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/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

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/repeating Host Dallas Bragg welcomes Juan Galan — spiritual teacher, identity alchemist, and life coach for gay men — to tackle one of the most common questions in chemsex recovery: "Why do I keep doing this?" Juan explains that repeated patterns aren't character flaws but nervous-system responses — trauma-formed survival mechanisms that have lived in the body for years and can't simply be thought away. He walks through his "remembrance method," a four-stage path: the trance (identity fused to the pattern), the witnessing (seeing yourself repeat it but unable to stop), the descent (the hardest stage — going within to face shadows, shame, and exiled parts through shadow work and breathwork), and the return (reclaiming your true essence and purpose). A recurring theme is that "every collapse is divinely orchestrated" — that addiction, relapse, and heartbreak are initiations happening for you, not to you. Both host and guest share personal stories of separating mind from body — noticing the urge to reach for validation, Grindr, or substances, then pausing, breathing, and staying present rather than numbing the feeling. Juan offers practical anchors like the "window of tolerance" and the "90-second rule" (a trigger, if you name it and stay with it, passes in about 90 seconds). The throughline is compassion over shame: patterns once protected you, healing is a spiral rather than a straight line, and progress means reacting the old way less often while forgiving yourself when you don't. The episode closes with an invitation to go deeper through Juan's "Five Days to Come Home" mini-program and a reminder that lasting recovery means descending into the body — not just quitting the substance. Contact Juan:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healingwithjuan/ Free Private Podcast Experience: https://juangalan.co/private-podcast-experience/ 5-days to Come Home Challenge: https://juangalan.co/coming-home-challenge/ 1:1 Mentorship: https://juangalan.co/coming-home/ 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/post In this short solo episode, Dr. Dallas Bragg shares one of the most effective tools in his coaching program: the post-relapse video. He traces its origin to his own bottom — returning home after an arrest to find his house ransacked by the men he'd been using with, no car, no job, eviction looming, and no one left to call. With nothing else to do, he propped his phone on the dresser and recorded himself in that moment of raw despair. Rewatching it later, sober, was excruciating — and that was exactly the point. The video became a way to interrupt euphoric recall, the powerful pull he describes as the midbrain hijacking the prefrontal cortex, telling every convincing lie ("I'm just getting on Grindr to look around," "I'm just taking Friday off") until using feels inevitable. Safeguards like blocking apps or handing over car keys create a pause; the video is what wakes you up inside it. Dallas then walks through the practical protocol. Record before you sleep, while the crash is still on you and nothing in you wants to use — three to five minutes, answering seven prompts: what do I see, how does my body feel, what actually happened in the last 24 to 72 hours, what am I feeling, what's on my phone, what did this cost me, and what does my future self need to know. Making the video isn't enough; the real work is watching it sober, with full attention, every day for 90 days — the step where most men fall short. He also suggests recording a second video from the opposite state: the grateful, resolved version of yourself a few days out, when you realize what you didn't lose. A free companion form is linked in the show notes, and Dallas invites listeners to try the protocol and report back, with deeper episodes on euphoric recall coming soon. Tool Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NplnE58He_wnpuOrmuFtj4m4CdSIie1U/view?usp=drive_link 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/profiles In this returning-guest episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg welcomes back Dr. Patrick Lockwood for a wide-ranging conversation that opens with an unscripted reflection on connection itself. The two men explore how easy it is—especially for busy professionals and entrepreneurs—to let productivity crowd out relationships, and how a simple weekly text can chip away at isolation. Dallas is candid about his own instinct to distrust kindness and question people's motives, while Patrick shares the opposite reflex of gratitude, and together they land on the familiar recovery truth that the opposite of addiction is connection. It's a warm, meandering start that sets an emotionally honest tone before the episode turns to its central idea. From there, Patrick unpacks a framework he developed with a colleague, Mel, for understanding the different core motivations behind chemsex: numbers, who use drugs and sex to numb intolerable psychological pain and shame; connectors, who chase euphoria and a sense of belonging; and dissociators, who use to escape the self entirely, often in the wake of severe trauma. He draws a careful distinction between numbing—dulling a pain one is still in contact with—and dissociating, a total flight from the self, and both men stress that these categories are meant to help people feel seen rather than to pathologize or pigeonhole. They discuss how someone can shift between types over time (a connector becoming a dissociator after trauma, or after an HIV diagnosis) and why identifying one's underlying motivation can point toward the right support, including trauma therapy when the injury runs deep. Dallas closes by floating the idea of building case studies so listeners can recognize themselves in someone else's story, and reminds listeners of the supplemental study guide accompanying every episode. 