exactly!’”
“The people who freak out… those are the people that it never occurred to them that this is an illusion,” he added. “… It lifts the veil of the illusion, the fantasy that we collectively agree to in our lives.”
Looking back on his drug use, RuPaul said, “I used for 30 years. The first 20 were a blast. Had a great time. It was those last 10 that were pure hell.” Even so, RuPaul noted that he thanks “God for the drugs and alcohol, because it saved my life.”
“It gave me a layaway plan, a deferment plan until I was strong enough to deal with what was going on,” he said. “Thankfully, I found a 12-step program that really, really, really helped me so much that I am in love with. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that… The success I have today, I wouldn’t have that if it weren’t for this 12-step program… because it gives you all the processing tools to deal with all of the trauma of what life is.”
Wow, RuPaul offers a lot of depth just in that little summary alone. The perspective of being grateful for the drugs is intriguing. It’s certainly not what people usually talk about when discussing sobriety. But the way Ru explains his appreciation for a particular period of time, I actually understand his thinking? What I’m getting from him is that he’s afraid he would’ve shut down, either figuratively or in the worst way imaginable, if he didn’t have something to get him through until he was ready to deal with himself. Of course the huge caveat to that approach is, man was he lucky things worked out the way they did. You could think “this is what I need to get through for right now,” but your body could decide something else. Still, I think RuPaul sharing his full story, completely unvarnished, will do a world of good.
I’m ready to adopt “Everything you think you know about solid objects or what people are is a lie,” as a mantra. Though I haven’t ever dropped acid, I did have a very intense dream along these lines in my twenties that still haunts me. I was sitting in a circle with people from my childhood, in what felt like a meditation retreat. No talking, just sitting. And then kind of slowly yet suddenly, it was like a light was turned on and we realized there weren’t any definitions between us. The end of my arm or leg was just a trick of the eye. Once you had the right vantage point, it became apparent that everything was part of the same matter. We were all one, endless expansion of being, any perceived separations were merely illusions. I was so swept up in the moment, that when I woke up it nearly felt painful to be reconnected with solid, separated objects. The dream left me with the feeling that that field of connection is the place where I/we are supposed to find our way back to. Can I get an amen?
