In this 30‑minute video Dr. Dallas Bragg, a recovery coach for gay men, introduces the concept of “approval addiction” – a hidden, non‑substance addiction that can drive relapse after chemsex recovery. He frames the discussion as the first installment of a four‑part series, using a fictional client, Marcus, to illustrate how the need for external validation can replace methamphetamine cravings. Bragg explains two manifestations of the approval trap: (1) approval‑seeking (pursuing praise, likes, and positive feedback) and (2) attention‑seeking (creating drama or negative attention to feel noticed). He argues that crystal meth temporarily masks this underlying need, creating a feedback loop where the drug is used to obtain the validation the nervous system craves. Traditional recovery programs focus on behavior change and often miss this deeper issue, sometimes even reinforcing it through validation in group settings. Bragg outlines initial strategies for breaking the cycle: becoming a compassionate observer of one’s patterns, pausing to distinguish fact from story when faced with perceived rejection, and making values‑based choices rather than seeking approval. He promotes his intensive “Recovery Alchemy” coaching program (one‑on‑one and group) as a structured way to work through these patterns. The video ends with a teaser for part 2, which will explore the origins of approval addiction, and a call for viewer comments.
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Hey there, Dr. Dallas Bragg here, recovery coach for gay men who want to break free from the addictive patterns of chemsex and live their best and highest life. Today we're talking about how did we trade one addiction for the other, but we're not talking about substances. We're talking about addiction to approval, something I can personally vouch about for. If you are constantly looking for the approval of others, I want you to keep watching the whole video. On this channel, you're gonna find lots of resources to help you break free from chemsex and attain your best and highest self. Also, don't forget to look for my podcast. It's called The Aftermath Podcast here on this channel as well, or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcast. I drop a long-form video like this every Saturday, so please turn on the notification bell, subscribe to the channel so you don't miss anything. By the way, if you're interested, I have a one-on-one coaching and a group coaching program under the umbrella Recovery Alchemy. The link to apply to Recovery Alchemy is in the show notes. Through weekly one-on-one sessions, weekly group sessions, and daily accountability, your life could look much differently in 6 months or 3 months than it does now. We often hear about people trading one addiction for another in early recovery. I know for me, I couldn't drink enough Red Bull in my transition away from daily methamphetamine use. But the most damaging trade-off is the addictions that are hidden. In order to explore this concept, I'm gonna present a 4-part series. This is number 1, Breaking Free from the Approval Trap. The series is gonna follow a client's journey whom we're going to call Marcus. Maybe you'll see yourself in him. Meet Marcus. So Marcus sits in his car in the parking lot after work, hands gripping the steering wheel. He's been meth-free for 18 months now. It's a milestone that should feel like a victory, but right now all he can think about is how his presentation went flat inside, how his boss barely nodded or made eye contact, how the silence he felt after he pitched his innovative marketing strategy hurt. The shame spiral starts, right? It's that familiar tightness in your chest, and somewhere In the back of his mind, crystal meth starts to whisper. Remember how confident you felt, how unstoppable when you used me, how everyone wanted you? Doesn't this rejection feel so fucking uncomfortable and scary? Remember that first puff when you took, and it took all of that away? Marcus knows that feeling very intimately, and I'll bet you do too. It's not just about the drug anymore. It's about this gnawing, Desperate need for approval that seems to control every aspect of his recovery and maybe yours. What most people don't comprehend is that approval addiction might be more dangerous to your sobriety than physical cravings. So let's look at the hidden prison of approval addiction. For decades before meth and years after, I lived in this unseen prison. I remember the rise and the fall of my emotions and my wellbeing based on the actions of everyone around me. It's smothering and it's a living hell. And now that I'm working with men in recovery, I can see their unseen prison bars, a jail cell hidden in the periphery, constantly seeking validation, sleepless nights just from a strongly worded email, hours of productivity loss due to an unanswered text that's just sitting there waiting to be responded to and acknowledged. Emotional highs and lows based on external affirmation from other people. We call it the approval trap, and it's the reason so many intelligent, capable men keep relapsing even when they desperately don't want to anymore. This isn't about being a people pleaser or having low self-esteem, though those are symptoms of this. It's about something much deeper. It's about how your nervous system learned to survive by becoming a validation-seeking machine and how that same survival mechanism is now sabotaging your recovery. So here's what the recovery or the— I'm sorry, the approval trap looks like in real life. You're 6 weeks substance-free, you're feeling proud, and someone at a party barely acknowledges you exist. Instead of thinking, eh, their loss, or maybe they didn't notice me, maybe they're busy, maybe something's on their mind, you spiral into shame about not being interesting enough, successful enough, attractive enough. And by the time you get home, you're convinced that you're fundamentally flawed. You're never going out anywhere else. The crystal starts looking like the only thing that can fix you and make you feel better. Or maybe you're the guy who tells elaborate stories about your recovery journey. And it's not to inspire other people, but it's because you're desperate for them to see you as a hero transformed, worthy of admiration. Look at me. Look at me. But when the applause died down and the novelty of your, your life dies down, you feel emptier than before. Marcus represents something that I see constantly in my Recovery Alchemy program, and it's highly functioning gay men who've conquered the physical addiction but are still imprisoned By their need for external validation. It is a prison. They've stopped using crystal, but they haven't stopped being addicted to approval. I help gay men break free from the addictive patterns of chemsex and become their best and highest selves. My one-on-one coaching, Recovery Alchemy, is a 6-month intensive program that can literally change your life. And I accept 2 new clients a month. Again, application is in the show notes. So let's keep going. So why recovery programs miss this? Traditional recovery programs and a lot of treatment centers focus on behavior modification. Don't pick up, go to meetings, work the steps, people, places, things, right? But