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/journey
In this audio-only episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg talks with "Joey," a middle-aged writer in Brussels who chronicles his chemsex recovery on Instagram and whose name has been changed to protect his privacy. Joey arrived in Brussels fifteen years ago wary of apps and drugs, and within two months of opening his relationship had been introduced to the European "alphabet" of chems: G, 3-MMC, K, and the rest. He used for a few years, walked away easily when a new relationship began, and then watched it return with a vengeance in 2020. Three years ago he decided to stop, and he is honest that he is still in the cycle: six months at his longest, usually one to three, with weekend binges that stretch to 30 hours because, in his words, he has no off button. Dallas uses Joey's story to deliver a PSA for anyone considering an open relationship, and to insist on one of his core beliefs: your recovery starts when you decide it does, not on your last meth-free day.
The heart of the conversation is neurodivergence. Joey has severe ADD, and he describes the unstructured weekend as his most dangerous time, the Grindr hunt as a hit before the hit, and the strange truth that a man who has written books and started NGOs cannot hold a single commitment about chems, because addiction is a different beast than discipline. He and Dallas trade hard-won insights: chems do not disinhibit you, they change your character; the fun you are chasing is long gone; shame after a relapse is the most counterproductive thing you can add; and the part of you that wants to use is still a part of you, so treat it with kindness and study it rather than going to war. Joey credits three months with the Dutch coaching collective Herstel Collectief, including a simple Friday afternoon check-in text, with more progress than the previous three years. He closes with a metaphor Dallas had never heard: addiction, like HIV, can become undetectable. Still in the bloodstream, but no longer in charge.
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chemsexguide/
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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/help
In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg shares one idea from a book he says has changed his life: Letting Go by David R. Hawkins. It centers on two words Dallas hears from clients constantly and that most listeners will recognize in their own mouths: “I can’t.” I can’t stop going on the apps. I can’t go to that party sober. I can’t tell him. I can’t sit with this. Dallas explains why those two words are so comfortable (they sound like a fact, close the conversation, and put the world outside your control) and why they are actually a feeling, one that Hawkins places at the very bottom of his map of emotional states: apathy. “I can’t” is a man who has let the cravings drive the car while he watches the scenery from the passenger seat.
Hawkins’s remedy is deceptively simple: replace “I can’t” with “I won’t.” That swap turns a condition into a choice, and a choice means the behavior belongs to you. Dallas walks through the translations he hears most. “I can’t stop going on the apps” becomes “I won’t let go of the validation I get there.” “I can’t tell him” becomes “I won’t let go of the fear of looking like a drug addict.” “I can’t do mornings” becomes “I won’t go to bed on time.” Nothing about the circumstances changes, but the direction does, because now there is a root to work on and an action to take. The goal, Dallas insists, is not to stop meth by white-knuckling it. It is to heal and expand so much that meth becomes an afterthought, and to trade the question “how do I stop?” for the one that actually matters: “how do I find my peace?” Every “I can’t,” he says, is a gift pointing at something that is begging to be seen.
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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: mell@nomatterwhatrecovery.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inkandcaviar/
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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:
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Dallas Bragg
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YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast
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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:
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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