6 Easy Steps to Cure FOMO (and quit using Crystal Meth)

Hey there, Dr. Dallas Bragg here, recovery coach for gay men who want to break free from the addictive patterns of crystal meth and live their best and highest life. That second part is the most important. Today we are talking about FOMO, fear of missing out, and how that can play into your continuous return to crystal meth. If you can identify with the feeling of FOMO, do you know what FOMO is? Or maybe you don't know what FOMO is. Stay right here for the entire video. And I'll introduce you to 6 steps for breaking free from the FOMO cycle. On this channel, you're going to find lots of resources to help you break free from Tina and attain your best and highest self. Also, don't forget to look for my podcast. It's also on this channel called The Aftermath. You will find all of season 1 and starting in season 2 in March 2025. I drop a long-form video just like this one. Every Saturday, so please turn on the notification bell and subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any of these videos. By the way, if you are interested in my one-on-one coaching program called Recovery Alchemy, the link to apply is in the show notes. Through weekly one-on-one sessions, weekly group sessions, and daily accountability, your life could look much differently than it does right now in only six months. Okay. So a lot of people ask me, what was the one thing that kept you actively using meth? And without a doubt, it was FOMO, or fear of missing out. The nuance that makes the Tina world different than other substances is that as gay men, we know that at any time and anywhere, there will be a chemsex party to attend, even if it was just one other person. It's like a child who lives by an amusement park. And must watch the roller coasters going 24/7, but can't go. Knows it's always there, right? That's how it is to be a gay man who knows that there—that wants to use crystal meth and knows that it's going on all around him all the time. Having the power to access that fun is actually very easy, right here on your phone and in your hands. It's called Grinder, or it's called Sniffies, Scruff, BBRT. Zoom, whatever else, however else you want to access it. It's right there at your fingertips, fingertips, and that leads to constant FOMO. You know, I can remember being in the grips of anguish and my body begging me to download and open Grindr. Who is out tonight? Who is in town partying tonight? What's my favorite party guy on? What orgy am I being left out of? Listen. The struggle is real, and I know it. It was tough for me because I found my worth in being invited to these parties. So if I'm home alone without Grindr and not being invited, I felt like shit. Even when my children, who loved me unconditionally, were right there in front of me wanting my attention, all I could think about was what was going on on Grindr. I can recall finally, finally giving in. Downloading Grindr and feeling that rush of dopamine sweep my body when that grid comes alive on the screen and you hear that, that trill, that sound of, you know, whatever it is, of a new message, right? FOMO isn't just about though missing that party, and it just isn't about missing a hookup. It's about something much deeper, something formed in us long before we ever touched crystal. So let me share what I've discovered about this feeling of FOMO that haunts so many of us and keeps us going back to crystal meth, and how we can transform it into a powerful catalyst for authentic living. I help gay men break free from the addictive patterns of chemsex or Tina and become their best and highest selves by one-on-one coaching. Recovery Alchemy is a 6 month intense program that can literally change your life, and I accept 2 new clients per month. You can apply by clicking the link in the show notes. All right, what I've come to understand is that FOMO isn't created by social media, and it's not created by Grindr. These things, they're only magnifying a shadow that's already inside us. For many of us in the queer community, This shadow formed when we first realized that we were different and we first had to hide ourselves and parts of ourselves in order to survive and feel loved. Our FOMO often comes from childhoods where we learn to conform rather than express our authenticity. We fear disappointing others because rejection felt life-threatening. It stood between us and the love of our parents. Childhoods that adapted our joy to fit into what others would approve of, and where we felt powerless to create the lives we truly wanted. Does any of that sound familiar to you? This social anxiety, it became our constant companion, right? And eventually, crystal offered a temporary escape. A chemical permission slip to finally feel free, to finally feel connected, to finally feel powerful. So here is six steps to break free from the FOMO cycle, which will break free from the Tina cycle. Now, number one: face your truth with compassion. The first step is acknowledging that the real root. of this anxiety, this