Andrew Gillum opened up about the circumstances that led him to a drug-fueled sex orgy with two men that ended his once-promising political career.
Gillum, the former Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Florida, made headlines after he was found drunk on a bathroom floor at a luxury Miami Beach hotel with a naked male escort who was suspected of overdosing on crystal meth.
In an Instagram video on Tuesday, Gillum described the shame and “great embarrassment” he felt “from the harm that I had caused… I needed real help to try to unpack that.”
Gillum captioned the video: “I am thankful to so many of you who have wished me well during this especially challenging time. I wanted to provide a personal update on how I have been doing. Take good care of yourselves during this season and I will see you on the other side. Warmest, Andrew.”
Gillum said the words “feeling” and “shame” multiple times during the 11-minute video.
“It’s one thing to feel guilty for a harm you feel you may have caused someone,” he said. “That’s how you know you’re human. That’s how you know you’re not a sociopath.”
He said being a Black man in America, during a time of Black Lives Matter and “anti-blackness,” caused him “to look for other ways to try to numb” his pain and “do some mind shift.”
“I know as a Black man… what it means to have to convince people that your life has meaning. Convince people that… your life has purpose, not to be set above anybody but just to be treated on a level that’s equal to everybody else around you.”
He urged people who are struggling with their addictions to “be kind to yourself.” He said “there is no perfect person. There is no perfect life. We’re all just struggling to get by and to do better.”
The father-of-three concluded by thanking his wife and “life partner, my wife RJ, a woman who knows everything that I am and everything that I am not. And she chooses to love me anyhow. A woman who is literally God’s grace on earth – the epitome of grace.”
