100th Episode and Season 2 Finale: 7 Daily Practices for Chemsex Recovery

The Aftermath Podcast is an outreach tool to help men who have sex with men break free from the addictive patterns associated with chemsex, otherwise known as crystal meth or Tina. I'm your host, Dr. Dallas Bragg, a former crystal meth user, now recovery coach. Here you will find a repository of tools and resources intended to eradicate the epidemic that is plaguing our MSM population. Please note that the views expressed on This podcast are not to be taken as medical advice. Also, we will be talking about drugs and sex. So if you feel triggered to use, stop listening and contact your local emergency system and/or your support network. Let's go. All right, welcome back to the Aftermath Podcast, and welcome to episode 100. 100 episodes. For once, I might be speechless, but it would be a boring episode, wouldn't it? I don't think I'm ever speechless anyway. But this podcast, listen, it has been such a labor of love for me. I, I started it thinking it would be a limited series because I thought there's no way we're going to have that much to talk about. All right. And here we are. So much to talk about and we're not finished. The, um, I, I can't get over really the amount of DMs and the amount of emails and the amount of comments I get from men all over the world who tell me about listening to the podcast in their hotel room to keep them from using or listening to the podcast when they're coming down as a way to find hope or listening to the podcast just to feel seen, heard, and connected. It's really quite surreal for me. So I just wanna thank you for joining me on this journey for the past 2 years, and I wanna thank you for walking with me into the next season. And I want you to know that we aren't stopping. I am not slowing down. In fact, I'm only just beginning. I don't know what's next for this podcast. I'm surrendering. I'm just letting it develop its own trajectory, its own life. I'm surrendering to who comes forth. And how it evolves. All I know is I'm going to keep showing up, and I hope you do too. I'm not the perfect podcast host. I'm not the most well-spoken, but I'm going to tell you something: I lead this thing from my heart, and I hope that that comes through. So today we're going to finish up season two. Season three begins March 26th, 2026, with my friends from the Netherlands, the Harstel Collectif. I love saying that. Probably saying it wrong, but I love saying it. But today I want to talk to you about the 7 guiding principle practices, sorry, or principles, whatever, that you can implement today to strengthen your chemsex recovery or really any recovery. I thought about developing 12 guiding principles to kind of counteract 12 steps, but I'm over trying to debunk or pick apart the 12-step philosophy. Look, there are parts of it I do not support, parts of it I don't care for. It's a great program. It's helped Billions of people. That's obvious, but I'm done talking about it. Look, what I'm leaning into is my message, my clients, my audience, my heart, my purpose. And I'm going to worry about giving the best and deepest guidance and advice and knowledge that I can and glean that and bring that and extract that from as many people as I can to bring to you. I'm going to lean in and help my clients have the best and deepest coaching experience that they can so that they can meet their goals and achieve the best and highest life. So what I want to present today are 7 practices that you can implement on a daily basis right away, right now. These are a bit esoteric, so bear with me on some of it, but they are in no particular order. They are in no particular importance, but I do believe that if you implement these into your daily recovery, you can see immediate improvement. You can immediately see some emotional regulation and an increase in wellbeing, and you will immediately begin to evolve into the best version of yourself that doesn't need the escape of chemsex. It doesn't need meth or methadone or monkey dust. By the way, I'm going to say meth in this podcast to cover it all. But when I say meth, I mean methamphetamine or methadone or monkey dust. You can begin creating a life so good that you don't need any of that to escape it. These practices can be implemented right now as you listen to the podcast. So as you listen and when you finish, if you have something to add, something to subtract, something to suggest an improvement, please do. Let me know in the show notes, the comment section of YouTube, the comment section of Spotify, send me a DM. I'd love to hear from you. So I want you to just really tune into this episode, listen to what I have to say, and just let me know how it resonates with you. And if you begin to implement the 7 guiding practices, tell me how it's going. I would love to know how you have enriched your recovery, whether you use it alongside the 12 steps or SMART or Dharma or no recovery program at all. I would love to hear how you weave these practices into your daily life and the change that occurs. Guys, this whole fucking epidemic of chemsex is out of control. And if I sit here long and I think about it enough, I will get overwhelmed and I will get really, really emotional. And sometimes I feel like I'm fighting against my own community in this thing. But I come back to knowing that the only thing I can do is be the change I want to see in the world, as Gandhi said. That is, be the best and highest version of me. Right now in this moment. And that's what I wanna say to you. The only thing you can do, as they say, is clean up your side of the street. Pull yourself out