Advertise on podcast: The AfterMeth: Gay Men Recovering from Crystal Methamphetamine and Chemsex Addiction

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/moralinjury Host Dallas Bragg welcomes back Mell McCracken — national director of Chemsex and LGBTQ+ programs at No Matter What Recovery, treatment developer, and faculty at the International Institute of Trauma and Addiction Specialists — for a deep conversation on moral injury, one of the least-discussed wounds in chemsex. Mell begins by separating morals (beliefs about right and wrong, handed down by institutions, religion, government, and family) from virtues (deeply personal values like courage, compassion, and integrity), then defines moral injury as "the spiritual consequence of self-betrayal": what happens when we act against our values, fail to act when we witness harm, or are betrayed by people and institutions we trusted. Originally identified in combat veterans, moral injury shows up in chemsex when men cross their own sexual boundaries, are exposed to content in Zoom rooms they'd never seek out sober, or watch someone be intentionally G'd out while paralyzed and unable to intervene. Mell and Dallas draw a sharp line between post-traumatic stress — which asks "Am I safe?" — and moral injury, which asks "Who have I become, and can I forgive myself?" The heart of the episode is Mell's reframing of arousal and shame. Meth cuts a person off from their emotional landscape and eliminates the internal compass that would normally signal revulsion, so escalating, taboo, or disturbing content registers only as sensation — as more high. "That is meth wanting to get higher. That is not who you are as a person." Mell notes moral injury carries one of the highest rates of suicidality precisely because men have no safe space to name what they saw, what they failed to stop, or what turned them on. They also address the men who caused harm, arguing that perpetration follows the same escalation curve, usually grows out of unhealed victimization, and leaves behind the heaviest shame of anyone they've worked with — and that no one, using or not, ever consents to abuse. Healing starts with naming what happened, grieving the identity and innocence that was lost, and rebuilding body trust before sexual trust, through consensual non-sexual touch and slow, boundaried practice. Both close with the same message: this is not something anyone should carry alone, and recovery comes through softness and self-forgiveness, never self-flagellation. Contact Mell McCracken: Email: [email protected] Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inkandcaviar/ The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail For more information on the Holiday Healing webinar series for addicts and those who love them, visit: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/holiday-healing In this bonus part two, Dallas Bragg welcomes back family and loved ones recovery coach Charlie Bray to pick up where their first conversation on family dynamics left off. Dallas opens with a question marriage therapists have put to him for years: if meth shows up in a relationship, there was probably a problem already. Charlie answers through family systems theory with a story of a loving, non-abusive family where a mother’s illness quietly turns a seven-year-old into the caretaker and teaches her five-year-old brother to pretend he is fine. No villain, no abuse, and yet either child could grow up to be the codependent partner or the addict. From there they explore how there is only so much emotional air in a family, how children learn that being unwell is the way to get attention, and why addiction, for all its devastation, can be the wake-up call that lets an entire family finally see its own patterns. The second half turns practical and personal. Dallas asks how a parent in recovery reconciles the guilt of what their kids lived through, and Charlie reframes amends as making right rather than apologizing: daily, regulated, consistent action is what erases shame, not promises. They talk about why a 90-day chip lands as small potatoes with family who have been hurt for years, then move into the holidays: what to say when a loved one shows up high, how a parent should handle a sibling who refuses to come, why clearing the alcohol is a small ask, and the one rule Charlie says is always true for everyone: slow down. A story about a toddler bumblebee craft becomes the episode’s center of gravity, a reminder that the holiday is never the project. The people are. This conversation previews Holiday Healing, Dallas and Charlie’s program for loved ones and people in recovery, launching in November. The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/asking In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg takes on three of the hardest words in recovery: “I need help.” He opens with his own story of leaving home at eighteen, never asking his parents for anything, and building an identity on proving to his family, his church, and his bullies that he was strong and self-sufficient. That same pride kept him in the closet for thirty-six years and nearly kept him from surrendering to meth. Dallas sees the pattern constantly in the high-functioning gay men he coaches: they are the rocks, the listeners, the friends who always show up, fluent at giving support and nearly