EP 1:16 The Myth of Sex Addiction with Ken Howard

Hey, stick around. At the end of this episode, you will hear a commentary by yours truly to take a little deeper dive into the topics we talked about today. This is a new feature we're starting with this podcast. So tune into that. And don't forget the study guide that accompanies this as well. Link in the show notes.

I don't think there is an inherent value in just abstinence from sex or masturbation for its own sake, you know, because it's like giving up something for Lent, you know, give up Doritos for Lent or something. It's kind of— I— the, the idea of a reset or, or being— going back to basics, I think, is a neat idea. But I would go back to basics in the sense of things that are just more nurturing elements, like—

Welcome to the Aftermath Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Dallas Bragg. A former crystal meth addict, now sobriety coach. Join me on my mission to increase awareness around the epidemic of crystal meth among the gay male population and create a repository of resources for current and past addicts, as well as and especially for their loved ones. This is The Aftermath. Trigger warning, this podcast will contain discussions pertaining to drug and alcohol misuse. If you feel triggered to use or relapse, please call SAMHSA's National Hotline at 1-800-662-HELP. Also, if you are new in your sobriety journey and you feel like you could be triggered by discussions around drug, alcohol, and sex misuse, please do not listen to this podcast. All right, now on with the show. Okay, thank you. Welcome to The Aftermath. On this episode, I am so excited. to for our guests. We have a real— I say real as in, you know, as if someone else wasn't real that we've had, but a very experienced, knowledgeable psychotherapist. And I am going to, if I can click the right thing here, introduce him. See, we're all prepared. Here we go. Ken Howard. He's MSW and LCSW-CST. He's been a psychotherapist Specializing in gay men's mental health, individuals and couples for over 32 years. The most experienced gay men specialist psychotherapist and coach in the United States today. He is the founder and director of www.gaytherapyla.com and gaycoachingla.com. His full-time private practice in therapy and coaching from his home in Los Angeles, West Hollywood. He is an AASECT-certified sex therapist. He is a certified psychiatric social worker and California clinical supervisor and a graduate of UCLA and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, where he was adjunct associate professor. He was formerly the clinical director of 2 LA-based HIV/AIDS social service agencies and the author of books. Self-Empowerment: Have the Life You Want, and Positive Outlook: Collected Essays for Living Successfully with HIV Today. He's the host of the popular Gay Therapy LA podcast, which is very, very informative, by the way, and the author of the online course Starting Your Own Business: A Guide to Gay Male Entrepreneurs on Thinkific, thinkific.com. Um, it's a good place to get courses. He and his husband of 22 years live in West Hollywood, California. Among the first 18,000 couples married in California in 2008. Welcome.

Thank you a lot. Yeah, that's how you're just hearing that. I would say I'm living it.

Great. Well, I'll tell you, on the podcast, we start with a wellness check-in. So I would just want to ask you how you're doing today.

I'm doing great. I'm just happy to be here. I'm honored you've asked me. I'm having a good time.

So, well, I really— Good, good. Sorry. I really love your Instagram page, which is how I found you.

Oh, thanks.

I enjoy your content quite a bit. And honestly, when I asked you to be on, I didn't expect you to answer.

Oh, really? Oh, I'm honored to.

Thanks. I'm pleased. Well, among all of your credentials, I have to approach it from our listeners. And I think the first question that comes to mind is, what is sex addiction? And how do I know if I'm a sex addict? Because, you know, the term is thrown around a lot, just like trauma. I'm traumatized by that. You know, it's— there's— we're throwing this term around, I'm a sex addict, but I wanted to know straight from you, what is sex addiction?

Well, you know, you know me, or you don't know me yet, but if you know me, you'll know that, you know, my, my answers usually start out with something flippant. And, you know, and I would say it's a myth. I mean, that's a little bit of an exaggeration. But, you know, certified sex therapists like me, And I think other gay male advocates really have a very, very critical view of the whole topic of sex addiction because it is an area of a lot of exploitation. I mean, you know, therapists have practices. We're self-employed people. We make our livelihood by selling our services. I wouldn't be able to survive as a self-employed person if I weren't somewhat entrepreneurial. Mm-hmm. The overhead is high, and you know, to have any kind of standard of living, you know, it's an expensive proposition. However, that said, you know, me to some degree, but my colleagues even more, like David Lay or Justin Lay Miller or Joe Court or a number of you know leading gay or bisexual male therapists have really brought a lot of critical thinking to sex addiction because. You know, it's, it's very controversial. I mean, sex addiction is not a diagnosis in the Bible of mental disorders. You know, the American Psychiatric Association publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, you know, now on its 5th edition. And, you know, very famously, homosexuality was removed as a mental illness in 1973 after advocacy, certain amount of activism, because, you know, they were confronting the idea that these very old-school Freudian psychoanalysts were considering homosexuality a pathology because your mother was domineering and your father was a wimp, or what, you know, just this crap. It was just not, not true. You know, being gay does not result from a domineering mother. Despite Anderson Cooper, but you know, and it's the same. So we have to have kind of a critical eye to some of that. And because you know sex addiction as a concept does not have objective diagnostic criteria, you know it's one person can say yes you are, the other person can say no you're not. There's no commonly accepted formal diagnostic criteria among.

Committee.

There's no real scientific evidence of its treatment because its treatment is all over the place. You know, things like bringing in a polygraph test and things like that. It's disproportionately diagnosed to men, which is a bit of misandry. It's really disproportionately diagnosed, quote unquote, with gay men. And it's a form of, you know, what I call the ick factor, you know, with gay men sexually, you know, the Pope says, oh, you can be gay, but just don't have sex.

Right.