FOMO. It's not about the party you're missing. It's about that wounded part of you that still believes you can't be fully yourself and still be loved. You have to go over to the party for that. Many of us in the queer spaces found crystal because it temporarily dissolved this painful belief. And under its influence, we didn't care about rejection. We felt invincible, desirable, and worthy to take up space. We didn't have to hide anything. But that chemical courage also comes with a price, a price that's pretty devastating. Your healing begins when you face that original wound, the belief that your authentic self isn't enough. This isn't about the high you're missing. It's about the little one inside you who learned to fear disapproval more than anything. When FOMO hits, you ask yourself, what am I really afraid of losing here? Really ask yourself that question. Often it's not the party or it's not the sex. It's that temporary relief from feeling like you have to perform to be loved. You are addicted to the approval shortcut that crystal meth offers. So here's a deeper practice. The next time FOMO triggers cravings, sit quietly with that feeling. Place a hand on your heart. Speak to that younger part. I see you're afraid of being left out again. That makes sense given our history, but we're safe now. We can find belonging without hurting ourselves. Sounds corny. Talk to your younger self. Really feel those words. Really believe it. You can find what you're getting from crystal meth in a way that doesn't hurt yourself. So the reflective question for that is, when the FOMO hits hardest, What are you really afraid of losing? Is it connection? Validation? Is it excitement? Is it freedom? Ask yourself those questions. All right. Number 2, love from authenticity, not avoidance. All right. So many of us have lived our lives trying to avoid rejection rather than pursuing what truly makes our hearts happy. Crystal became our shortcut again to feeling Happy without risking vulnerability, without the courage and the bravery that takes. For me, I pretended to be as dominant and masculine as possible out of fear of not being accepted in the orgy. I started as an older man. I had to be daddy. I lost whatever authenticity I had cultivated as a sober man, even though that was very little considering the pressures that I had already from the regular gay community. In recovery, we're learning a radical new way of living—one where we choose self-love over fear of rejection. That is a big one there. This is about making the hard choice to pursue what genuinely brings you joy instead of what helps you avoid pain. Think about that: pretending to be someone else temporarily. Relieved the pain I had carried my whole life. Here's the truth that transformed my own journey, though. Conditional love isn't love at all. And that's what you get from these communities. If someone only accepts you when you're performing, conforming, or chemically enhanced, that's not the connection your soul is starving for, and it will always leave you hungry. You will never, ever find true happiness if you keep going back to meth. Recovery allows you to decide who you are, and you decide it on purpose, and you live that authentically, even when it feels terrifying. So here's a deeper practice for number 2. Make a list of relationships in your life. Mark each with, can I be my full self with this person? If the answer is no, what parts of yourself are you hiding? Begin practicing vulnerability with those you trust most. Gradually, you can expand your circle of authentic connection. The reflective question here is, what would you pursue in your life if fear of others' disapproval wasn't holding you back? What parts of yourself have you been hiding to maintain connection? All right, number 3. Transform scarcity into abundance. So FOMO thrives in the soil of scarcity thinking. So when we're using, our world shrinks until the only source of pleasure seems to be in that pipe, that party, that connection that was mediated by chemicals. Recovery demands that we confront this scarcity mentality head on. The crystal lifestyle convinces us that there's only one path to feeling good. And that without it, life is boring. Life is colorless. Sex is vanilla. Life is a wasteland. This is perhaps the most insidious lie of crystal meth. And I've witnessed countless men in recovery discover that once they heal this scarcity wound, that they think that this is all they have, their world begins to open up. It becomes abundant. Pleasures that seem dull compared to crystal slowly reawaken. Genuine laughter, authentic connection, the subtle joy of a quiet morning, the sense of accomplishment from creating something meaningful. But you can't just remove crystal and expect fulfillment to appear magically either. You must actively create a life rich with experiences that meet your soul's needs. You have to know what your soul's needs are first. This is all the work of recovery. This requires intention. Patience, sometimes uncomfortable, very uncomfortable exploration. True