of this world the way it is and create the world you want. And I believe these 7 practices will help you do just that. So come along with me today and I hope you enjoy it. Don't forget, there is a supplemental study guide that comes along with every episode. The link will be in the show notes. Or if you wanna get the study guide in your email, you can go to drdallasbragg.com, click on the blog and subscribe. I also send out a Monday newsletter that acts as a study guide on the subject as well. All right, here we go. Practice 1, I acknowledge the gift and the cost. So there's a guided meditation that I do in my program where we meet your addictive patterns. You can say meet your addiction if you want. That's the experience you had in active use. We bring it out of where it shows up in our body. So you think about where you think about yourself in active use, and then you scan your body to see where you're activated. You bring it out of that and you personify it. Something that is most, most common when guys first do this, when they first personify their addictive patterns, their experience with crystal, is that they make it a demon. Something evil, the enemy. And it always seems so counterintuitive to them. It sometimes can be a little bit activating to them when I tell them, no, thank it. It's not bad. It's not the enemy. It's not a demon. Be grateful for it and ask it what gifts it came to give you. Because I believe all experience is for us, for our best and highest. And that includes our experience with chemsex. We come out on the other side of this experience, an expanded version of ourselves, one that has been alchemized. Alchemy is known as changing lead into gold by removing the impurities that are covering up the gold. But in the spiritual sense, it is removing the impurities, which are the thoughts and beliefs, and the gold is our true self. So the thoughts and beliefs that separate us from the gold of our true self, the limiting thoughts and beliefs that we've accepted about our identity. The impurities, these thoughts and beliefs that have been there throughout our life that led us to be addicted to a feeling. So I believe we are more addicted to the feeling the chemical gives us, not the actual chemical for the most part. Recovery is the process of removing these impurities. These thoughts and beliefs, or at least identifying them. And once we shift our perspective about ourselves and about the rest of the world, which is really the underlying key to recovery growth, spiritual growth, emotional growth, once we shift our perspective, the thoughts and beliefs shift. So we begin to see ourselves as the gold we are underneath. No longer a label, an addict, or not enough, or lonely, or rejected, or not lovable. We are no longer too ugly or too fat, too dumb, left out of the crowd, or any of the thousands of impurities that hide our true nature. The Buddhists call these impurities obscurations. The beliefs and thoughts that obscure our light. Our true nature, how you were born into this world that led to the feeling of not being enough. These obscurations led to the feeling of not being enough. And I haven't met a person yet who has been addicted to a substance that didn't find out that they felt some version of not being enough. And that was the root of their chemsex use. And we are all perfect light. That's how we were born. Life conditioning causes us to infer certain things about ourselves, certain beliefs, and those beliefs and those stories became the infrastructure of our life, our identity. And we get so wrapped up in that identity that we fall asleep and we're just sleepwalking through life, wondering why we keep repeating the same patterns and keep dating the same people and keep losing the jobs and never feel happy. Your experience with chemsex comes along to wake you up, remove those obscurations so you can see who you truly are. I always say recovery is not learning something new. It's unlearning everything you thought you knew. So there are tons of gifts that come from this experience. And when you're in early recovery and your life has fallen apart and you feel like shit, that statement is going to seem so patronizing to you. I get that. But I just challenge you to every single day begin looking for the gift. How are you better now than you were because of this experience? How much more self-awareness do you have because of your experience with meth? How have your relationships improved? What is life like? And what would it be like if crystal meth had never come along? You might still be trapped in the unconscious patterns, totally lacking self-awareness, asleep. This experience of recovery truly is enlightenment. We're enlightened to see and understand the thoughts that we've been thinking, healing the trauma, the delusions about ourselves that led to beliefs that are also delusions, like, I'm not wanted. I'm shit. And the way we see ourselves in the world is never based on reality. And that's what's causing our suffering. So, you know, there's a real quick story. I had a man in a sales call, a sales call. He was interested in the program. He starts out by, so I've never been wanted. I was like, oh. So he was adopted. And because of his adoption, he accepted this story that he just was not wanted. And when I pressed and asked like, oh, well, you know, tell me about your, when you talked to your birth parents and what is that story like? I've never met my birth parents. And his parents didn't know anything about them. You're telling me that you are in your 50s, And you have based your life on this story of not being wanted, based on no information. It's a story