You know, it's like, I don't mind people being gay, but why do they have to flaunt it? Why do they have to hold their partner's hand walking down? You know, there's a lot of ick and homophobia about gay men's sex in particular. And more conservative women who are dead set against porn really are experiencing what we call in the shrink world abandonment rage. You know, it's, uh, how dare you have any kind of sexual attention even to a pixel on a computer screen except me? You know, I own your genitals and don't you forget it, buddy boy, or I'm gonna take you to the cleaners in a big divorce. So, you know, so we have to start with the idea that it is a problematic term. I think Um, my colleagues do it better than me. Michael Bigarito is a therapist in Washington, D.C., and his colleague Doug Braun-Harvey is a therapist in San Diego. And together they really set the record straight. They wrote a book called Treating Out-of-Control Sexual Behavior: Rethinking Sex Addiction.

Okay.

Because, you know, when people say sex addiction is a myth, which Father David Ley, L-E-Y, wrote a great book called The Myth of Sex Addiction. Um, noted sex therapist, straight guy Marty Klein, has written a lot about the problematic use of that term. But what Michael Vigueredo and Doug Brown Harvey did was answer the, the criti— because the people who do sex addiction treatment would say, okay, fancy pants, if it's not an addiction, what is it? Because I've got guys coming to me and they're crying because they feel like their sexual behavior is out of control. You know, they've got 2 lewd conduct arrests from playing around in public bathrooms. If they get one more, they're going to lose custody of their kids or whatever it is.

Right.

And, you know, it leaves the question, what do we do about that? And I think that, you know, especially guys who are hypersexual— again, the definition of hypersexual is subject to debate. I mean, some people can get laid 3 times a day, and the guy who gets laid 6 times a day says, you know, what's your problem? Are you lazy? Somebody else might get laid twice a year, and if it's not in the context of a heterosexual marriage for procreation, then they label the guy a sinner who's definitely going to hell. So, you know, it's very subjective, but I think it's subjective for that person. If somebody comes to me and says, you know, I'm really distraught because You know, I'm a writer and I missed a deadline and I'm going to be fired from my newspaper because instead of writing my article about, you know, inflation rates in Missouri, I was in a public bathroom, you know, hooking up with, you know, 3 different guys.

Mm-hmm.

And then on the way home, I hooked up with somebody else from Scruff. And then the next morning, you know, and I think that that's kind of the meth talking. You know, bipolar disorder in a hypomanic or manic state will cause hypersexuality or just an increased sexuality. And certainly with meth, you know, meth kind of creates insatiable, it's sometimes sexuality, including, you know, I think especially for bottoming. And that's a problem, you know, but then lots of things are a problem with meth, as we know. you know, teeth, uh, systemic issues, uh, cardiac issues. It's not good stuff, you know.

Yeah.

It's— so I think, you know, what a lot of my colleagues say, and I say too, when a guy is concerned about sexual frequency is we look at it from the standpoint of what is the sex doing? He's self-medicating for something. He's anxious, he's depressed, he's scared, he's traumatized. And, you know, sex is kind of a salve in that case, you know. And then we also talk about sexuality according to what's called the 6 Principles of Sexual Health. Now, I didn't— Doug Brown Harvey and Michael Vigabrito coined that in their book Treating Out-of-Control Sexual Behavior.

Okay.

I took it a step further, taking pains to give them credit, which is only ethical to do, but I took it and I, I applied it more specifically to gay men and on my blog, gaytherapyla.com/blog, I have a, an article called The 6 Principles of Sexual Health as Applied to Gay Men.

Okay.

And, um, we look at what a guy's doing in terms of his sexual practices, and we go through some of the 6 principles, um, you know, consent, honesty, mutual pleasure, prevention of, uh, HIV and STDs, Um, the other— I just need my cheat sheet with that. But, you know, we talk about what's going on with him, and then we compare that to kind of an objective principle. And the set of 6 principles of sexual health is secular. It's not religious or moralistic based in Christian or Catholic or Muslim or whatever. It's more along the lines of things like from the World Health Organization, and it's multicultural.

Okay.

And it's, it's devoid of kind of a moralism because we know there's a lot of moralism about sexual issues from the Pope or the evangelicals or whatever, and makes it more, much more secular, much more humanitarian. You know, if the sex that you're having is within the 6 principles, you're probably doing okay. There's no there there. If one or more are kind of coloring outside of the lines, then we might say, Okay, what's that about? You know, is is there a way that we can bring sexual behavior back under the six principles of sexual health? Can we make it more healthy? Now labeling something healthy versus unhealthy is very. In LA, there's this sex addiction clinic called the Center for Healthy Sex, and I always say, you know, as defined by whom? You know, and it's run by I think a Greek Orthodox. heterosexual woman, you know, with enormous fees. They only really only take rich people in LA, which there are a lot of. And, you know, but it's problematic because, you know, I don't like straight women telling gay men how to live just as an activist. It's kind of like Ebony magazine would not have a white male as editor-in-chief. That's an offense to a magazine for African Americans, you know. And so we bring a lot of critical thinking to say who has standing. Yeah, because it really— I think with gay men, it kind of takes one to know one. You have to— I know a couple of straight women who are experts in HIV, mental health, and gay men's psychology who are right there with all the rest of us. Most of them don't know what they don't know.

Hmm.

Especially when it comes to sexuality, because they're trying to see gay men through a straight woman's lens.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So this kind of, for me, I think could help a lot of listeners feel better, a little bit better about labeling themselves a sex addict, you know, and saying that maybe, maybe my sex is out of control, maybe it isn't. But it's more of defining the motives behind it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's almost always an evasive thing because, you know, it's to, you know, how they say, take your mind off things, you know. So, you know, you have a bad day at work, go get drunk. You have a bad day at work, go get high. You have a bad day at work, go get laid. You know, it's, it's just kind of, it's like taking an aspirin for a headache kind of thing. The problem is, is that it's not as efficient as an aspirin for a headache is relatively harmless and will tend to work. Whereas, okay, going into hypersexuality, you know, as a symptom, a side effect of being artificially stimulated with meth, or doing that in reaction to some kind of life stress. Okay, you can— I don't know if we can say— can we say 4-letter words on here? Yeah, we can.