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/pillars In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg lays out the three pillars he considers essential to chemsex recovery: consistency, proactivity, and certainty — three overlapping circles whose intersection is a chemsex-free life. He opens by naming the strange, uncomfortable stretch of time that follows quitting, the liminal space where a man suddenly has hours, energy, and attention back and no idea what to do with them. Chemsex, as Dallas frames it, was never just a drug; it was a culture, a subculture, an identity. Leaving it means living in between selves for a while, and the boredom so many men report in that gap isn't laziness — it's the absence of a compelling enough vision of who they're becoming. This episode is for the man who has quit and feels like he's buffering, and equally for the man who keeps getting almost all the way there before relapsing every two weeks, every month, every six months, and can't seem to clear that last hurdle. Practically, Dallas builds each pillar into something a listener can act on this week. Consistency means committing to one daily action and one daily communication — journaling, the gym, a check-in, whatever feels like the path of least resistance — and treating the first missed day as a red alert rather than a small slip, because the miss itself is data about a subconscious pattern already in motion. Proactivity means running recovery like a business: sitting down on Sunday, putting on what Dallas calls the meth thinking cap, and mapping out exactly when, how, where, and with whom you would use this week, then building safeguards, blocks, and unbreakable plans around that danger zone before motivation drops. He extends the same audit to the calendar year — anniversaries, breakups, holidays, Pride, birthdays — and ties it back to re-entry planning for the weeks after travel or a partner's absence. Certainty is the hardest of the three: the reframe that life is happening for you, that a use is a data point and a learning episode rather than a verdict on your worth, and that the spiral of lost days and disappearing after a relapse does more damage than the relapse itself. Dallas points listeners to his free Reframing Relapse course, notes that the supplemental study guide for this episode — along with journal prompts, exercises, and a full topic archive — lives on the blog at recoveryalchemy.org (drdallasbragg.com now forwards there), and invites questions and reactions in the YouTube and Spotify comments or by DM. 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/breakthrough Episode 3-41, "Breakthrough Moment," of The AfterMeth Podcast welcomes London-based DJ and harm reduction advocate Dom (known online as Dom Topics), whom Dallas first met through the interconnected web of chemsex advocacy on Instagram before sharing coffee together in London. Dom brings a distinctive vantage point shaped by more than a decade volunteering with Impulse, an organization working globally to engage, connect, and support gay men across the pillars of substance use and harm reduction, sexual health, mental health, and social justice. Rooted in his own experience moving through London's nightlife and chemsex scenes, Dom frames harm reduction not as an instruction to stop but as meeting people where they are, offering balanced information and education rather than judgment. He and Dallas explore why gay men have built an entire subculture around chemsex, what that subculture reveals about what may be missing from mainstream queer life, and why telling someone simply to quit so often backfires. At the heart of the episode is Dom's account of the "breakthrough moment" that turned a summer of reclaimed fun into a decision to get sober. Having found that his work, finances, social life, and confidence remained intact even while using, he began to wonder what his life could look like without substances at all. The turning point arrived at an after-party where every marker of a "successful" night was present, yet he found himself drifting room to room, sensing there was nothing there for him, and chose to leave by taking one deliberate action at a time despite his body screaming to stay. Dallas reflects this back through the image of trying to milk a dry udder, the futile effort to recreate a peak experience that never returns, and the two dig into the practical wisdom of sitting in discomfort, playing the long game, and rebuilding community rather than forcing isolation. They close on the steadying role of consistent, non-judgmental friendships, including the women who quietly held space through the chemsex years, and Dom's advice for returning to nightlife sober by finding a trusted anchor for the night. Contact Dom: https://linktr.ee/domtopics 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/reentry In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg tackles one of the most overlooked triggers in chemsex recovery: re-entry, the fraught return home from a trip, whether vacation, business travel, or even treatment. Drawing on his own lived experience and his work with clients, Dallas explains why this transition catches so many men off guard. After a week riding a "dopamine drip" of novelty, the brain crashes as the plane descends into a familiar, predictable environment; stack sleep deprivation, exhaustion, and a prefrontal cortex knocked offline on top of that, and cue reactivity fires before conscious reasoning can intervene. That's the moment the "meth brain" kicks in, the still small voice that whispers "let me just text the dealer" or "let me fit one in before real life begins." Dallas frames re-entry as a form of shadow work, urging listeners to observe over a full year the triggers they run past on autopilot, and to