incapable of receiving it. He traces that back to childhoods where needing something felt dangerous, and names the insidious way meth exploits it, turning reliability into credit so that nobody asks questions when you go quiet. The core of the episode is a case for using your voice. Secrecy, Dallas argues, is the fuel for chemsex. A craving kept in the dark builds a charge and graduates into euphoric recall; shame needs silence to keep its grip. Naming something out loud turns down its emotional charge and brings the brain back online, which is why one client’s “pre-lapse video,” saying the whole plan into his phone camera until it sounded ridiculous, killed the craving by the fifth try. Dallas then gets practical: five things to tell your person so they can hold your truth without flinching, lecturing, or panicking, and five small ways to start saying things out loud, from asking for a hug to telling on yourself within 24 hours of a use. He closes with permission that this culture rarely gives: it is okay to not be okay, and one true sentence to one person once a week is how the muscle gets built. The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/neuroscience Season 3 of The AfterMeth Podcast is the season of big names, and Dallas Bragg lands one of the biggest in addiction education: Dr. Nicole Labor, addiction medicine physician, author of The Addictoholic Deconstructed, self-described sweary godmother, and a person in long-term recovery whose reels on the science of addiction have reached millions. Dallas discovered her through her chemsex reel (still her most-watched ever), read her book, and now recommends it to every client because it finally made the neuroscience click. In this conversation, Nicole explains why addiction is a disease, introduces her brand-new baseball-field metaphor for dopamine and receptor downregulation, and unpacks glutamate, the “executive assistant to dopamine” that files meth, sex, Grindr, porn, a room, and a time of night into one learned network that any single cue can switch on. The second half gets practical in ways chemsex recovery rarely does. Nicole explains why cravings negotiate rather than announce themselves (“I’m just checking who’s on”), why the addicted brain only has to convince you to take the next step, and why interrupting the loop with something as simple as cold water or thirty seconds of jumping still counts even if you use afterward. She and Dallas cover why sneaking and lying get stamped as rewarding, why sex addiction and Grindr scrolling are addiction all the same, how to “dopamine stack” your way out of the flat, gray early months, and why a two-week slip after six months clean leaves you with seven months, not zero. Her closing instruction for anyone in early recovery: get in the lifeboat first. You can figure out what to do on shore once you get there. Contact Dr. Nicole Labor: Instragram: https://www.instagram.com/theaddictsdoc/ The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/concept In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg returns to a moment early in his recovery that quietly changed everything. Preparing to share his story for the first time at a spiritual center, he pulled out his family's old photo albums and found page after page of an unhappy little boy: scowling, arms crossed, visibly out of place among smiling relatives. For a long time he used those images to build a case against his family, his church, and his classmates. Then, putting the photos back years later, he realized he had skipped right past every picture of himself laughing with his brother, opening Christmas presents, and hugging his grandmother. His brain had been so trained to find the negative that the joyful photos had become invisible. That discovery became the turning point where he stepped outside the self-concept he had written and began to see the whole picture. From there, Dallas draws on NLP pioneer Steve Andreas's idea that a self-concept is not a belief but a collection of examples, a mental photo album the brain flips through for evidence. Ask "Am I reliable?" and the brain does not answer with a word; it shows you pictures, and in early recovery the frowning ones come first. The most useful insight for men in chemsex recovery is that a strong self-concept includes counterexamples. Instead of "I'm chemsex-free," a fragile album that gets thrown out after one slip, the truthful statement is "I'm chemsex-free, and sometimes I'm not." Dallas challenges listeners to count honestly and recognize they are chemsex-free more often than not, to treat a using episode as a photo with a note on the back rather than a verdict, and to imagine what their self-concept album would show a stranger if it sat unedited on the coffee table. The work, he reminds us, takes repetition, because the brain will keep reaching for the old curated album of transgressions. But you get to choose which album sits on the shelf. The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/smart For a year, Dallas Bragg has wanted to bring an alternative to the 12 steps onto The AfterMeth Podcast, and this episode delivers it with two guests whose lived experience runs straight through chemsex. Gus Curran is SMART Recovery’s senior director of training and program development, a facilitator for nearly a decade, and ten years meth and alcohol free after a path