Yeah, we can.

You know, it's like, you know, you can fuck all day long, but whatever problem originally upset you at work is going to be there when you go back the next morning. You know what I mean? If you, if you have a boss that's a micromanager and you go out and you just get high and screw all night just to get your mind off of it, Mr. Micromanager is still going to be at the office 9 o'clock tomorrow morning. So the idea is, how do you deal with a micromanaging boss? You know, that's how you deal with the problem. You don't just run out and, you know, get high and get laid and just, you know, anesthetize. You know, you could inject yourself with sodium pentothal and anesthetize yourself too, but that's not— taking care of the problem.

Right, right. Okay. Well, you know, most of my listeners, or most of my clients, and anyone who comes to me, who— their main question is, how do I untangle my association of sex with meth? Like, you know, after so many years of doing it together, Yeah. What, how do we, how do we get that separated out?

I think a good crowbar, you know, because, you know, in my, it's a little bit less now at this phase in my practice. You know, I've been a gay men's specialist for 32 years. That's a lot of guys. There was a period. Let me see. Let me think. Around the 2010s or so, like around the recession, where a third of my practice was gay men in recovery from meth.

Wow.

It was just a really big segment need, a subpopulation in the gay male population. There's been other times when job stuff like the recession has been hot. There's just— there's been eras where these guys don't know each other, but they're presenting with the same main issue they want to work on. And, you know, during that time, it was a lot of supporting them, you know, any way I could. And a lot of it, I think, is, you know, the self-medication theory, you know, guys using meth probably to anesthetize themselves against sexual shame, particularly around bottoming or around kink. And So, you know, it's tough because if sex and meth get fused, usually, you know, the answer is abstinence in terms of meth, of just no, you know, excise that from your life. But you don't really excise sex from your life. That's like excising sleep or food or something like that. You know, you want to be able to have a robust, rewarding human gay male sexuality without necessarily needing the meth to do it.

Mm-hmm.

You know, there are millions of gay men who have lots of sex, but meth is— they can't spell meth. You know, they just have no association to it. And a lot of guys, I think, you know, were probably sexually active before they got involved with meth. And we have to kind of say, okay, you were a sexual being before meth came into your life. You'll be a sexual being after Meth is kindly asked to leave the premises.

Mm-hmm.

And reclaiming the idea that you— your sexuality, you know, is lifelong. It's very pervasive, whereas meth is more or less episodic. You know, it's either intermittent or it starts and then it goes and then it stops. And occasional relapses in there sometimes. We've dealt with that, but And I think it takes a while because there's a lot of neurobiology in there. You know, if you look at PET scans of a guy who's used meth, you know, it's, it's dull. It doesn't light up very much because the brain has been so hurt. Then after about 12 months of being clean, you take that same PET scan, it's going to light up like a Christmas tree. It's going to be very colorful. The brain's going to be very robust. How the brain knows that it's 12 nice, neat 12 months, I don't know. But it just for some reason, 12 months is about the sweet spot.

Okay.

And so, you know, boring sex, which can feel boring at first in recovery, you know, your first sex after getting clean is kind of like, really, this is all there is? You know, it's a little lackluster.

Yes.

But then with continued sober sex, after a while it's kind of like, yeah, this is not so bad, I can deal with this, you know, because you're still talking about sexually satisfying experiences. You know, it's— I've— the way I've described it, you know, in television now we have these 72-inch, you know, color TVs with laser or whatever it is. You know, it's like going from that to a little I Love Lucy, old 1952 Philco, you know, with the 6-inch television screen.

Yeah.

But, but it grows, you know, it's like the image is the black and white Lucy in 1952. And then as your recovery grows, your sexuality grows. It kind of grows back like a snake tail or whatever, you know. And, and the biggest thing is just patience, you know.

Yeah.

And asking and having sexual communication with a partner.

Okay.

Um, you know, I even encourage people to just explain it and kind of say, you know, when they first start having sober sex, just be real upfront and say, you know, I'm in recovery. for meth. I'm still kind of practicing, you know, sober sex. If I seem a little off, it's not because I don't like you. It's just because I'm going through that. And I hope I can ask for your patience in that. And their partners usually will say, yeah, whatever, you know, they're just glad to have you, you know, get in the bedroom. So, you know, if people have to go a little slow or they have to make some kind of adjustment because sober sex is not second nature yet. Um, but it— I think it, you know, it comes soon, fairly soon. I'm trying— the average— I'm trying to think what guys have said because I've asked this: how long was it from the time you started sober sex until it really felt great? A lot of them said about 6 months.

Okay, that's good information too.

But I think, you know, if it's more than that, don't beat yourself up. And if it's less than that, well then that's good. Um, but to have patience and just, you know, say to yourself, you— the radical acceptance of, I just have to accept that it's a transition. Yeah, you're transitioning from functioning one way sexually with You know, the substance to functioning sexually without, you know, benefit of pipe or whatever.

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Patience and practice will underscore what you just said for everyone listening, because, you know, coming out of a meth addiction, of course, your emotions are kind of out of whack anyway. Do you feel hopeless that sex will ever be enjoyable again.

Yeah.

And you have this lens about it, an attitude about it. A lot of the men that come to me, and me too, when I was coming out of it, you know, I was like, I'll never have that again, you know. But I did. But like you said, it's patience and finding someone who's communicative and will practice with you. Yeah.