build safeguards before the moment arrives, so that willpower, a finite resource, is never left to carry the load alone. The heart of the episode is Dallas's free Re-Entry Plan, a four-phase Google Doc tool (linked in the show notes) that he walks through step by step. Pre-departure covers preparing a clean, stocked home and blocking apps from the phone rather than merely deleting them; in-transit focuses on checking in with the body and team, calling out fleeting thoughts to use, and visualizing a proud, meth-free homecoming while still on the beach or the plane. The plan then details the first 30 minutes, first 48 hours, phone safeguards, and emergency protocols, including scheduled video check-ins with an accountability partner, arranging a ride home rather than an Uber, and having a friend stay over, boundaries that feel extreme but are often exactly what early recovery requires. Throughout, Dallas returns to the deeper question beneath the logistics: this isn't ultimately about mechanics but identity. Echoing Mel McCracken's reminder that the phone itself is paraphernalia, he invites listeners to move the "why" from the head into the heart and ask who they want to show up as. Grounded in his program's three pillars of consistency, proactivity, and certainty, the episode is a practical, compassionate roadmap for returning home safe, proud, and at peace. A supplemental study guide accompanies the episode. Form: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oqP8szYxn94281iy2g6uRtOT7v-ESVX0/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113725342648816625666&rtpof=true&sd=true 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/late In this episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg sits down with Darrell Martin, an LCSW, transformational psychotherapist, and musician based in New York City, for a conversation about what happens when gay men come out later in life and find themselves swept into chemsex. Dallas shares his own story of coming out at thirty-six and the relentless drive to "make up for lost time" that pulled him toward crystal meth — a drive Darrell sees echoed in the aging gay men he treats, men who arrive in his office carrying the added weight of believing they should have known better. Together they trace how the illusion of validation works on older men: the house, the money, the sudden flood of attention, the pharmaceutical props that sustain a manufactured virility. They name the loneliness underneath it, the way rejection by the broader gay population lands the same way on a fifty-year-old late bloomer as it does on a young Black or brown man, and how chemsex offers both of them a subculture where they finally feel wanted. The conversation moves from the psychological to the practical. Dallas reframes dopamine as a molecule of anticipation rather than reward, explaining why men stay glued to Grindr for hours in rooms full of other men, and why euphoric recall retains such vivid, full-body power years into recovery — a phenomenon he still encounters at the edges of sleep, eight years out. Darrell points to that anticipatory surge as the real intervention point, the moment before the pickup. They discuss why crystal meth carries the highest relapse rate of any drug and why chemsex recovery raises it further: you aren't only surrendering a substance, you're grieving an identity. Dallas makes the case for harm reduction and tapering over rigid abstinence, argues that safeguards must replace willpower because willpower runs out late at night, and describes the work of detangling sex, work, and connection from the drug. Both land on the same foundation — willingness, community, and the shift from instant to delayed gratification. Darrell's contact information will be included in the show notes, and he'll return for a future episode focused specifically on the experiences of gay men of color navigating crystal meth. Contant Darrell: Websites: https://darrellmartinconsulting.com/ https://artsnyc.org/ http://darrellmartin.org/ Email: [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/unspoken In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg challenges one of the most common assumptions in chemsex recovery: that horniness, sex, and hookup apps are the true triggers behind relapse. Drawing from his daily work with men around the world, he argues that these are effects rather than causes, and that the real driver sits further upstream in the form of emotional dysregulation. Using the story of a client he calls Marco, Dallas traces how a single deflating four-minute phone call from a supervisor, met only with a quiet "okay," set off a chain of unspoken frustration that later left Marco closer to using than he had been in months. The culprit wasn't the party or the dealer but the accumulated pressure of a conversation avoided, of self-advocacy withheld, of emotion left to boil with nowhere to go. From there, Dallas grounds the episode in the deeper work of excavating core beliefs, showing how Marco's silence traced back decades to a childhood dinner table where he was told his opinion didn't matter, a limiting belief that fed into the "I am not enough" thread connecting so many who use chemsex as maladaptive coping. He reframes recovery around the question "How can I live in peace?" rather than the narrower demand to simply stop using, and offers listeners a set of reflective coaching questions to identify what lives beneath their avoidance, where it sits in the body, and whose voice is telling them to stay quiet. He closes with a practical invitation to list every conversation they are currently avoiding, name what carrying it costs them, and begin writing letters, including one to the younger part of themselves that first learned silence felt safer than speaking up. A supplemental study guide accompanies the episode, 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