that ran from ecstasy in the LA club scene to isolated meth use and treatment that, he realized only later, addressed the drug but never the sex. Zach Reedy, a substance use counselor and president of SMART Recovery NYC, met meth on the apps at 27 and lost everything: job, car, housing, with years unhoused in Florida, an HIV diagnosis that got them into care, Zoom rooms before the pandemic, and daily psychosis in New York before a neighbor walked them to their first meeting. Both now spend their lives making recovery spaces more inclusive, and both say the same thing Dallas has been saying for years: whatever you use meth for, it eventually takes that away. The conversation is a full introduction to SMART Recovery: a secular, evidence-informed mutual support community where you set your own goal, choose your own language, and no one tells you what you must do. Gus and Zach explain why crosstalk is the heart of a meeting, how trained facilitators keep a mixed room supportive, the four points (motivation, urges, thoughts and feelings, balanced living), and the tools that changed their lives, from the cost-benefit analysis to the question nobody had ever asked Gus: “What do you love about it?” They are honest about SMART’s weak spot, fellowship, and what they are building to fix it. And they share two analogies every listener should keep: when you lapse, you do not pour out the fishbowl, and when your car breaks down in Kansas City, you fix it there and keep driving. Gus is offering AfterMeth listeners a free facilitator training code in the show notes. Gus and Zack invite listeners to learn more about SMART Recovery and consider getting involved. Take the SMART Recovery 4-Point Meeting Facilitator Training for free. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of SMART’s approach and tools, and you may decide to start a new meeting or support an existing one. We’d especially love to grow the number of LGBTQ+ SMART Recovery meetings available to support people who want to make changes related to chemsex, sexualized drug use, or other addictive behaviors. This training is the first step toward becoming a SMART facilitator or meeting helper. Zach and I would like to start a national LGBTQ+ SMART Meeting and are looking for people who may be interested in helping us launch the first SMART National LGBTQ+ meeting. We’ll need co-facilitators, people to help manage chat, and volunteers who can support Zoom and other meeting technology. There is absolutely no requirement to start or help with a meeting, though. We invite you to take the training, learn more about SMART, and see whether our approach resonates with you. Code: AFTERMETHSMART Register here: https://training.smartrecovery.org/course/gsf201-lms-en-01 Offer expires: December 31, 2026 Register now and complete the training at your own pace. Questions? Email [email protected] and put Chemsex in the subject line. The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/goodnews In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg names a trigger that almost nobody in recovery talks about: good news. He opens with his own pattern from his drug court years, when he found himself relapsing after nearly every NA key tag and drove straight from the courthouse to pick up a guy to party on the day he was released from probation. Milestones, he realized, were one of his biggest danger zones, and he suspects they are for many listeners too. Dallas walks through G. Alan Marlatt's cognitive-behavioral model of relapse, which shows that while negative emotions and interpersonal conflict account for most relapses, positive emotional states are a real category of their own. In those moments, people are not trying to escape a feeling. They are trying to amplify one, and meth amplifies better than almost anything on earth. The heart of the episode is a simple neurological reframe: during active use, the brain learned the rule "big feeling, use," and it does not distinguish between a promotion and a breakup. Both are intensity, and intensity is the trigger. Dallas unpacks the "I deserve it" whisper that arrives exactly when defenses are lowest, and why milestone days are the sneakiest version, since nobody thinks to check on someone who looks like they are winning. He then turns practical: put good news on your danger zone list, train your recovery team to go on alert when something good happens, run fire drills for the hours after a celebration when the dopamine dives, and keep doing the boring daily work on your best days, because a routine that only shows up when you are struggling is not a routine. He closes with compassion and a promise: plan for these inflationary experiences, get through enough of them, and eventually you just get to live your life. The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/foundation This episode of The AfterMeth Podcast is unlike any other. Instead of a clinician or author, Dallas Bragg hosts a panel of three people connected to the LGBT Foundation in the UK, each with a direct, lived relationship to chemsex, brought together with help from Reese, the Foundation's sexual health coordinator, whom Dallas met at the chemsex conference in Belgium. Hugh moved from Derry to Manchester alone and watched crystal meth take his jobs, his housing, and nearly his life before spending two and a half years finding himself