You know, in general, in mental health, I think patience is one of the hardest things to cultivate because we have the least control over it. You know, it's the old joke, you know, God, give me patience and give it to me right now. You know, it doesn't work that way. You know, it's like a kid at Christmas time, you know, I want Christmas. Well, it's December 1st. You've got 3 more weeks to go. So, you know, it's just you say to yourself, how can I take care of myself in the moment, in the meantime? You know, I'm in early recovery. I'm in early sober sex. That said, what's your name again? You know, and you enjoy what you can. You kind of take your kicks where you can get them. Yeah.

Yeah.

Knowing that, you know, meth monkeying with the, the brain chemicals about pleasure, you know, in early recovery, not much can feel pleasurable. Oh, I won the lottery. Oh, okay. I guess I have to get an accountant now. You know, I mean, everything is diminished and it takes a while For— it's like, think of the PET scan. It takes a while for those colors to start to brighten again. It's like a sunrise. But, you know, as you know, it's nice to be on the other side of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If only they could see it. One thing that comes up too is men feeling disconnected with their bodies. after a meth addiction. Do you have any, any maybe somatic advice or any, anything that you help your clients with in terms of getting in touch with how they feel and, and just, you know, in knowing what their body's telling them, I guess?

Well, I think it's, you know, again, that thing about accepting yourself, you know, the idea of the perfectly imperfect. You know, we know demographically that problems with meth can happen sometimes with older gay men who, you know, they might look a little older in the face with wrinkles or skin tone. They might be a little chubby. You know, they're just not the 22-year-old gymnast they were, you know, or whatever, if they ever were.

Yeah.

And so, you know, sometimes meth use is a maladaptive coping for a normal aging process, or it's a maladaptive coping with you know, just not being traditionally attractive. I mean, I've worked with guys who no one would put them on the COVID of GQ magazine. They're just not traditionally attractive in that sense. But, you know, they can find somebody to party and play with, and they get laid just as much as the hot guy does.

Yeah.

And, you know, that gets very existential about, you know, accepting yourself. You know, it's I think it's the old 12-step thing. You know, you have the courage to change the things you can. If you're 40 pounds overweight and your doctor says you've got to lose weight or you're going to have a heart attack or have diabetes, then maybe you go embark on a safe way to lose weight. But, you know, if your nose has a bump like Barbra Streisand and you can't afford a plastic surgeon, nor maybe do you want to, you know, I think you have to go into a self-affirmation You know, it's like Jerry Herman's song from the Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles, where the drag queen at the end of the first act sings, I am what I am, and what I am needs no excuses. You know, and really taking kind of a hard line. If you don't like the little bump on my nose, well then fuck you, I'll find somebody who will. Yeah. You know, and then they meet the next guy, oh, you have such a cute little bump on your nose, can I fuck you? You know, it's just the way it works. And the new course that I'm developing, Improving Sexual Confidence for Gay Men, has a whole section about appearance. And I say, just for fun, think of the people you admire most, either in your family or your friends or famous people. You know, I like Eleanor Roosevelt. She was a pioneering feminist and she did lots for the world. Or I like— Uh, Golda Meir, who, you know, was a strong leader of Israel, or I like Franklin Roosevelt, who helped us out of the Depression. Okay, think about what did they all look like? You know, Eleanor Roosevelt was notoriously not known to be a beautiful lady, but yet is a fantastic figure of the 20th century.

Right.

FDR was in a wheelchair, you know, and older by the time he was president. Was he a GQ model? No. Was he an admirable person? Yes, for the most part. Not for denying Jewish immigrants during the war, but that's another thing. But, you know, but when you think— if you think about the people you admire most and then say, okay, what was their appearance? Obviously, appearance is not the only yardstick, you know, and that's kind of true for everybody. What's also true is just the idea of aging. You know, one of my best friends here in LA, is a former teen heartthrob. I mean, and he was drop-dead gorgeous in movies, in modeling, in soaps, all that stuff. And now he's still okay, a handsome, you know, 65-year-old. But I was at the gym with him recently. He wasn't knocking them down, turning heads, you know, but in his heyday, the place would have come to a standstill.

Wow.

And, and so even, even if you're pretty, pretty when you're young, that still doesn't last. And some people aren't pretty, pretty from— it's a whole range. And you don't need the whole world to, you know, put a poster of you on the wall. You just need some, usually one, sometimes more than one, a polycule, you know, to love you.

Hmm.

And the, you know, the same guy that says, ew, you got a bump on your nose, I'm not dating you. another guy would turn around and say, oh, you got a cute bump on your nose. Can I date you? You know, nose doesn't change, but people's perception— and just, you know, fill in the blank with whatever it is.

Right, right.

Height, weight, uh, ethnicity, just all of that stuff. And, you know, it's just things you can't control. You know, the, the courage to change the things you can, but the serenity to accept the things you can't change, which is really important because I think as you get older, there's more and more things you can't change.

Yeah.

That has to be there. I mean, I wrote Self-Empowerment: Have the Life You Want. I believe in self-empowerment of not seeing yourself as helpless and using your internal resources like drive and ambition and determination and resilience. And then your external resources, like putting on your shoes is an external resource, walking down the block to a 12-step meeting, that is a resource that Jerry used to say. You combine your internal and your external resources to empower yourself to get over some kind of challenge. But as you know, the Svenni Priestess, the wisdom to know the difference.

Hmm.

You know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's part of the issue is coming out of it. So coming out of a meth addiction for me, and many of the people that I help is that we spent a life in a very low self-esteem place. We developed beliefs about ourselves, you know, like the bump on the nose, you know.

Mm-hmm.

My nose is crooked. I need surgery there. So, you know, if I, I believe that it's an ugly part of me, you know, that when, when I'm told that by someone, You know, I align with that because I believe it already and it means more than the man. Then someone else says your nose is beautiful. I tended to ignore that, you know, and really dwell on what this guy said. And I think that—

That's what you see, the selective attention in that.

Yeah.