that's repeated in his head, and he's collected the evidence of that story all his life. All the men that's left him, the jobs that's fired him, the groups that leave him out. Nobody wants me. All based on a story made up. That right there is the answer to this whole addiction problem. You can study dopamine and you can study the brain all you want. That's what it's about. What story have we accepted as truth that isn't true? So in this first practice, yes, you want to acknowledge the cost of your active use, right? It, it, you want to remember what it has cost you for sure. That's gonna help you in the very beginning. But for long-term sustainable recovery that takes you into a higher version of yourself, counting the benefits, the gifts, that's what leads to a sense of gratitude and appreciation and an understanding that everything in my life happens for me, for my best and highest good. What that's gonna do is help your nervous system calm down. It's gonna take you out of the shame. It's gonna let you settle in and surrender, just surrender to what life offers with curiosity. So today, here's the action. Write down all the gifts you've received from your chemsex experience so far and make that Your gratitude list and your gratitude journal every day for the next, whatever, 90 days if you want. All right. Practice 2, I claim my power. So this practice sometimes is framed as reclaiming your power. Right. Which is the beginning of my business. That was my tagline, reclaim your power. And then I realized in helping men and reflecting on my own experience that I never had power. There's nothing to reclaim here. But a guiding practice for every day is to step into and claim the power you have over your life. Stop. We gotta move from victim to creator. And you can either be totally responsible for your life or be totally the victim of it. And when I say this, a lot of times people get really activated and they'll say, I'm not responsible for fill in the blank tragedy, whether it be sickness, death, addictive patterns. Or their ADHD. And what I explain is, look, I'm not saying it's you, you're at fault. Although oftentimes in a certain way, we are at fault because we're calling things in based on our beliefs about ourselves and our trauma responses. So for instance, if you tell me your last 3 relationships have been with narcissists and you're taking the victim standpoint of why do they keep targeting me, you're not going to get anywhere. The real answer Is when you say, "Why am I needing a narcissist? What am I getting from that? Why am I calling them in? What about me do I think needs to be controlled or manipulated or lied to? What not enough belief have I adopted about myself that I need a narcissist?" That's the true question. That's the deep question. Because when you start asking those questions, that's when the real change happens. The transformation of your life occurs, and you start creating your reality. Because you're responding to life in a more self-aware, curious way instead of blaming everybody else. Claiming your power is power over your response to life. Having full responsibility is about how you choose to respond to every life experience. And I'm sure you've heard me talk about relapse ad nauseam at this point, or if you're new here, let me tell you what my stance is: relapse. Using drugs in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's neutral. Crystal meth in and of itself is just a chemical. It's not bad or good. There's no value judgment here or subjective assignment. We decide. You're in charge. You claim your power by deciding and assigning meaning to your life experience. We write the narrative here. We are the writer, producer, director, and actor of our own movie. We get to decide the plotline, but many of us behave as if somebody else is writing our story, writing our plot for us. Why is it everybody else? Why did they, how did they make me feel this way? Why, why is this happening? Why did they do that? Somebody else is giving you a narrative of your own life. But if you don't write the narrative, then we are not claiming our power. We create, we create our reality. You've heard of that, right? Creating a reality is choosing how you respond to life. So let's, here's an example. Let's say that you and I were both not invited to a wedding of our close friends. Your response to that could be, they must not have had space for everybody, right? Or maybe they ran outta money for the reception or any number of responses. That might how you, that might be how you respond to it. My response Based on my story, could be I start spiraling. I'm hurt, I'm offended, and immediately filling in the blank and making up story. They never really liked me anyway. And then I'll start going through a litany of reasons and recounting all through our friendship of all the ways they've showed me over the years that prove I'm right, that prove that they never liked me. And I'll get myself worked up and probably send the nasty texts and damage the relationship when all along. Perhaps they were gonna call me the next day or, and, and personally explain that, listen, we only are, we're only having very close family at the wedding or something along those lines, right? Who knows? 