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/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.
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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/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

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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/neuroscience
Season 3 of The AfterMeth Podcast is the season of big names, and Dallas Bragg lands one of the biggest in addiction education: Dr. Nicole Labor, addiction medicine physician, author of The Addictoholic Deconstructed, self-described sweary godmother, and a person in long-term recovery whose reels on the science of addiction have reached millions. Dallas discovered her through her chemsex reel (still her most-watched ever), read her book, and now recommends it to every client because it finally made the neuroscience click. In this conversation, Nicole explains why addiction is a disease, introduces her brand-new baseball-field metaphor for dopamine and receptor downregulation, and unpacks glutamate, the “executive assistant to dopamine” that files meth, sex, Grindr, porn, a room, and a time of night into one learned network that any single cue can switch on.
The second half gets practical in ways chemsex recovery rarely does. Nicole explains why cravings negotiate rather than announce themselves (“I’m just checking who’s on”), why the addicted brain only has to convince you to take the next step, and why interrupting the loop with something as simple as cold water or thirty seconds of jumping still counts even if you use afterward. She and Dallas cover why sneaking and lying get stamped as rewarding, why sex addiction and Grindr scrolling are addiction all the same, how to “dopamine stack” your way out of the flat, gray early months, and why a two-week slip after six months clean leaves you with seven months, not zero. Her closing instruction for anyone in early recovery: get in the lifeboat first. You can figure out what to do on shore once you get there.
Contact Dr. Nicole Labor:
Instragram: https://www.instagram.com/theaddictsdoc/
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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/concept
In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg returns to a moment early in his recovery that quietly changed everything. Preparing to share his story for the first time at a spiritual center, he pulled out his family's old photo albums and found page after page of an unhappy little boy: scowling, arms crossed, visibly out of place among smiling relatives. For a long time he used those images to build a case against his family, his church, and his classmates. Then, putting the photos back years later, he realized he had skipped right past every picture of himself laughing with his brother, opening Christmas presents, and hugging his grandmother. His brain had been so trained to find the negative that the joyful photos had become invisible. That discovery became the turning point where he stepped outside the self-concept he had written and began to see the whole picture.
From there, Dallas draws on NLP pioneer Steve Andreas's idea that a self-concept is not a belief but a collection of examples, a mental photo album the brain flips through for evidence. Ask "Am I reliable?" and the brain does not answer with a word; it shows you pictures, and in early recovery the frowning ones come first. The most useful insight for men in chemsex recovery is that a strong self-concept includes counterexamples. Instead of "I'm chemsex-free," a fragile album that gets thrown out after one slip, the truthful statement is "I'm chemsex-free, and sometimes I'm not." Dallas challenges listeners to count honestly and recognize they are chemsex-free more often than not, to treat a using episode as a photo with a note on the back rather than a verdict, and to imagine what their self-concept album would show a stranger if it sat unedited on the coffee table. The work, he reminds us, takes repetition, because the brain will keep reaching for the old curated album of transgressions. But you get to choose which album sits on the shelf.
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