You know, one guy says, oh, I think it's cute. The other guy says, I don't like that. It's like, and then you go right to, you know, it's like actors, they'll get, you know, 6 rave reviews of their movie and one bad one, they'll be like, what? Why didn't they like it? They zero in. Yeah, you know, they have kind of what's called the negative cognitive bias.

Yeah.

And it's unfortunate because it doesn't feel good. You know, if you emphasize the negative, that doesn't feel as good as emphasizing, you know, the positive and just having kind of a nuanced understanding.

Yeah. So when you're— when we're coming out of the addiction, there's some experts who say, who suggest that we go 90 days, no sex, no masturbation, no porn as a reset. What do you think about that?

I don't know. I would put the reset in a slightly different area. You know, I kind of have this thing, you know, I don't think there is an inherent value in just abstinence from sex or masturbation for its own sake, you know, because it's like giving up something for Lent, you know, give up Doritos for Lent or something. It's kind of— the idea of a reset or being— going back to basics, I think, is a neat idea. But I would go back to basics in the sense of things that are just more nurturing elements like sleep. You know, can you discipline yourself to put an alarm on your phone? You know, you're going to go to bed by 10:00 every night. If the dishes aren't done, all right, you're not going to stay up until 10:40 to do them or whatever it is. You know, you're just going to go to bed. Your sleep, your nutrition, your exercise. I'm a big believer in that. Some interpersonal support. You know, where are you getting your support from? Because I it it also happens in grief or trauma if somebody's been through something. Going back to the basics of saying, you know, what are you eating? Are you hydrated? That's a big one. Are you getting emotional support? Can you stabilize yourself with work? You know, I'm a cancer survivor, and when I was going through daily radiation. therapy, you know, I really looked forward to going to work because work was a way to take my mind off, you know, being sick until I wasn't sick anymore, until it was over. But, you know, work gave me purpose and structure, you know. And if somebody's retired or they don't really have a work 9-to-5 thing, I would just say then with sense of purpose, you know.

Yeah.

If you, if you sold your startup for $1 million and money is not an issue, you don't really have to work. Well, then discipline yourself to work out between 10 AM and noon, have a good lunch, and then volunteer at the animal shelter between 1 and 4.

Yeah.

And then go home and cook a good dinner and watch something you like. And then, you know, it's kind of going back to that, just going back to the basics of life. You know, self-nurturing. Because when you're well rested and you're well fed with particularly good food, and you're well hydrated, and you're well supported, you've got people to talk to either in meetings or buddies or friends or family partners. Even the role of partners in meth recovery I've seen as being a factor. So, you know, single guys who don't have a partner have a little bit harder time, whereas guys that have a partner tend to accelerate the recovery process because they've got kind of a buddy system. They're not responsible for your recovery. We have to be careful about the codependent quality of that. But guys who have either a supportive— one guy who made a pretty fast recovery had a lot of support from his partner and a lot of support from his mom that he was close to who lived nearby. And, and it's that social support system because there, there was research about actually heroin addiction that said that isolation was a big factor, that isolation will make a heroin addiction worse, and lots of social support and social connection will tend to help a heroin addict to recover. And I, I think it carries over into meth as well.

Sure, sure.

More is more, you know.

Yeah, yeah. I love the thought. I love this the idea of the basic needs in the reset. And it's a good checklist to use. You know, I, I had my kids as a means, you know, instead of a partner, I had my kids.

Mm-hmm.

But I want to say to the listeners, I don't think I've ever mentioned this before on the podcast. I also brought a guy in to live with me as a sober, kind of a sober companion.

Uh-huh.

We ended up sleeping together. We were, you know, friends with benefits while we're in the same house, you know.

Yeah.

But he can't— he needed it. We helped each other out because even having the kids there, I didn't feel— I didn't trust myself, you know, because I had the kids in the house when I started using meth, you know, just to say I wouldn't return to it. Um, but, you know, there's so many different options you can take But the support system is so strong, right?

Yeah, that's a big thing, you know, because I'm a clinical social worker, not a psychologist. And, you know, we're— it's a lot the same. We all do therapy, same thing with the marriage and family therapist. But one of the things that clinical social workers are taught, that I was taught and that I teach, you know, is the idea of the person-in-environment theory, that you take the same person and you put them in a different environment, something about them is going to change. If we put you in a time machine and we put you in 1850, you know, you're still Dallas, but you're, you're going to be different because of all the horse and buggies around, you know.

Yeah.

Um, and so, you know, your social support system are like the spokes of the wheel that keep the wheel, you know, strong and rolling along and making those connections. It's also, it's also a factor in homelessness because I've worked with homeless mentally ill for 5 years in Hollywood. And it's not only a lack of housing, it's also a lack of what one article called affiliative bonds, you know, family, friends, peers, work colleagues, some kind of a social group. You know, people don't really— homelessness is kind of almost synonymous with isolation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think recovery can be too, because a lot of people are using when no one's looking, or maybe, you know, one other person, or like a group scene or something. But it's definitely a, a subculture, you know?

Yeah.

Um, there's a lot that goes on not in public view. You know, there's a lot of heterosexual sex in the world. I don't think I've ever seen it live, you know. So it's just kind of, you know, um, and yet we know there's a lot of it because look at all the people around. They got here somehow, hatch from an egg, you know. So it's kind of, um, to— is it— to what degree the party and play scene is strong now, I don't— have my finger on it completely, you know, how it compares now versus, say, 15 years ago. My sense is that it's a little less because I'm getting less calls for that overall. But I think it's still, you know, it's definitely still there and worldwide, you know.

Right.

In England, they call it chemsex. You know, they have a different name for it. And You know, it's kind of sad because it kind of targets our community, especially even though there's, you know, bored housewives and aren't that's all who are meth addicts. I mean, there is that whole population, but, you know, for gay men, it's its own special phenomenon. Yes. You know, that's worldwide.