2 of us experienced the same life circumstance and both of us were able to choose the meaning, choose the story. We wrote the narrative. One of us is suffering. One of us isn't. You choose the narrative. You choose the meaning. You choose what your life looks like. It's you. And that is claiming your power. And that right there is the key. That's the golden ticket for transforming your way out of chemsex use. Because when you claim your power by deciding how to respond to life, you're not going to need a way to escape it. You're not going to need desperate connection. You're not going to be bored on a Friday night. You're not going to need any reason to use. Because you have created the life you want. So today your practice is ask yourself, how can I shift the way I respond to my life? How can I respond today to a life experience in a new way? All right. Practice 3. Getting thirsty here. I examine I examine with curiosity. So what does that mean, to examine life with curiosity? If you listen to me, you know that I say that successful recovery is about curiosity, not condemnation. Condemnation is placing judgment, condemning yourself for the things you do. Of course, first thing I'm gonna think of here is relapse. Responding to relapse with condemnation is not going to get you anywhere. In fact, it's going to be the very thing that puts you behind in your recovery. Not the relapse itself. That's not the problem. Your response to it. When you respond with curiosity, you're asking questions. You are an investigator, a compassionate observer. You're a student in a lab. And as a student, you are able to observe that you're feeling the feelings, you're feeling the sensations, and you're observing what's happening to you. But you're not carried away by it. Observing allows you to zoom out so that you're not attached. You're not being carried away with the feelings. You are watching what happens to you from a third-person point of view. The third person is your true self, that gold. Sorry about that. That gold, right? Not trying to stop What's going on? You're studying it. And this is where our meditation and our mindfulness comes into play. And it's very helpful in recovery and in life in general. For instance, back to the wedding example, I was feeling rejected, right? Because of being left out. Well, that's my story of the wedding invite. I can feel that rejection in my body, and I can know that it's just a sensation. I feel it right now. It's this churning in my stomach, but it's nothing real. I didn't get rejected. There's nothing life-threatening here. They don't hate me, but I feel the feelings and I observe it with curiosity. Well, isn't this interesting? My body is reacting to this news. I'm feeling these strong emotions. I'm gonna ask myself, Is this true? What is true and what's a story here? And when I ask myself what is true, I'm asking, what is the evidence? Where are the receipts? During the wedding example, what is true? The only thing true in that example is that I did not get an invitation to a wedding. That is all you can prove. Anything beyond that is a made-up story. So when I approach my life with curiosity, I'm asking myself that every day. What is true and what's a story? What are you feeling in your body because of that? I'm going to be feeling the feelings, but I'm not gonna be trying to make myself feel better. That's bypassing. This is what I've had to say to my friends, my close friends who, you know, everybody has good intentions. They bring an issue, you know, you bring an issue to them and they wanna fix it. If I say I'm feeling rejected today, I'm feeling really down, the first instinct is going to be to try to make me feel better. I don't want that. A true friend helps me feel it better. Help me feel it all better instead of feeling better. I wanna feel fully that emotion, that rejection, let it run through my body. Lean into it and let it crest like a wave. Not turn to my phone, not turn to a reaction, not turn to anything. Just let it go. Like, like when you're urge surfing or your cravings come up or an emotion that's uncomfortable, let that flow all the way through your body and let it crest like a wave and then let it go and it'll dissipate. It's just, it just wants to express itself. It just wants to protect you. And it's nothing more than a bodily sensation. Same way with cravings, with triggers, they're sensations. They're just sensations in your body. They're energy that wants to express itself. But if you have a craving and you start condemning it and condemning yourself, I must be doing something wrong. I must not be doing well in recovery. Maybe I didn't do my step work right. Oh no, I'm getting ready to relapse. That's condemnation. Curiosity would be, oh, interesting. I'm experiencing a craving. And then you separate yourself from it. Don't attach to it. It doesn't become your identity. It doesn't become your property. It's not my craving. It's part of me is experiencing a craving right now. And what does that part want? Where has this craving come from? Hmm. How interesting. You're giving your subconscious a job right here. You're distracting it. From what's going on? And those are real questions. Those are curious questions. Oftentimes I have clients who will ask questions that aren't even questions, they're statements. So let me, let me explain, like questions like, why does this keep happening to me? Why can't I get this right? Why did I relapse again? Those are posed as questions, but they're from a place of hopelessness and disempowerment. Those aren't questions. Those are statements. About themselves. Those are moral judgments about who you are and what you've done. And when you ask questions like that, you're closed off to any answer because you're not looking for an answer. Curiosity will ask those questions in an open way, knowing that you may not have the answer right now, but you're going to keep being curious and the answer will reveal itself. So ask yourself today, here's the practice. What is true that I'm believing and