empowerment in recovery means recognizing you have choices in each and every moment to find joy, to find light, to find beauty. You can leave environments that don't feel good. You can speak up about what you need. You can modify your plans to accommodate your own well-being. This is all about self-empowerment. Many of us fear that setting these boundaries are going to lead to being rejected. You're only rejecting yourself when you don't set the boundaries. Genuine connection only happens when we show up authentically. When you show up with your boundaries and all as yourself, the relationships that survive your truth are the ones that are worth Keeping. All right, here's a deeper practice: create an abundance inventory. This is where you track moments genuine pleasure, abundance of joy, abundance of peace, abundance of laughter, connection, and meaning in your sober life. Start tracking them. Start with just noting one moment every day. I still keep a little journal, and I write down. At the beginning of every day, I write down from the day before a moment of joy. You go back and read that. It's a story of your year. There is something magical in that. Watch how your awareness of abundance starts to grow simply through that attention. You start looking for ways to find joy, right? So here's a reflective question. How fulfilling is your sober life right now? Honestly, would you call it boring? Where are the gaps? What's lacking that you're not doing? Which needs that crystal meth do you need to find new pathways to satisfy? Okay, number 4, learn to dance with fear. So crystal meth numbed our fears instantly— another shortcut. Now we need to learn to acknowledge our fears without letting them run our lives. Fear isn't the enemy here. Our relationship with fear is what needs healing. For many of you, the slightest twinge of social anxiety or uncertainty sends you running for the chemical relief. You don't face it. You don't want to feel uncomfortable. Using crystal meth, we developed a profound intolerance for discomfort. Recovery isn't about eliminating that fear. It's, it's about developing a new relationship with the fear, using it for growth. Fear can be information rather than a dictator. You use that information to know this fear is here to show me my growth opportunities. Fear can be a companion rather than a tormentor. It's there to help you. Fear can be a protector. Rather than the inner, an inner critic. It's how you label that voice. It all depends on how you respond to fear. When FOMO arises, it's fear speaking. Fear of disconnection. Fear of missing joy. Fear of making the wrong choice. These fears make perfect sense given the histories that we have. But your goal is to not to drown out the voice of fear. But face it with curiosity. What are you here to help me with? Given that all things are here for our best and our highest, what is fear helping you heal? All right. Here's a deeper practice. Create a fear dialogue practice. When fear arises, imagine it as a character sitting across from you. Ask, what are you trying to protect me from? Listen. Without judgment, then respond with compassion. Thank you for trying to keep me safe. I hear your concern. Here's how I'm going to take care of both of us. Listen to that. That is making fear your friend and your ally. Here's a reflective question. What fears am I trying to avoid by contemplating using again? If these fears could speak, What would they say? What would they say they're protecting me from? Write that down. Number 5, meet your needs directly. So crystal meth met multiple needs at once. We've talked about this here and on this channel and everywhere else. Connection, confidence, sexual freedom, escape from shame, all artificially, right? Now you need to become the initiator of meeting your needs authentically. This is perhaps, not just perhaps, this is the most practical, the most life-changing work that you're going to do in your recovery. Replacing crystal meth wasn't just about getting high. It was a multipurpose solution for deep-seated needs we didn't know how to meet otherwise. We learned maladaptive coping using meth to meet those needs. Many of us discovered through using that we had legitimate needs that weren't being addressed in our sober lives, right? Needs for community, for transcendent experience, the need for uninhibited expression, for sexual connection without shame, for relief from the weight of minority stress. The task now is to separate these legitimate needs from the destructive delivery system of crystal meth. Each need requires its own pathway to fulfillment. Listen, there's no single replacement for what crystal provided. This is your time to experiment, to be vulnerable, to be courageous, to take risks. For me, my FOMO was rooted in being left out. I was always left out, you know, which had been a wound woven through my life way before I found crystal meth. That was a wound I had. What you'll learn is that whatever unmet needs you had before using will still be there in abstinence. It doesn't go