Yeah. Yeah. I've been receiving messages from men in countries like Pakistan.

Wow.

Where, you know, it's just so taboo. It's the— you could die from being gay. So this is kind of this— it— you— they have Grindr, and now meth is coming in, and it's really like liberating, but it's also adding on this, all this shame cycle. a huge same shame cycle in these men. So it is, it is spreading to different areas where I don't think it has been.

And that's especially tough because, you know, I mean, we see what gay men in America go through with evangelical anti-gay antipathy, right? You know, Muslim anti-gay antipathy, I would say, is stronger. Yeah. You know, evangelicals can't murder gay men yet. They're trying to, but not yet. Muslim governments can.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I take a hard line with that stuff. I mean, you know, I understand there's a problem with, you know, being an Islamophobe or whatever, painting everybody with the same brush. But, you know, there's a huge component of my work, again, in social work, in activism. And, you know, I am old and tired and angry about how gay men are mistreated. And that's the start of my career was really at the height of the AIDS crisis and saying, we, we have to do something. I'm going to do something. I likened it to, you know, a guy signing up to go to war.

Yeah.

You know, if Germany is going to take over Europe, fuck them. I'm going to go over there and stop them.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, a lot of— he had the draft then, so a lot of them didn't have a choice. But, you know, some people were the first in line. Because they were saying, no, if I, if I can use my body and my mind in order to stop this from happening, I'm going to. Especially when you think of, you know, the Allies and the Russians who liberated the concentration camps, you know, and just going in there and saying, okay, this is over. This has gone way too far. This is over. I kind of— I have an interest in World War II history because we learned so much from it, especially for today. And, you know, we, we need gay men to be at their best. We don't need them strung out and drunk and high and all that other kind of stuff. We need them present and voting and speaking out and advocating and doing all that we can because The other side is very clever. You know, they absolutely will take our rights very systematically unless they're stopped. It's like Hitler taking over Europe, saying, oh, he's fine, he's not— that's, that's not anything bad. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it would have been nice if Hitler was stopped before 6 million people were murdered.

Right.

You know, but he wasn't. And if he hadn't been stopped, then there would have probably been 30 million murdered.

Yeah.

So, you know, we can take a lesson about when it's time for oppressed people to take action. And you can't be at your best as a worker and as an activist and as a partner and as a son and brother and scout leader or whatever, you know, if, if the meth is undermining you, it's just, it cuts you off at the knees with just about everything.

Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of a segue into something you were saying before we recorded, which is changing your identity from, you know, I'm a meth addict to, you know, picking up a passion or a cause or a profession.

Yeah, absolutely. And I did— that's another one of those things that before I did this work, I did not predict was going to happen. But the more I did it— I do this with everybody— the more I do it, the more I look for patterns. You know, I have this joke. The older I get, the stronger my opinions get because I see guys making the same mistakes over and over and over again that very reliably fuck up their life. But then I also see what guys do over and over and over again that tends to work. You know, there's certain principles about getting your life together that are remarkably consistent. You know, things like investing in your 401. I mean, that's something I tell 24-year-olds, you know?

Yeah.

But I also think one of the things I noticed with guys in recovery from meth was that sense of identity is very strong in recovery about saying your sense of self, you know, what am I? If, if I'm not in meth addict, what am I? Well, I'm an architect. Well, I'm an actor. Well, I'm a 3rd grade teacher. Well, I'm a magazine editor, you know, and really going into You know, kind of what I was saying with the cancer thing, it, you know, work is very therapeutic when you're in recovery because you, you focus on a task. And, you know, not only does that make you get a good job at work where you might get a raise or at least good performance, or if you're running your own business, you know, I've worked with guys in recovery from meth who've grown their own businesses, and that was very key. You know, one guy became, you know, CEO of his own small business, and he didn't have time to use because he was wearing a lot of hats. But because he was kind of focusing on his work and his partner and his work and his partner, those 2 things were enough to kind of really keep meth at bay.

Yeah.

You know, I don't have time to use. I have my 4th quarter financials to develop. I don't have time to use. I have dinner with my husband tonight.

Hmm.

You know, you just, you could say that you don't have time. Nobody really has time for something that, you know, is not nurturing. But, you know, I, but the other thing in that I think is that you do have to have what I call selective hedonism. You know, if meth is not your vice anymore, something's got to be, you know, it's got to be something that you point to that's pleasurable where, you know, okay, you're not using meth anymore, but, you know, you're watching every single episode of every Real Housewives program on TV, you know, something, something you— because you can't go from, you know, the pleasure centers in your brain being stimulated with meth to no pleasure at all because existentially that's miserable.

Yeah.

Instead, you have to just kind of redirect. I see it in LA all the time. The, the guys in recovery in LA have a very robust social group. You know, they go to the gay night at Six Flags or the gay day at Disneyland or bowling leagues. You know, it's— you know, they have so much— I have this joke, you know, they have so much fun it makes me want to go out and put a needle in my arm because I'm not in recovery. It's— I've worked with so many guys and used so many phrases it sounds like that, but I'm actually not. But, you know, it's— I get jealous of that because a lot of guys are very lonely. And they might not know that, you know, a lot of gay 12-step scenes in a lot of cities are, in addition to being healthy for recovery, they're also social opportunities. And so social opportunities for gay men is a really unmet need, particularly as you get middle-aged.

Yeah.

When you're 25, it's easier. When you're 45, it's a lot harder to go out and hang out with your buds. Yeah.

Agreed. Agreed. Wow. If you were to suggest some books for my listeners to read, what would you— Oh, no, your books sound, you know, a lot of my readers also are living with HIV because it goes hand in hand with crystal meth addiction. The books, your books that you've written, you talked about the course that you have, and those would be interesting, I think, for us to to delve into. But yeah.