again. Patrick, also known as Kitana, came from Barbados at 17, was diagnosed with HIV at 20, survived a devastatingly abusive relationship that left him with a rare early-onset dementia, and used meth to block it all out before becoming a leading HIV and dementia advocate. Luke runs NeuroQueers, a community for queer neurodivergent people, and brings a more sporadic history with meth and cocaine alongside a longer battle with alcohol. What follows is raw, funny in places, and relentlessly honest. The panel talks about sexual assault while on chems and the shame that keeps men from asking for help, what comes flooding back once the substance is gone, why therapy is essential and why it can also trigger relapse, and how recovery differs for neurodivergent people who have to break both the addiction and the routine of using. They share what sober sex has actually been like, the importance of being honest with a partner about what you have been through, and why the way someone responds to "I relapsed" can change everything. Running through it all is a single thread: tell someone, face what you were numbing, find the people who get it, and take responsibility so you can finally forgive yourself. A supplemental study guide is linked in the show notes. Contact: Reece Boulton Email:  [email protected] Website: https://lgbt.foundation/ The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/decide In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg challenges one of recovery culture's most rigid ideas: the day one. He shares that the date he publicly uses isn't when his recovery began. It began on a hotel bed, when sunlight broke through the curtain and a voice cut through the static to say, "I'm done." He used many times after that morning, but each time felt worse and more disconnected. Dallas uses the story to introduce Prochaska and DiClemente's Stages of Change: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. He then points to a gap in the model. It jumps from doing it to having done it, with no name for the stretch in between where most men actually live. Dallas names that gap Stage 4.5: The Becoming. In this stage a man is taking action and still using. He is building new patterns by hand, leaning on unreliable willpower, and hitting plateaus that invite shame every time the counter resets to zero. Dallas reframes relapse here as contrast and data rather than failure, and offers a mantra: "This is something I do until it's something I am." What carries a man across to maintenance, he argues, is three things: A visceral, five-senses prophetic vision of the man he is becoming.A heart-led why rooted in identity rather than consequences.A daily anchor practiced regardless of mood or relapse.The episode closes with a reminder that the timeline belongs to no one else and that each man is the executive of his own recovery. The study guide linked in the show notes includes a downloadable Stages of Change document with Stage 4.5 added. Study Guide Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cCvwZ6v8NOYF9gPwtn0G-egNeDm6xzeX/view The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/dynamics Dallas Bragg has been asked one question more than almost any other: what do I do when someone I love is using? In this episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, he finally sits down with someone equipped to answer it. Charlie Bray is a counselor, former treatment center clinician, and family and loved ones recovery coach with 18 years in recovery, years of facilitating family intensives alongside Mell McCracken, and lived experience on both sides of addiction in a family. Dallas opens with his own story: a mother who thought his drug arrest meant marijuana, made every mistake in the book, and eventually did the right thing. Charlie's central point reframes the whole conversation. Family dynamics exist long before anyone picks up a substance, and the using is usually a symptom of how the family already operates. The conversation is packed with practical wisdom for parents, partners, and friends. Charlie and Dallas redefine "help" as something other than convincing and managing, unpack why fear so often shows up as anger, and walk through Pia Mellody's framework for codependency and where real self-worth comes from. They tackle the hardest scenarios head on: lending money ("I won't give you cash, but I'll pay for treatment"), refusing to let someone use in your home as an act of love, what to say at the emergency room, and the partner who keeps disappearing on binges. Running through it all is Charlie's insistence that loving someone does not mean funding their slow death, and that a held boundary tells your loved one, without words, that you believe they are capable. This is part one of two, and it previews the Holiday Healing webinar series for addicts and the people who love them, launching in November. Contact Charlie: Instagram: @family.recovery Email Address: [email protected] The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/fbuddy In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg opens with a story from his earliest days of recovery, when finally settling into a home with his kids set off cravings and a deep fear of sex. Drug tested several times a week and told in 12-step rooms to wait a year, he made his own plan. He invited a non-attached f**k buddy, a