away. It gets worse, right? The question for me was, how can I find ways to feel included that do not include partying? And I had to go and find that. The most impactful part of my recovery was finding a group of people who provided an inclusive space. For me, I had to go outside of the queer community to find that, but I found a wonderful group of people who showed me love and acceptance like I had never experienced. These people weren't gay and they weren't even in recovery. This pure joy that I had without the pressure of hiding any parts of myself. That gave me a high I had never, ever attained with crystal meth. So here's a deeper practice. Create a needs inventory and action plan, right? List every need crystal meth met for you. Be specific and be very honest. For each need, I want you to brainstorm 3 to 5 healthier ways you might meet it. Experiment with one new strategy every week. You can note what works, what doesn't work. Here's a reflective question to go along with that. What legitimate needs was crystal meeting for you, and how can you meet those needs in healthier ways? Sounds repetitive, but keep asking it. Which needs of those feel most urgent? Which needs are unfulfilled in your current recovery? Rate them from urgent to not urgent. The ones that are urgent are going to be the ones that cause the most cravings and triggers. Number 6, embrace the beautiful impossibility of having it all. The brutal truth is in here is that no one, no one, including you, can be everywhere having every experience all the time, right? And that is okay. You're always going to be missing something, right? The final principle though here is probably the most profound shift in your relationship with FOMO. The crystal meth lifestyle perpetuates the exhausting myth that we can and we should have it all, right? That we can party all night and we can build successful careers and we can fuck who we want. We can have orgies on the weekends and we can maintain perfect bodies and somehow avoid the natural consequences of our choices. Recovery means embracing the limitations of being Human. We have finite energy, finite time, and finite resources. Every yes necessarily means saying no to something else, right? There's freedom in this acceptance. What and who have you been saying no to? You can either choose a life of stagnancy and unfulfillment with crystal meth in it, or you can choose a life of momentum and purpose and deciding what is yes and what is no. You can't have both. You just can't. And I don't care what that guy who you party with on the weekend says. He might be managing meth right now recreationally, but you are meeting him at one point along his journey. He will fall, and he will fall hard. And when we embrace our limitations, we're forced to clarify what truly matters to us. And if you're watching this, what truly matters to you is a life without crystal meth. We're invited to make conscious choices rather than frantically chasing a dream where we can have meth and a life too. Forget about it. Here's a deeper practice. Try a deliberate missing out experiment. Identify something you would normally feel compelled to attend due to FOMO. Consciously choose not to go, and instead fully immerse yourself in a— in quiet. Quieter. Turn your phone off, turn the TV off, maybe listen to a little music, go outside, something more nourishing. Notice the feelings that arise and pass without acting on them. Notice the anxiety, feel it, but let it express itself. Reflective question here is, what if Missing out isn't a failure. What if it's a success? What if you start loving purposely missing out on things? What would change if you embrace the fact that you'll always be missing something? You get to decide what that is. Here's what I want you to really hear. FOMO will always exist in some form, but I want you to ask yourself what you're really missing out on. What do you really need? If you are listening to this or watching this, you obviously don't want to use crystal meth. Anymore, right? So what are you truly chasing? Where are you empty inside? Crystal meth or Tina chemsex will never fill that void. It will only make it deeper. Recovery isn't about perfect abstinence though. It's about creating a life so rich, so authentic, So fulfilling and so present that the artificial shortcuts of crystal meth loses its appeal because what you have, you've worked for. It's about unbecoming everything the world made you and returning to your truest self. I want you to remember, you can either go through this process From a place of joy and gratitude, or you can go through this recovery process in pain and shame. Either way, you're going to go through it. So choose the path of compassionate transformation. All right, guys. I love you all. I will see you next week. If you'd like to join in the discussion, please drop some comments here. Tell me what you think. What was missing? What would you add? I would love to hear from you. And please share this video on your social media channels. I would like that. All right. Thank you.