what's a story? All right. Practice 4, I share my truth. Anyone who has been in the chemsex scene knows what it's like to lie, manipulate, strategically leave out information, or know when to strategically share it. Oftentimes we get into recovery and we don't know how to share our truth because we don't know what the hell the truth is. We've lost connection with ourselves and we begin believing in our own lies. And sharing your truth is about first understanding and connecting with your truth. What is it that you truly feel? Who is it that you truly are? What are your values? Having a set of values and making those the compass of your life is going to move you toward a life worth living. Having a set of values, and I suggest having 3, Will help you make decisions quickly, will help you navigate the world with confidence, and you'll always know what's true because it's value-based. You won't have to ask yourself, what is my truth in this moment? What do I think in this moment? What do I do next? It's all measured and based on what you value. My core values evolve over time. Right now, I'm running off these 3 values: compassion, unconditional love, and surrender. So these are the metrics that you can use to evaluate yourself every day, all day, starting right now. And at the end of the day, I ask myself, were you compassionate today? Did you walk alongside your clients and anyone else who came to your path? Did you meet them where they are? Unconditional love. Did you hold yourself or anyone else To conditional standards before you showed them love? Are you withholding love from yourself or anyone else based on conditions that you created? And then surrender. Are you surrendering, Dallas, to the process? Are you surrendering to your belief that everything happens for you? Did you try to interfere today with your life? Did you try to make it? The desires of your heart come true. Did you try to make them come true, or did you surrender to what is? Are you trying, or are you allowing? It's the questions I ask myself. And if I hold these 3 values in place, they act as my GPS. If I uphold my values, I will always, always share my truth. I will always know my truth. It takes out the guesswork, takes out the opportunity for me to be out of alignment with my higher self. So today, ask yourself, what are my values and how can I live my truth through those values? All right, practice 5, I commit to change. In my program, we start with an exercise called the prophetic vision. This vision is meant to act as Your North Star to lead you to becoming the best and highest version of yourself. It's the version that your active use experience brought to bear. It's what that active use is, the crucible. It's the initiation that brings about that version of you. And the prompt to begin writing it is, I am becoming someone who... Because so many of the men that come into this program are laden with guilt, Low self-worth and shame. They will, they'll use that prompt, I am becoming somebody who, to hold themselves in a constant state of not enoughness. They use that word becoming against themselves. It's like some type of reminder that they're still not who they visualize themselves to be. That's not what the sentence is about. In recovery and in life, you hold 2 truths. One is, I'm perfectly happy and content. And one is, I'm always trying to become someone better, higher, and more expansive. You have to be able to hold these 2 truths at the same time. Until you become at peace with who you are, you're unable to transform into who you're becoming. That's the way it works. Because when you come from a place of lack, you're going to attract more lack. So if you come from a place of, I'm becoming this, And when I do become that, I'll finally be happy. But right now, I'm going to list all the reasons why I'm not there yet. If only I was somebody different, or any other statement that infers that you're not enough. When you come from a place of abundance, you attract abundance. So when you come from a place of I'm totally content and at peace with who I am, then you attract more reasons to become totally content and at peace with who you are. And more and more, and that energy attracts the same energy. But if you come from a place of lack, you're going to attract more and more reasons to show you why you're not enough. So there's a balancing act here of committing to change, but also loving who you are. So I want you to tell yourself every day, there's no better place for me to be than where I am right now. There's no better person for me to be than who I am right now. Okay, so how do we change? Commitment to change means committing to consistent daily action. Commitment means holding onto your why, why I'm quitting, and embodying that future version of yourself no matter how you feel emotionally. Some days you're gonna feel really good and some days you're gonna feel really bad, but you cannot base your recovery on how you feel. Commitment means I'm going to stick to my routine and I'm going to stick to my habits as a strong single baseline, no matter what, if it's an up day or a down day. Consistent daily action might be journaling, might be meditation. It might be checking in with your network. You do it when you feel good, just as much as you do when you feel bad. In my program, we take a look at the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. And in this book, really some of the most, the easiest and most effective ways to create consistent habits in your life. And I got a lot of men in the program who say they're neurospicy in some way, ADHD, ADD, BPD, any of those others. And they use that as