what they don't address is this. If your entire sense of self-worth depends on other people's reactions to you, you're always one perceived rejection away from relapse. This can happen at work. It can happen in family. It can happen with friends. Those, those places that feel safe aren't safe. The cruel irony is that recovery groups can actually reinforce the whole approval addiction. You share your story, you get validation for your progress. You become the guy with the most clean time and the, and the one everybody looks up to, right? But underneath, you're still that desperate child. Who will do anything to be seen as worthy. Marcus discovered this, but he did it the hard way. He'd become the star of his recovery group— funny, insightful, always ready for the perfect share, right? Got nods of understanding. How powerful. But when new people joined and the attention shifted away from him, his cravings returned, and they returned hard. He realized that he transferred his addiction to them. From crystal to recovery applause to validation. So there's 2 faces here. There's 2 faces of this trap, and you might recognize yourself in one or both. So face one is approval seeking. I need you to like me. I need you to respect me. I need you to validate me. This is Marcus at work crafting presentations, not based on what's good for the company, but what will make him look innovative, impressive, right? It's checking your phone obsessively after posting on social media. Measuring your worth by likes and comments. That's phase 1. Phase 2 is attention seeking. I just need you to see me, notice me. This is more desperate, right? This is what I used to do. It's more raw. It's the guy who acts outrageously at parties, who puts people down just to get a laugh, who picks fights on dating, on dating apps, right? Who creates drama just to feel noticed. Even negative attention feels better than being invisible. Both faces serve the same master, a nervous system that learned early on that love and safety were conditional, conditional on performance, on appearance, and other people's approval, mostly parents, right? So what's— how's this connected to crystal or chemsex? Here's where it gets really insidious. Crystal meth is the ultimate Approval drug. Think about this. One hit and suddenly you feel confident, attractive, sexually magnetic. You feel like the most interesting person in the room. For a few hours, you don't need anyone's validation. You feel like pure gold. Here's what's really happening. Crystal isn't giving you confidence. It's temporarily numbing the approval addiction. It's putting a Band-Aid over a bullet hole, right? It's, it's Yeah, it's putting a Band-Aid over a bullet hole. That's right. When the drug wears off though, the wound, the bullet hole is still there and it's still gashing. It's often deeper. Marcus remembers those crystal-fueled nights, you know, when he felt untouchable, sexy. I wasn't seeking approval anymore, he would say, because I felt like I was approval. I was approval. Like I was everything everyone wanted. But when he crashed, that need for validation comes back and it comes back 10 times stronger. It's a cycle. We use meth to get validated. We feel even more need to get validated. We use meth again, right? So how do we break the cycle? In our recovery program, Recovery Alchemy, we start with the premise of you cannot heal What you cannot see. So most men are so unconsciously addicted to approval, they don't even realize they're in this prison. They think the problem is crystal meth when really crystal was just the chosen medication to, for a much deeper wound. They were addicted to approval before meth. The first phase of transformation is what we call decomposition in Recovery Alchemy. It's about becoming the compassionate observer of your own patterns. It's seeing what needs to be treated, right? It's about getting curious. Hmm, why am I like this? Instead of critical of, why do I keep doing this? Right? There's a difference there. And it's curious about, why do I need other people's opinions to feel okay about myself? Marcus is learning to catch himself in real time. And this is the trick, right? Catching yourself in real time. When his boss doesn't respond to his email with enthusiasm, instead of spiraling into shame, he pauses. Pauses and thinks, interesting. My nervous system is interpreting this silence, right, as rejection. But what's true? What's true and what's a story? What's true is he hasn't emailed me back yet. That's the only tangible evidence I have. What's a story? He's mad. He's upset. He doesn't like me. He's gonna fire me, right? All the shit that comes up. What's this about? Is a question to ask yourself. It's not about eliminating your need either for connection or for validation. Some validation is normal. It's healthy. And to eliminate the need is impossible anyway. It's about understanding why that need has become so desperate, so all-consuming. That's what's running your life, right? And it's threatening not only your sobriety, but your happiness. There's freedom that awaits. Here's what I know. Here is what I know after guiding hundreds of men through this process. On the other side of the approval trap is a freedom. It's a freedom you cannot even imagine right now. It's the freedom to be authentically you. And you have to know who you are first, right? Knowing who you are and living it on purpose to make decisions based on your values. What are your values? Do you know what your values are? Making decisions based on values other— rather than other people's reactions and opinions, to build relationships that are going to nourish rather than drain you. Marcus is starting to taste that freedom. Last week, his presentation didn't land the way he hoped, but instead of reaching for his phone to scroll on apps or to get on Grindr or whatever and to seek validation quickly to get a dopamine hit, He sat with the discomfort. That's the key. Sit with the uncomfortable feelings. He felt that old familiar shame, rejection. He just, he felt it and then he acknowledged it. He welcomed it in. It has been here before and it'll be here again, right? But this time he chose differently. That's what recovery really looks like. Not the absence of difficult feelings, not just the absence of myth, but the presence of choice, choice in how you respond to life. So in part 2 next week, we're going to dive deep into where the approval addiction began. And you're going to see yourself in that. We'll explore Marcus's childhood story and help you understand your own because you can't heal what you don't understand and you can't heal what you don't see. Understanding and yourself is the first step and the best step toward freedom. You are not broken. You are not weak. You develop these patterns for a very good reason, and you can learn new ones. If you learn the bad ones and the old ones, you can learn new ones. The prison door has been locked from the inside, and guess who holds the key? That's right, you. All right, guys, like to hear from you. Tell me in the comments what you thought about today. What would you add? What would you take away? Would you agree with? Would you disagree with? Love to hear from you. See you next week.