friend also in meth recovery, to live with him for a few months. That arrangement kept him off Grindr, helped rewire his brain, and put him on the path to enjoying sober sex. Dallas is clear that this is not a prescription. Many men need to start slow and start alone, with a porn detox, sober masturbation, and careful attention to what triggers cravings. He also stresses that there is no universal timeline for returning to partnered sex. From there, Dallas lays out the art and science of using a f**k buddy for sexual reintegration. Drawing on Jack Morin's The Erotic Mind and its love/lust conflict, he explains why a low-pressure, non-romantic partner helps men get out of their heads and into their bodies. He walks through the preparation step by step: Define "ready" as radical honesty rather than horniness.Build a safe container and involve your recovery team.Write an if-then plan for before, during, and after sex.Set a clear exit and safe word.Name your sober sexual values.Set boundaries without turning them into expectations.Choose on purpose which kinks come forward into sober life.Design a sensory scene that tells the nervous system this is different and safe.He also covers interviewing a potential partner, treating a partner's "no" as low-stakes shadow work around rejection, and considering a sober sex worker as a recovery tool. The study guide linked in the show notes includes his Sober F**k Buddy Planning Sheet. The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/realwork Host Dallas Bragg sits down with Danni Pomplun, a men's coach and men's work facilitator based in San Francisco, whose message — "I quit the drugs, but the addiction stayed" — cuts to the heart of what happens after the substance is gone. Danni traces his own path from leaving home at seventeen and managing gay bars in Southern California at twenty-one, through losing his first partner at twenty-five, to a second bottom years later when meth entered the picture hard and fast. What finally moved him wasn't talk therapy alone, which he says kept him stuck in his head, but somatic and embodiment work, trauma therapy, and men's circles where he was met with what he calls "sharp love" — brothers who cared less about his stories and more about his integrity. He and Dallas name a pattern the gay community rarely talks about: enormous freedom of expression with very little containment, and the "leaky energy" that follows when there are no boundaries around it. The conversation turns to why unspoken emotion is so often the real trigger. Dallas describes a client whose unspoken workplace conflict built until chemsex became the exit; Danni frames every relapse as "the moment we choose to leave ourselves." They explore how men are conditioned out of two feelings in particular — grief and celebration — and how learning to sit in stillness, converse with the body, and name what's actually there (anger under sadness, anxiety mistaken for sexual charge) is the work that white-knuckling can never replace. Danni also speaks to touch and the fear of being held, especially for men carrying chemsex trauma, and closes with a call for community care over self-care alone: "It's amazing that we get to laugh and dance together. It's a shame if I don't get to see you cry." He shares his free and donation-based online men's circles and a meditation album, From Pain to Peace, releasing on Spotify at the end of September. Contact Danni: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dannipomplun/?hl=en" Website: https://www.dannipomplun.com/ The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/build In this solo episode, Dallas Bragg tackles a question most men in chemsex recovery answer too quickly: "Who's on my team?" The opposite of addiction may be connection, but shame around meth, GHB, or mephedrone keeps men from asking for help — and even when they do, what they usually get is "I'm here if you need me," which Dallas calls about as useful as a fart in the wind at eleven o'clock on a Friday night. Loving someone is a feeling; a team is a function. He reframes recovery as running a business, with the listener as founder and the people around them as staff who get hired, trained, reviewed, and sometimes let go. It sounds cold, he admits, but the cost of a bad quarter here is your life, and the founder mindset — checking the calendar, deciding on Monday what Saturday night will look like — is exactly what separates the men who make this work. The second half lays out the job description. Team members need specifics: named danger zones (payday, Friday after nine, the week in November when mom died), instructions to call rather than text because texting lets you perform, and pointed questions like "Have you found yourself on Grindr today?" that a vague "fine" can't slide past. Dallas urges listeners to define a "level two" escalation in advance — someone comes to take your phone or stay with you, not just a pep talk — because euphoric recall will never hand you the exit on its own. He covers training your team like a 90-day probationary hire, casting by strength (the nosy straight-woman friend who won't apologize for invading your privacy belongs on the front line, the soft enabler does not), cross-training for coverage, temporary scaffolding like view-only bank access or phone monitoring, and giving honest performance reviews, including