a way to deflect adopting a routine or deflect creating a new habit. But commitment to change means no matter my circumstance, I'm gonna find a way. I'm open to a way. It might mean approaching it from a trauma-informed standpoint. It might mean that I have to work extra hard because I am neurospicy, but either way, I'm committed. I'm not hopeless. I'm not a victim. I just require a different approach cuz I'm working with a different type of brain. So commitment to change is a daily practice of consistency, of doing things when you don't feel like it. In fact, it means doing things especially When you don't feel like it, when you are experiencing resistance and everything in you might be telling you not to do it, that's typically a good sign that you're on the verge of a breakthrough. You're breaking down old parts of yourself, old thoughts, old behavioral patterns that know that they're about to die and they're activated and they're trying to hold on. They're trying to hold you back because they know their life's at stake. So today, say to yourself that you are perfect the way you are. And commit to one daily action that begins right now. Practice number 6, I honor my energy. When I first came out, I was 36. And any other seasoned gentleman who has come out, especially those of us who were married and living a lie for years, we have this subconscious belief that we have to make up for lost time, right? We've been missing out on that gay life. Which is Truly been something that culture has perverted, in my opinion. But I would love for us to just come up with a definition of what life is, no matter what our sexuality is. But that's for a whole other podcast and not very popular. When I came out and I had this subconscious push to make up for lost time, I really had no boundaries. There was no price of admission to get to me, not to get into my body or me into yours. I just went from man to man. From attention to attention, from dick to dick, spreading my energy out everywhere, taking in all these foreign energies. I certainly never honored myself or my body or my energy. And that hypersexuality grew into a natural evolution into the chemsex world. Some of us exhibit problematic sexual behavior before meth. Some of us after. Most of us all during, right? But we certainly aren't honoring the energy that we offer or the energy that is allowed in our lives, the energy that we offer and the energy that we allow. So there's a meditation I do in my program where we talk about our garden and what our boundaries are. So boundaries aren't walls, they're gates, a fence with a gate. So I have my clients imagine their life as a garden, a garden that they get to plant, to tend to, create, a garden where they get to choose who enters the gate and who's locked out. Who gets to participate in your energy? Because it can't be everybody. Because in chemsex, it's really like a zombie apocalypse. They just come marching and treading through your garden without any kind of, without any kind of boundary, right? Any kind of fence. So boundaries to me are the most misunderstood and misused topic in recovery too. Boundaries are a way to make you feel free. But if you were like me and boundaryless with an insecure attachment style, When someone set a boundary for me, it felt personal. It felt hurtful. It felt like rejection. So let me tell you, side note, when you set a boundary, first, if somebody has that type of response, that's normally because they don't understand boundaries and they don't have them for themselves. But a boundary is there so you can cultivate your garden. What's allowed in? What's not allowed in? What does your world look like? What does it look like physically, by the way? What's your space look like? Is this the space where you used? Then can you look around your room or your house and visualize chemsex experiences from the past? If so, change it around, change it up. Look at your physical space, cleaning out your closets, cleaning up your yard, putting up some paint on the wall maybe, or something, something that is symbolically and energetically clearing the space. And then the boundary comes into play when you say, this is mine. The boundary is there will be no chemsex here. There will be no behaviors here that look like my past self. That's my boundary. Here are my values. This is what's allowed in here. So you could begin simply with boundaries, boundaries with dating apps, boundaries with porn, boundaries with how you spend your time, and you stick to that. You have to start small with boundaries, because if you begin to set boundaries and you don't enforce them, you're just confirming to yourself that you can't trust yourself. You're wasting your breath and your time. Your subconscious is never going to believe you, and you won't take boundaries seriously. I honor my energy. Honoring your energy can look like skipping out on recovery meeting when you can tell that your energy is at the capacity for the day. Many men come to the program and they've been living their lives outside of their bandwidth. Your energy capacity is so important. And your ability to detect when you're at or over capacity is what can save you when it comes to cravings management, trigger management, emotional regulation, and overall wellbeing. You have a certain amount of energy in a day, and in an early recovery, a bulk of that energy is dedicated to just not using. It's dedicated to what you're not doing. And then what's left, you have for work, Friends, family, partner, and then you just living in general. And then on top of that, you have recovery work and then you have meetings and then you have