Dallas Bragg describes how addiction to methamphetamine and chemsex shattered the false identity he'd built his whole life, revealing patterns he kept repeating: the same relationships, the same job losses, the same unhappiness. Recovery, he argues, isn't learning something new but unlearning the beliefs that trapped him, and he urges people early in recovery to find the gifts hidden in that painful process.
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.
