Posted: Mon, Mar. 26, 2012, 3:01 AM
Addiction treatment for transgender people
A one-of-a-kind treatment center where transgender people can free themselves of addictions is about to open in Philadelphia.
By Don Sapatkin
Inquirer Staff Writer
http://www.philly.com/philly/health/20120326_Getting_clean.html?c=rDetermined to overcome a cocaine addiction that had propelled him into a downward spiral of unemployment, sex work, and life one step off the street, Erik Leiff contacted dozens of treatment programs.
In person, when he explained who he was - a trans man, having medically transitioned from his birth gender to the only one he could live with - office workers giggled and pointed: "It's like, 'Look at the freak.' "
On the phone, all said he would be housed with women. "If you saw me, that would have been ridiculous. I look nothing like a woman," he said. "The women in a program would have been just as uncomfortable as I would have been."
