In 2013, Jinkx Monsoon won season five of RuPaul’s Drag Race at the age of 26. Upon taking the crown, she was no longer, as she described herself early in that season, “Seattle’s premier Jewish narcoleptic drag queen.” She was now, in the parlance of the show, America’s next drag superstar. Over the next decade, she’d tour the world, release albums, start a podcast, continue to develop her drag persona, and eventually return to the Werk Room to compete in RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 7, joining the “all stars all winners” cast of queens who had won their own respective seasons of Drag Race or Drag Race All Stars.
This trajectory meant Jinkx was in the public eye in a way she had never anticipated—and also, she says, in a way she wasn’t ready for. Over time, she drank more as a way to help her cope with the pressures of stardom and to self-medicate her otherwise untreated anxiety, OCD, and depression. After nearly getting hit by a car while drunk in 2019 (after actually getting hit by a car while drunk a few years before that), Jinkx decided to quit drinking for good.
Today Jinkx is about three years sober from alcohol (though she says she still uses cannabis and remains “a huge weed advocate”), fresh off her All Stars 7 win (which included a truly iconic Snatch Game performance, which I implore you to watch here), and feeling good, grounded, and excited for what’s next. She recently spoke to SELF about her robust-as-hell (and extremely relatable) mental health practice, which includes therapy, video games, witchcraft, and Grindr.
Here’s Jinkx in her own words.
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This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
When your life changes rapidly overnight, and you go from low pressure to high pressure or low profile to high profile, any underlying issues that you have yet to address bubble up to the top really quickly. When you are put under that extreme stress, things you thought you had a handle on for a long time, they just come to the surface.
I think I’ve settled into who I am now, and I’m really confident, but that took a lot of work. And I don’t think I was ready for this career when I did season five. I wasn’t ready for being a public persona. I would’ve loved a crash course in that. Or you know, like a night school education on how to effectively be in the public eye.
As an actor who thinks that being able to take notes and critique is an important part of your work, I thought going on Twitter and reading my Instagram comments and reading Reddit threads was a part of taking my critique…but what I found was the only thing it was affirming was my own insecurities. My therapist said that when I go looking for those comments, it’s almost a form of self-harm.
Source: SELF