letting go of anyone who flakes and teaches your brain the system has holes. His closing message is that authority over your recovery is a birthright, not something earned by consecutive meth-free days: you're not asking for help, you're staffing an operation. A supplemental study guide is linked in the show notes. The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/selfempowered Host Dallas Bragg sits down with Damon Hunter — former public health professor, social worker, and harm reduction content creator — for a candid conversation about why the U.S. still flinches at harm reduction and what it actually looks like in practice. Damon traces the country's fear of drugs back through a century of racially motivated drug panics and explains that language like "meth mouth" and "tweaker" does nothing but perpetuate stigma and push people who are already marginalized further away from help. He shares his own story with disarming honesty: coming out in a rural, deeply religious environment, being introduced to Tina through Grindr, a spiral into use that led to a federal embezzlement charge, house arrest, and prison — and the turning point that finally worked, an ADHD diagnosis in his late twenties and a psychiatrist willing to treat it with a stimulant medication. Eleven years of abstinence later, he's clear that his path was his own, not a prescription for anyone else, and that criminalization is never the answer. The second half turns to what fills the space after Tina. Damon credits building queer community as the single biggest protective factor in his life — he volunteered at a rural LGBTQ youth center, made lifelong friends, and met his husband there — alongside education, hobbies that keep his hands busy, dogs, and a small circle of people he can call without judgment. He and Dallas walk through sexual reintegration in real detail: the planning, conversations, and exit strategies that let him return to bathhouses and kink without substances, including going back to the very bathhouse where he first used. They discuss what supportive partners should actually ask ("Where are you at? What do you need from me?"), why a slip is not a reset, screening potential hookups, and drug checking with FTIR machines and Good Samaritan laws. Running through it all is Damon's core argument: pleasure is intrinsic to chemsex, and any public health approach that ignores it — or leads with shame instead of information — will keep failing the men it claims to serve. Contact Damon: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedamonhunterx/ The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/enough In this solo episode, Dallas Bragg retires a question he spent years asking his clients: "How bad do you want it?" He opens with the story of one of his first clients — a "flight risk" who, with his phone locked down, would drive to Walmart late at night to buy a track phone and get back on the apps. At the time Dallas told him he must not want it badly enough, a response he now names as shaming, counterproductive, and unbecoming of a coach, even when it occasionally landed. What he understands now is that wanting was never the missing ingredient. Every man who comes to him wants out; the man who relapsed on Saturday wanted it just as much as the man who didn't. Wanting is a feeling that arrives on its own — in the 4 a.m. vow, the 6 a.m. apology text, the prayer nobody heard — and it costs nothing. Willingness is a behavior produced on purpose, and it costs something every time. Dallas grounds the distinction in motivational interviewing's split between preparatory language (I want to, I should, I could) and commitment language (I will, I did), and in the intention-behavior gap: how badly someone intends to do something accounts for roughly 28% of whether they follow through, which means about three-quarters of recovery is happening somewhere other than desire. From there he turns to what unwillingness actually sounds like — almost never refusal, and almost always negotiation. He replays a conversation with a client six weeks in who deleted Grindr but kept Sniffies because "it's just browsing," and asks listeners whether they're chemsex free or chemsex free with caveats: I'll stop using but keep the apps, I'll delete the apps but keep his number, I'll go to a group but not that group, I'll do the work but not the hard part. Because the part of us that answers "am I willing?" is the same part that wants it, Dallas argues willingness can only be seen in the rearview mirror: the apps are on the phone or they aren't, the call was made or it wasn't — not a character verdict, just information. He is honest about the grief underneath it all, naming the chemsex scene as the first place many men ever felt wanted, and the loss of that social world and sexual template as real rather than dramatic. Since willingness is a fluctuating state that no one can summon at 3 a.m. with the midbrain running the show and the prefrontal cortex offline, it has to be decided in advance — written-down if-then plans (if he texts, then I do this specific thing) that create a 1% interruption in the pattern. The closing line is the whole episode in a sentence: you don't need to want it more, you need to take the action. A supplemental study guide is linked in the show notes. The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout