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/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
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Dallas Bragg
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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/rewired
In this episode, Dallas is joined by two guests — Dr. David Fawcett, returning veteran of the podcast and author of Lust, Men, and Meth and Sex Under the Influence, and Andrew McDonnell, a clinical social worker and outpatient addiction therapist in Memphis, Tennessee who brings his own lived experience with chemsex to the conversation. Together, the three announce an exciting new offering: Rewired for Connection: Life After Chemsex, an in-person retreat limited to twelve participants, designed specifically for gay men navigating the "now what?" of life after active use. The episode unfolds as a rich conversation about what recovery actually looks like once the milestones fade — the disorientation, the identity questions, and the longing for connection with other men who truly understand.
Each facilitator shares what they'll bring to the retreat experience, giving listeners a detailed preview of the weekend's content. Dallas will open with shadow work, identity exploration, and vision-casting — helping participants define their ideal self through somatic visualization, limiting belief work, and daily practice tools rooted in principles from Atomic Habits. Dr. Fawcett will focus on sexual reintegration, covering the neuroscience of dopamine dysregulation, arousal template repair, and the step-by-step process of reclaiming — or often discovering for the very first time — a sexuality free from the grip of chemsex. Andrew will introduce stoic philosophy as a framework for social reintegration and facilitate a nuanced conversation on sexual ethics that honors the full spectrum of gay sexual culture without shame or judgment. The retreat closes with a cacao ceremony and breathwork, grounding the experience in community, embodiment, and genuine connection between men. The retreat link is available in the show notes.
Contact David: https://sexandrelationshiphealing.com/
To apply for the retreat: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/rewiredretreat
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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/acceptancestage
In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg brings his five-part series comparing the stages of grief to chemsex recovery to a close with its most challenging and nuanced stage: acceptance. Dallas is careful from the outset to reframe what acceptance actually means — not a finish line or a moment of resolution, but a daily orientation, a practice of inhabiting the new life rather than mourning the old one. Drawing on the Latin root of the word, acceptare — to bring something close to oneself — he reframes acceptance as an active, embodied discipline: the ongoing act of pulling toward yourself the very parts you've been rejecting, the man you were in active use, including the parts that lied, that hurt people, that enjoyed it, and that sometimes still miss it.
At the heart of this episode is a powerful invitation to integration over exile. Dallas makes the case that men who skip this deeper work — who appear to have moved through all the stages but still secretly hate the man they were — build recoveries that are beautiful on the outside but brittle on the inside, and are at greater risk for relapse when those exiled parts eventually demand to be heard. He distinguishes acceptance from forgiveness, emphasizing that acceptance doesn't require approving of the past or finding a redemptive silver lining — it simply means stopping the war against yourself. Dallas also introduces the vision of "Recovery 2.0," sketching a portrait of the man in acceptance: how he handles longing, loneliness, rejection, and joy differently now, meeting each with presence instead of panic. The episode closes with a reminder that grief spirals back — on anniversaries, in quiet afternoons, in a familiar scent — and that acceptance isn't the end of that grief, but the moment when the past has finally lost its power to define you.
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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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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

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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.
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