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/dynamics
Dallas Bragg has been asked one question more than almost any other: what do I do when someone I love is using? In this episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, he finally sits down with someone equipped to answer it. Charlie Bray is a counselor, former treatment center clinician, and family and loved ones recovery coach with 18 years in recovery, years of facilitating family intensives alongside Mell McCracken, and lived experience on both sides of addiction in a family. Dallas opens with his own story: a mother who thought his drug arrest meant marijuana, made every mistake in the book, and eventually did the right thing. Charlie's central point reframes the whole conversation. Family dynamics exist long before anyone picks up a substance, and the using is usually a symptom of how the family already operates.
The conversation is packed with practical wisdom for parents, partners, and friends. Charlie and Dallas redefine "help" as something other than convincing and managing, unpack why fear so often shows up as anger, and walk through Pia Mellody's framework for codependency and where real self-worth comes from. They tackle the hardest scenarios head on: lending money ("I won't give you cash, but I'll pay for treatment"), refusing to let someone use in your home as an act of love, what to say at the emergency room, and the partner who keeps disappearing on binges. Running through it all is Charlie's insistence that loving someone does not mean funding their slow death, and that a held boundary tells your loved one, without words, that you believe they are capable. This is part one of two, and it previews the Holiday Healing webinar series for addicts and the people who love them, launching in November.
Contact Charlie:
Instagram: @family.recovery
Email Address: charlie@cbbrecoveryservices.com
The AfterMeth:
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Dallas Bragg
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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/fbuddy
In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg opens with a story from his earliest days of recovery, when finally settling into a home with his kids set off cravings and a deep fear of sex. Drug tested several times a week and told in 12-step rooms to wait a year, he made his own plan. He invited a non-attached fuck buddy, a friend also in meth recovery, to live with him for a few months. That arrangement kept him off Grindr, helped rewire his brain, and put him on the path to enjoying sober sex. Dallas is clear that this is not a prescription. Many men need to start slow and start alone, with a porn detox, sober masturbation, and careful attention to what triggers cravings. He also stresses that there is no universal timeline for returning to partnered sex.
From there, Dallas lays out the art and science of using a fuck buddy for sexual reintegration. Drawing on Jack Morin's The Erotic Mind and its love/lust conflict, he explains why a low-pressure, non-romantic partner helps men get out of their heads and into their bodies. He walks through the preparation step by step:
Define "ready" as radical honesty rather than horniness.
Build a safe container and involve your recovery team.
Write an if-then plan for before, during, and after sex.
Set a clear exit and safe word.
Name your sober sexual values.
Set boundaries without turning them into expectations.
Choose on purpose which kinks come forward into sober life.
Design a sensory scene that tells the nervous system this is different and safe.
He also covers interviewing a potential partner, treating a partner's "no" as low-stakes shadow work around rejection, and considering a sober sex worker as a recovery tool. The study guide linked in the show notes includes his Sober Fuck Buddy Planning Sheet.
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/realwork
Host Dallas Bragg sits down with Danni Pomplun, a men's coach and men's work facilitator based in San Francisco, whose message — "I quit the drugs, but the addiction stayed" — cuts to the heart of what happens after the substance is gone. Danni traces his own path from leaving home at seventeen and managing gay bars in Southern California at twenty-one, through losing his first partner at twenty-five, to a second bottom years later when meth entered the picture hard and fast. What finally moved him wasn't talk therapy alone, which he says kept him stuck in his head, but somatic and embodiment work, trauma therapy, and men's circles where he was met with what he calls "sharp love" — brothers who cared less about his stories and more about his integrity. He and Dallas name a pattern the gay community rarely talks about: enormous freedom of expression with very little containment, and the "leaky energy" that follows when there are no boundaries around it.
The conversation turns to why unspoken emotion is so often the real trigger. Dallas describes a client whose unspoken workplace conflict built until chemsex became the exit; Danni frames every relapse as "the moment we choose to leave ourselves." They explore how men are conditioned out of two feelings in particular — grief and celebration — and how learning to sit in stillness, converse with the body, and name what's actually there (anger under sadness, anxiety mistaken for sexual charge) is the work that white-knuckling can never replace. Danni also speaks to touch and the fear of being held, especially for men carrying chemsex trauma, and closes with a call for community care over self-care alone: "It's amazing that we get to laugh and dance together. It's a shame if I don't get to see you cry." He shares his free and donation-based online men's circles and a meditation album, From Pain to Peace, releasing on Spotify at the end of September.
Contact Danni:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dannipomplun/?hl=en"

Website: https://www.dannipomplun.com/
The AfterMeth:
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Dallas Bragg
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg
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/build
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.
The AfterMeth:
Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/
Dallas Bragg
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg
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/selfempowered
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.
Contact Damon:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedamonhunterx/
The AfterMeth:
Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/
Dallas Bragg
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg
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