Yeah, I'm just kind of, you know, it's therapy and coaching sessions are expensive, you know, in a high cost of living area like LA. I know the fees for that are high and it's out of reach for a lot of guys, at least on a weekly or biweekly basis. So I developed the blog and the podcast is just kind of out there for free, you know. Um, but also You know, a good business manager will say you're doing an awful lot of work for free. And, you know, the wisdom of that. So, what I decided to do was to develop a series of courses where it's not as expensive as having individual sessions, but it's also not free, which is a problem on my end. So, we just kind of split and say offer courses where you can get the content I might be talking with somebody in session about, but in a course, you know, that is—

Yeah.

Less than the cost of one session. So, um, it's not interactive, which is— we might develop like some— I'm thinking of doing like some kind of free group chat on Instagram or something because there are so many people, gay men, you know, who just need connection.

Yeah, yeah.

I swear, sometimes it, you know, it's, it's like the straight guy who hires the call girl and he doesn't even want to have sex with just wants to talk. There's a sliver of my practice that is that, and I'm happy to do that. But I'm also aware that it shows you the need for social connection. But starting your own business was the first one about the emotional and the practical side that you need to really learn from someone who started their own business, you know, 22 years ago. And You know, but then also the practical stuff. You know, I had to learn what a financial planner does. I had to learn what a CPA does. I had to learn QuickBooks. I had to, you know, all the stuff, whether you're running a shoe store or a restaurant, you know, or a therapy and coaching practice, or you sell vitamin supplements, you know, it would just very vocational. And then the other one, because so many guys have such sexual concerns. I had a couple last night who was having problems with sexual infrequency, and I was just kind of going there, you know, using a lot of very frank sexual terms. And they just look at me and they go, you're awfully frank, you know. But a lot, a lot of therapists don't do that. A lot of, a lot of therapists will not talk about sex as such. It's a problem because it means they're underserved. So I'm doing the, the game and improving sexual self-confidence. I didn't think about this actually, because I was thinking in general sexual self-confidence, But now that I think about it, guys in recovery from meth could probably use that because they're not confident about sober sex.

For sure.

You know, and, and bringing it back to the sober, to the sensual.

Yeah, well, that was, that was going to be kind of my, my, my big question. My big ending question was, you know, the sober sex part is many times we get into a meth addiction because we feel insecure about performing, or we can't bottom, or, you know, the list goes on. So, you know, meth kind of bridged that. But now we're thinking about sober sex. And it's that, like you're saying, that confidence and reframing it. So if, you know, I think your book would be very helpful for listeners to get. Anything you would say along those lines?

Well, it's, you know, because My book is, is actually not for, you know, so much is specifically for gay men. I always say out of LGBT, I'm the G, you know, because lesbians have their own psychology. Trans people need their own support. It's, it's— we lump it all together as all gender and sexual minorities. But I think gay men really need support. Gay men need extra support lately because there's this movement You know, I'm very left of center. However, the extreme far left with radical feminists are trying to say gay white men are part of the problem. And I understand, you know, about white privilege. I understand about male privilege. That is a problem. You know, the racism, the sexism, that's obvious. The problem is, is that, you know, gay white men are still an oppressed minority. You know, they are literally beaten to death in various places of the country. Every single year, there are literally gay white men beaten to death. And as long as that's true, we're an oppressed minority, or as long as we're HIV positive, we're an oppressed minority. And so we— they need, you know, our own resources that are not about LGBT, you know, all things to all people. Because when you— I wrote a blog article called The Problem with LGBT Terminology. When it's everything, it's nothing. Uh, you know, it has to be specified or else it is understood. It's kind of like my defense of lesbian bars. Lesbians want a woman-empowered environment free of fucking patriarchal energy. And I understand that. I would never set foot in a lesbian bar because without being— I think even if I were invited, because I would worry about what the other— and by the same token, I don't like bachelorettes and gay men's bars. You know, that is a male—

Yeah.

space, you know. You know, not— as I say, as part of the leather community, not all masculinity is toxic. We have, we have to look at positive masculinity, and we also have to look at toxic femininity, which, you know, is the misandry that oppresses men, including gay men. So, you know, so Self-Empowerment: Have the Life You Want is a nice, you know, overview self-help book. It's fairly short, it's fairly cheap. Um, But I think for your listeners, in terms of reading content, okay, if it's my stuff, it's the Gay Therapy with Ken Howard, LCSW, CST podcast, which is 144 episodes now. The blog articles, which is hundreds, there's so many blog articles in there. My website hosting is, you know, very full. Um, but it's not my stuff, because I'd like to quote a lot of other people's stuff that I like to use. I mean, I think my favorite Well, I've got to pick one favorite. Well, we talked about treating out-of-control sexual behavior.

Yes.

Vigorito and Braun Harvey. Hard to spell. That, I think, is a good one about sexual frequency and sexual health concerns. There's kind of just a life management book called The Success Principles by a guy named Jack Canfield. C-A-N-F-I-E-L-D. That one's really good because it's very inspirational. I read Success Principles with my— hold it in my left hand, in my right hand I wrote notes because it was so inspiring. And there's just so many stories in there about things like persistence and resilience and empowerment. And he's a good guy. He edited the whole Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He was so good. For a lot of guys, I think, in recovery— dating myself— but, you know, the '80s kind of guru Louise Hay.

Oh yeah.

Her book, You Can Heal Your Life. That, that was such a great support to me when I was younger. It really— some of it's controversial, you know, this idea that you can kind of think your way out of illness. That was controversial, but most of it is great. And then I think, um, You know, for finances and getting your life together, The Wealthy Spirit by Shelley Campbell is a really good book. It's got an affirmation of the day, an inspirational quote, and then a little essay. 365 essays for financial stability. And that can feel very empowering when people panic because they don't have enough money or they're facing bankruptcy or they're really upset about their financial situation. Shelley Campbell's book is very Specifically inspiring about how to stabilize your finances, just like Louise Hay's book, You Can Heal Your Life, is about improving your sense of loving yourself.