your therapist and then you have your coach. That's just so much of you to go around. Jumping on your phone and scrolling on TikTok is energy depletion, by the way. It is not any kind of way for you to escape or rejuvenate. It sucks more out. So honoring your energy looks like a really honest inventory of where you are every day, every moment of the day. I can invest my energy in this, or I can invest it in that. Sometimes you'll have to decide I cannot invest the energy in both things. Where am I energy-wise? How regulated am I? Use a rating system. Many of my clients find that really valuable. Like, we can use the yellow, green, and red. Or a number, a rating like 1 to 5 or an emoji. Where is your energy right now? If you're getting close to bandwidth, there's 2 things you can do. One is you can slow down and you can say no to something, which is a boundary, or you can do something that rejuvenates the energy, builds more up. Maybe it's sitting with soft music with no phone. Maybe it's taking a walk outside. Maybe it's whatever it takes, right? Whatever makes you feel more energetic after you've finished than you did when you started. And that includes being around people. Some people are energy vampires. Some people make you feel like you're soaring after you've talked with them, and some people are gonna make you feel like you're exhausted after you talk with them. And you're going to know when you start honoring your energy every day. Listen, you're not obligated, nor do you owe anybody an explanation about skipping a meeting Or leaving early somewhere or saying no to an invite. As long as you have your safeguards in place, why not spend the night at home on a Friday night instead of going to meet your friends? You might feel like, well, it's too risky. If you are not, if your energy is not there, you're at more risk. Because if you go and you push yourself past your limit, your ability to say no when temptation arrives or when the guy texts you or when your friends say, let's go to the afterparty or whatever, you're not going to be able to have the energy. To uphold your boundaries. Your energy is precious. Okay? You protect what needs protecting. You invest in what deserves investment. You stop leaking power through relationships and situations that don't serve you, and you start channeling that energy into connections that actually matter. When you honor your energy this way, you stop running on empty. You start operating from genuine fullness, genuine fullness, and everything changes when you're no longer depleted. So today, set a reminder on your phone to pause and check in with yourself throughout the day. Develop your own rating and monitor your own battery life. All right, last one. Practice 7th: I maintain authentic connection. So there are— listen, there are a few words And phrases that I hear so often every day. And I wish that I could create one of those word bubble diagrams that shows like the size of the words compared to how often they're used, whatever that's called. Because if I did make a diagram, the word disassociation and the acronym ADHD would probably take up the most space. Both are used so often to explain some type of disconnection. Disassociation is basically what happens when you use the substance for chemsex. And in my opinion, we get in such a habit of disassociating that it becomes a daily occurrence when you're not using. One could use disassociation to describe what happens when a craving comes up and all of a sudden you're on your phone making the plan or you're on your way to the chill out or the party. That same type of phenomenon is labeled ADHD by a lot of people as well. And I don't want to discount or invalidate or minimize anyone who has a neurodivergent brain or dissociates, but there are times when I think it's misdiagnosed, especially when it's self-diagnosed. But when we connect to ourselves, we will know the difference between being separated from our highest self. There's a separation from our gold. We'll know the difference between that and an atypical brain function. There are 2 differences here. All of this comes around to, again, talking about mindfulness, which I think is really the underlying answer to chemsex addiction, really suffering in general. If we were to invest in mindfulness, we would have an improved emotional wellbeing, physical health, our mindset, relationships, work-life balance. Mindfulness is simply connecting to the present moment. So how do you maintain authentic connection? How do you do it? First and foremost, what is the connection like to yourself and to this moment? And what I mean by that is a connection to something greater than yourself. And that something greater than yourself is a perfected version of you, the version of you who is already living meth-free. Not to get too in the metaphysical woo-woo weeds here, but I do believe there's a version of me who has learned all these lessons, who has overcome the addiction, who has ended the patterns. Often we have to borrow energy from that perfected self. We have to ask it for assistance, for knowledge, for epiphanies, downloads. That is my higher power. Because I also believe that the perfected self is part of that overall energy that holds the Earth in perfect place in orbit, the solar system, some kind of energy that's running all of this. That energy does not make decisions for me. I'm a human with free will, and that free will makes me the God of my life. And I will be unable to exert free will effectively. If I am disconnected from myself, that free will helps me create the reality I want by the way I choose to use my free will to respond to my