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/love
In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg opens with two mirrors from his own early recovery: the morning-after wreckage of a bender, where he catalogued everything wrong with him, and the day-90 reflection glowing with gratitude and quiet superiority over men still using. His revelation is that both images were lying, because both showed only half of him—and, as he puts it, you cannot love half a man. Dallas maps the pendulum so many in chemsex recovery live on, swinging between self-flagellation and self-indulgence, inflating on the pedestal and collapsing into the pit, pushed by constant comparison to other men. Neither extreme, he argues, is the authentic self, and without that authentic self there is no way to be truly loved by a partner, by brothers in recovery, or by oneself.
From there Dallas reframes love itself, rejecting the idea that love is a feeling—because if love were the rush, then meth was love too—and offering instead a definition rooted in equanimity: the willingness to observe all aspects of a person, light and shadow, and accept what you see. He grounds this in research linking equanimity to fewer problematic addictive behaviors and reduced cravings, connecting it to the compassionate observer that recurs throughout his work, the consciousness that finally sets down the judge's gavel. Applied to relapse, this lens turns a using episode from a verdict into information, transforming the user from a failure back into a student. He closes with three practices—balancing the ledger on other men through shadow work, catching the swing between pride and shame in real time, and retiring the judge to hire the curious researcher—and a weekly Level Ledger exercise that ends with ten seconds of eye contact in the mirror, seeing the whole man at once. A supplemental study guide is linked in the show notes.
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Dallas Bragg
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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/homeless
In this special episode — the first ever recorded in person for The AfterMeth Podcast — Dallas Bragg travels to Los Angeles for a chemsex conference and sits down with Thiccums, the voice behind the Instagram page "How to Be Homeless in LA." What unfolds is a candid, deeply human conversation about loss, survival, and the slow work of reclaiming one's worth. Thiccums traces a life that once held two houses, two cars, and a marriage, and how the death of his mother, a divorce, and a childhood spent searching for belonging in the foster care system opened the door to meth. His story lands squarely on a theme familiar to so many in recovery: how the drug offered a counterfeit sense of acceptance, euphoria, and appreciation to a man who had spent a lifetime looking for love and a place to call home. Dallas and Thiccums move through the arc of addiction with unusual honesty — the progression from party spaces to isolated use, the paranoia and psychosis, the grief of watching a friend die, and the guilt that eventually led Thiccums into therapy.
Grounding the conversation in practical reality, Thiccums walks listeners through the systems he learned to navigate: contingency management programs through APLA's chemsex services, shelter intake and housing matrices, general relief and food stamps, and the everyday resources — showers, laundry, restrooms, a listening ear — that make survival on the street possible. He speaks openly about the role fentanyl test strips played in his decision to slow down, the impact of budget cuts on the recovery meetings that once sustained him, and his diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder as one window into why some are drawn to substances in the first place. Threaded throughout is Thiccums's hard-won message of self-love and self-acceptance — that recovery begins with knowing you are enough, exactly as you are. The episode closes with a gentle call to community care and a reminder that small acts of dignity can change a life.
Contact Thiccums:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_real_thiccums/
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Dallas Bragg
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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

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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/glitching
In this solo episode, Dallas Bragg explores what he calls "glitching" — the disorienting middle phase of chemsex recovery when old patterns have been stripped away but a new identity hasn't yet formed. He opens with a raw story from his own early recovery: riding the last light rail across Charlotte at 2am to a run-down motel room, sitting in deafening silence after a life that had been "full-time" chemsex, and feeling the disassociation of having his entire operating system — apps, contacts, predictable rituals — suddenly removed. Dallas frames this as liminal space, a concept borrowed from contemplative and research traditions, and explains why it feels less like relief and more like grief: chemsex wasn't just about drugs or sex, but a structure that told men who to be and what role to play, often as a way to feel safe, wanted, or approved of after complex trauma.
Dallas grounds the episode in research, citing a longitudinal study of men who have sex with men showing that lower identity continuity and higher internalized shame predict riskier cycling patterns, while a more stable sense of self predicts grounded, integrated outcomes — and a mindfulness-based pilot study with young MSM in recovery linking present-moment awareness to greater self-compassion and identity stability. He normalizes the typical three-to-six-month timeline for this transition, encourages meeting old-pattern impulses without judgment, and closes by returning to his motel story — describing how he used visualization to picture his future life with his children rather than relapsing — framing liminal space not as a void to fear but as an open, even joyful, opportunity to consciously imagine and build the life a man wants after chemsex.
The AfterMeth:
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Dallas Bragg
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YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast
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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

