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

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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.
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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.
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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:
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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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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/
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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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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
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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