life. The way I respond to life is free will. So I hope that's clear. Remain connected every day by limiting your social media scrolling, Limiting the amount of news you watch, limiting the amount of energy you're using trying to fix other people or ruminate on the past or project the future or make up stories. All of that scrambles your connection. Every day, all day, bring yourself back to the present moment. Connect with that present moment. Feel into the perfected version of you and ask, how can I see this differently? When you feel anxiety or confusion or doubt or fear, ask, how can I see this differently? How can I be more open to responding to a life, to my life in a new way? How can I borrow energy from the perfected version of me? It's interesting to me, this whole discussion about higher power, and that when we are quote unquote clean for so many days, we give all credit to the higher power. But when we relapse, oh, that's the addiction's fault, the devil's fault, or my fault. I'm a fucking loser. No. At what point do we give credit or blame to ourself? You made the decision. You make decisions all day long, and those decisions mount up. To what your life looks like. And those decisions can either be indicative of your past self or your future self. And you have to ask yourself, do I wanna stay where I am, or do I want to expand into a better and higher version of me? Ask yourself, you're sitting there on TikTok watching some cat video. Not to say that's bad, but when it's been 2 hours, is that how you wanna look back on your life? And look and see how many hours you spent on TikTok? How many hours do you want to look back on your life to see how many, how often you, or how many hours you spent on Grindr? Scruff sniffies, right? You can connect to yourself in many, many, many ways. A walk in nature, or sometimes just staring at a candle flame. Laughing with friends, journaling, listening to emotion— to some emotion-evoking music. Connect back to your light, that gold, that light that's been obscured. Move impurities out of the way. That light is trying to shine. It's asking to be revealed. That, that asking to be revealed is what pushes you into the meth experience. Because it knows through that experience that you're going to have to move those thoughts. You're going to have to be aware. It's wanting, needing to shine. And it's so much harder to connect to it when you're clouding it with self-doubt messages, self-loathing comments, beliefs you're not enough, this ever-evolving identification with being an addict. With a disease. Connect to the perfected self. And I want you to connect as often as you can in whatever way possible. Some people carry crystals in their pocket and they'll put their hand in their pocket and hold onto that crystal. I don't know. Some people have a mantra, a phrase, a picture, a word. You could just say the word connection to snap you outta the spiraling thoughts and connect back to self, connect back to this moment. Say the word connection and then say, what would my highest self do right now? What would my perfected self be doing at this moment? How would I show up if I was the best version of me? And then make a choice. Use your free will and make a choice. It might be hard for you to connect. You might be early in early recovery and hear a lot of voices in your head, and you might feel overwhelmed just thinking about trying to connect. And none of this could even ever make sense to you. I just want to say to you, just do one thing today to connect to this moment, back to yourself. Turn everything off, your phone, everything in your home. Sit in silence for 5 minutes. Go outside with bare feet on the ground for 5 minutes. Do something you've never done before and set an intention to connect. Set an intention and then just allow it to happen. Assume that the answers to how to connect, the answers to how to be meth-free, the answers are there for you and they will come. They're also asking to be revealed because each answer you get reveals more light. And then tomorrow, maybe do something else new. Make it 10 minutes outside, whatever. Life is moving too fast and you're getting carried away by a brain that never stops. You have to step up and connect. Connect the brain to a new neural pathway. Connect yourself to the person The man who's calling you forward. He's waiting. He's already completed this journey. Connect into that state of consciousness. What would it feel like to be on the other side of this? Connect into that and let that take over your body in a visceral way every single day, as often as possible. So today, begin asking, am I being my future self or am I being my past self? How do I wanna show up? Connect to that future self, borrow energy from him to make tough decisions. All right. Oh, guys, I pray that you were able to glean some inspiration from this today. Maybe 7 practices seem really overwhelming to you. That's okay. Choose one, stick with it consistently every day. All I want you to leave this with is certainty. Certainty that you have what it takes to achieve the best and highest version of you. Certainty that all of this has happened for you. Certainty that the perfected version of you is calling you forward, helping to remove those thoughts and beliefs that hold you back. And I want you to breathe right now. Out. In and out. Surrender. Surrender to the certainty that this will all work for your good. You are exactly where you need to be. You're exactly who you need to be. And you're listening to this podcast on purpose. All right. I love you all. I look forward to seeing you in season 3. Thank you again for being here.