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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/regulating
In this episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas sits down with Doug Marshall, a trauma-informed life coach and somatic practitioner known online as "The World of Doug," for a deep dive into nervous system regulation and its central role in chemsex recovery. Doug, who facilitates recovery groups in Los Angeles and works with clients one-on-one and in online communities, brings both clinical insight and candid personal disclosure to the conversation, tracing how his own thirty-year pattern of compulsive sexual behavior and rejection-seeking was rooted in nervous system dysregulation rather than simple "addiction." Dallas connects this directly to the chemsex experience, framing instant gratification, app culture, and sexualized drug use as symptoms of a dysregulated nervous system seeking quick relief rather than moral failings, and the two unpack how growing up gay often means a nervous system primed for hypervigilance, secrecy, and shame from an early age.
The episode offers practical, body-based tools alongside the theory: Doug walks through the amygdala's role as a "danger detector," the fight-flight-freeze-fawn response, and how modern stressors like dating apps can hijack the prefrontal cortex the same way a physical threat would. He introduces concrete techniques listeners can use in moments of urge or dysregulation, including the "heart hold" (drawn from Internal Family Systems work), the butterfly hug for bilateral stimulation, mirror work, and simply pausing for thirty seconds to a few minutes before acting on a craving as a way of building tolerance for discomfort. Doug and Dallas also discuss the importance of self-validation over external approval, the dangers of taking perceived rejection personally on apps, and the value of practicing vulnerability and honesty in relationships rather than performing constant positivity — closing with an emphasis that healing isn't a quick fix, but a daily practice of learning to sit with one's own feelings.
Contact Doug:
My membership community Rewire & rise: https://go.lifetext.ai/creator/doug
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theworldofdoug/
Website: https://theworldofdoug.com/
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Dallas Bragg
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X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg
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Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/being

In this solo episode, Dallas Bragg shares a pivotal moment from his own early recovery — staying calm and unreactive during a near-collision in a gas station parking lot while his mother visited for Family Day at his treatment center — to introduce a framework he calls having, doing, being. Dallas argues that most recovery approaches focus on the first two levels (what you stop having and what you start doing) while skipping the foundational third: who you are becoming at the level of identity and self-belief. Drawing on his own transformation and patterns he's witnessed in his coaching clients, he explains why willpower and white-knuckling fail long-term — because a man will always default back to the version of himself he secretly believes he is, regardless of effort.
The practical core of the episode centers on Dallas's "prophetic vision" exercise, a cornerstone practice from his Recovery Alchemy program, where clients vividly imagine their fully inhabited life — not the absence of meth, but the presence of real connection, purpose, and embodiment. He offers listeners three daily practices to build this identity-first approach to recovery: asking "what would he do?" before acting, making the prophetic vision as specific and granular as possible, and taking one small aligned action each day as a "vote" for the emerging identity. Dallas frames this not as becoming someone new, but as remembering and stepping into the man who was always there beneath the fog of chemsex use — with each aligned choice closing the distance between who a man was and who he's consciously choosing to become.

Link to Prophetic Vision Webinar: https://youtu.be/wiI2PHSnx5I?si=W19WoMwtbRHf0c2N
The AfterMeth:
Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/
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