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

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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/unshamed
In this deeply personal episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas sits down with José Barrientos, a 33-year-old Latino gay man from Los Angeles now living in Queens, New York, whose story weaves together early childhood wounds, HIV diagnosis, crystal meth addiction, and a hard-won recovery. José opens up about growing up in a single-parent household, seeking validation from older men as a teenager, and his first encounter with crystal meth at just fourteen years old — an experience that quickly spiraled into intravenous use by sixteen. He shares how he seroconverted to HIV-positive around that same time, not learning his status until 2010, and how the compounding shame of being gay, HIV-positive, and a meth user left him feeling like "damaged goods" for years.
José traces his recovery journey from a pivotal moment at 21 — hospitalized with collapsed veins, untreated STIs, and drug-induced psychosis — to finding community through 12-step programs, trauma therapy, and his current role as a spokesperson for the HIV Stops With Me campaign, a New York State Department of Health initiative working to destigmatize HIV through real people sharing their real stories. He reflects on inner child healing, the difference between getting sober for someone else versus doing it for yourself, and the importance of education and community for gay men navigating HIV and chemsex recovery. Dallas and José also challenge the dangerous misconceptions still prevalent on hookup apps around HIV status, undetectable equals untransmittable (U=U), and what it truly means to protect oneself — offering listeners both raw honesty and genuine hope.
Contact Jose:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/its2025.Jose
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/its2026.jose/
You can visit: https://hivstopswithme.org/
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Dallas Bragg
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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/depression
In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg continues the series on the five stages of grief as a framework for chemsex recovery, moving into the fourth stage: depression. Dallas distinguishes this grief-based depression from clinical depression, while encouraging anyone experiencing severe symptoms or suicidal ideation to seek professional support. Drawing on his own early recovery experience—enrolled in drug treatment court and attending daily IOP, unable to numb out for the first time—Dallas describes sitting with the full weight of who he had become and what he had lost. He names this stage as the point where bargaining stops working and the body registers the finality of what's gone: the high, the community, the sex life, the imagined future, and even the ability to feel pleasure in ordinary things.
The episode offers a compassionate roadmap for naming and moving through these losses rather than escaping them, emphasizing Dallas's core message that "feeling is healing" and that the way through depression is through it, not around it. He warns that this stage carries the strongest temptation to use, since numbing the depression doesn't eliminate it but only delays and intensifies it. Practical guidance includes feeling emotions in manageable waves, maintaining basic self-care (eating, sleeping, hygiene), avoiding triggers and high-risk environments, journaling, and practicing patience with the process. Dallas closes by framing this stage as transformative—the place where men who stay with the weight often go on to become coaches, healers, and leaders for others—and previews the final installment on acceptance.
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Dallas Bragg
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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/hygiene
In this episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas sits down with Michael Power, an addiction counselor with over 15 years of experience specializing in chemsex, sexual compulsive behaviors, trauma, and LGBTQ mental health. Mike brings both professional expertise and lived experience to the conversation — having navigated his own recovery from methamphetamine use across the United States and Australia before eventually finding his way into frontline addiction work in London, where he trained under David Stewartz, the man widely credited with coining the term "chemsex." Now based in London, Mike works at Innisfree, a sexual compulsivity disorder clinic in Marylebone, where he serves as a chemsex consultant and is launching an innovative weekend structured program for gay and bisexual men.
The conversation centers on what Mike calls "app hygiene" — the intentional, values-aligned approach to dating and hookup apps like Grindr during and after chemsex recovery. Mike and Dallas explore the two-stage model of recovery: first stabilization (removing the drugs and achieving some grounding), and then the more vulnerable, often overlooked work of sexual reintegration. Mike introduces the erotic desire cycle as a framework for rebuilding sober sexuality rooted in connection and safety, and walks through practical tools including masturbation as a relapse prevention strategy, navigating pornography mindfully, and how to thoughtfully design a recovery-informed app profile. Dallas also shares his own "App Map" — a decision-tree intervention that guides men through conscious pauses before opening an app — prompting a rich discussion about the prefrontal cortex, impulsivity, and why secrecy around app use is often its own red flag. Together, they make the case that getting back on the apps isn't a sign of failure — it just requires intention, accountability, and time.
Find Mike Power on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-power-0605a64a?utm_source=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=member_ios
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Dallas Bragg
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X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg
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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/bargaining
In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg continues his serialized series applying the five stages of grief to chemsex recovery, turning the lens on stage three: bargaining. Dallas frames bargaining as the most dangerous stage — not because it feels the worst, but because it feels the most reasonable. Unlike denial's numbness or anger's volatility, bargaining arrives dressed in logic, self-awareness, and apparent progress. It is the mind making one final offer — a negotiated middle ground between the old life and the new — and Dallas unpacks how that offer is always, ultimately, a trap. Drawing on his own three and a half years of active use, he shares with striking honesty the many iterations of bargaining he attempted: using only once a month, only on vacation, only with certain people, only after a stretch of sobriety. Every single bargain, he reflects, ended the same way. Tina always wins the negotiation.
Dallas goes deeper into the specific voices bargaining uses — voices that sound like maturity, earned insight, and measured wisdom — and identifies the most insidious form: staying meth-free on the surface while remaining embedded in the ecosystem of chemsex. Staying on the apps, texting the guys, keeping the dealer in your phone, returning to familiar places. This, Dallas argues, is not recovery — it's the antechamber of relapse, because the scene and the substance are not separable. He traces how most relapses he has witnessed in his coaching work originate here, in men who have done real work but are quietly running scenarios and engineering circumstances that make use feel accidental or justifiable. The way out, he insists, is not to argue with the bargaining mind — it will win — but to declare, out loud, in writing, with witnesses, that there is no loophole, no exception, no version where any of it gets to stay. That declaration, and the grief it opens, is the doorway into the next stage: depression — and ultimately, surrender.
The AfterMeth:
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Dallas Bragg
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Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

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Supplementary Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/integration
In this episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas sits down with Malu, a yoga teacher with twenty years of experience who specializes in working with gay men in recovery. Based in Hawaii, Malu discovered yoga in college and spent years building a practice before recognizing how deeply it supported his own sobriety journey — one rooted in alcohol use and a high-pressure career in New York City. Drawing on the teachings of his mentor Rod Stryker and a therapeutic approach to yoga rooted in Tantric Alchemy, Malu explains the difference between abstinence and true sobriety, and how the mat can become a bridge between what's learned in therapy and what's actually lived in daily life. His framework, which he calls Sober Embodiment, offers gay men in recovery a structured, body-based pathway for transforming not just their behaviors — but their identity.
Malu walks Dallas through his three-pillar approach: tapas (the heat of discipline and sitting with discomfort), self-study (exploring the addiction story and frequency), and identity work (stepping into the authentic self through Yoga Nidra, sankalpa, and visioning). The conversation dives into how yoga rewires the brain through unfamiliar movement, unwinds deep-seated patterns called vasanas, and trains the nervous system to tolerate difficult emotions — including the cravings and triggers so central to chemsex recovery. Dallas and Malu find powerful alignment between their respective frameworks, particularly around the concept of "frequency," building a prophetic vision of the self, and using consistent daily practice — even just seven minutes — as an act of identity reclamation. This episode is a rich, practical, and spiritually resonant conversation for any gay man in recovery who is ready to embody his sobriety, not just endure it.
Contact Malu:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/malulaniyoga/
Email: malu@malulaniyoga.com
The AfterMeth:
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Dallas Bragg
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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