Yeah.

And then mine with self-empowerment, it's how to go from where you are to where you want to be in your domains, your health, your mental health, your sexuality, your spirituality, and your sense of community. And, you know, it's, it's kind of an overview, but that was based on what, my first 18 years of practice. I just kind of took—

Oh, okay.

Lessons learned. I'm trying to think of other books. There's a lot of relationship books too. Esther Perel's book Mating in Captivity is a fantastic book about relationships. And then my colleague, Alan Downs in Palm Springs who wrote The Velvet Rage, you know, which is such a gay men's classic book and beautiful title because I think it is about a treatise of what happens to us. You know, it's kind of no wonder that we have meth addicts who are gay men because of all the oppression we go through. It's surprising we don't have axe murderers with all the oppression we go through.

Right.

But, you know, We have to do something about that. We can't just be victims of the oppression. We have to fight back and say, uh-huh, I hear you now, fuck you, you know, and really come back, you know, not to crumble. I think a lot of guys, gay men in the throes of meth, they've been kicked down by oppression and being down on the ground and crawling around, you know, is part of the addiction. And part of recovery is standing back up again and say, Well, that's that. Where are we going? And, you know, be on your way, you know.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. Yeah. Anything I missed that you think would be important to—

well, you know, a lot of guys have multiple relationships in their support system. I mean, I've talked about the importance of a partner if you have one, or supportive parent or supportive sibling. I think the combination of group support in terms of 12-step meetings, you know, they're not ideal. You know, some of the gay 12-step meetings in LA, you know, people can be catty, people can be judgy. Somebody relapses, it's like, oh, her again. You know, it can be mean because it's supposed to be about peer support. And some of these queens are not taking the idea of peer support seriously. They're just using it as another social competition, like it's RuPaul's Drag Race, you know.

Right.

Hopefully group support. And then the relationship to a sponsor, I think, is incredibly important. Listen to your sponsor. They've been there. You know, they always say, choose a sponsor who has what you want. You know, it's like your sponsor has 5 years clean. Really? I have 5 days clean. All right, well, then listen to everything he says.

Yeah.

If you want 5 years, you're gonna have to do what he does. If he wears a pink shirt on Tuesday, you wear a pink shirt on Tuesday. It just everything, you know, tell me what you did to get 5 years because I want 5 years too.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, coaches, sobriety companions, one thing I've noticed again as a theme is more is more, you know.

Oh yeah.

If going to one meeting a week is good, going to 3 meetings a week is better. If having one friend who's Somebody you can call when you're having cravings. Okay, 6 friends you can call is even better. You know, there's very much more is more.

Yeah, yeah, I like that.

Like that.

Well, Ken, I have really enjoyed this.

I do.

I took a lot of notes.

Cool. I keep, I keep imagining, you know, it's funny, I keep imagining the listeners out there and just You know, I sometimes say to clients, I wish you believed in yourself as much as I believe in you.

Yeah.

Because that really— it really has to start with that because it's so, you know, it's painful to be in this situation. You have a lot of guys in the throes of this saying, you know what, this sucks. And I always say to a guy on my first session with them, We have one job on our first session, and that's to restore hope that the things that you brought, the problems that brought you in, can be mitigated, maybe not completely solved. You know, somebody has a very serious terminal issue. All right, it's not about cure, it's about adaptive coping. And say, okay, be that as it may, how can I have a quality of life regardless of a huge stressor or loss? If they've been widowed or if they've been traumatized, you can never become a person who was not traumatized. You know, if you were sexually abused between the ages of 6 and 12, you can't erase that with a time machine. But, you know, you can learn to cope with that and say, okay, what is good living for somebody who went through hell 20 years ago? Yeah, it definitely is an important question. Yeah. Of saying, you know, or what is life after death?

Right.

We start with the idea that there is one. Yeah, that's, you know, that's an easy— there is one.

Yeah.

We start with that. I think you're okay.

Yeah. Yeah. This is some good questions. And we didn't get into kinks. We don't have time, probably. But I listened to your, your podcast episode about kinks. And I would suggest the listeners listen to that too, because I really— your, your viewpoint, your take, your instructions are unique. Um, because, you know, we explore kinks in meth addiction. We explore these kinks that we wouldn't normally. And so then when we come out of that, we think it's— we're going to relapse, or we think there's shame around it. Yeah. But we still— we're still interested, you know?

Yeah. Um, and some guys, you know, do things when they're high that they don't really want to do in sober.

Yes.

Other time, other guys want to do the same kink things, but, you know, they have a shame around it, and the meth disinhibits the shame. It anesthetizes the shame enough to do it. I think you have to kind of really, you know, stick your flag in the ground and just affirm, my body is my own. You know, when you're with a consenting adult, you know, my body is my own. And what I call a healthy haughtiness of saying, yeah, Yeah, I like it. Got a piss down my throat. So, and, right, you know, I mean, it really kind of just assert if that's what you're into, you know, this saying, don't, don't yuck my yum. If that's not okay for you, okay, that's fine. You don't have to do that. But if somebody else wants to do that, yeah, I'm there. Because you know what? That's fun.

Yeah.

And whatever it is, you know, whatever kink, whatever it is, as long as it's, you know, consenting, you're not doing it in a public place where cops gonna give you a lewd conduct arrest, you know, things like that. That kind of thing is sabotage. Yeah.

Don't yuck my yum.

Yeah. Whatever it is, you know, because we all have some kind of yum that another person—

yeah.

Just being gay, a lot of people would yuck that. Yeah. Yeah. Regardless of the kink stuff, they don't. Yeah. Yeah. But maybe we can all come back. We'll talk about—

yeah, I would love— I would love to have that conversation for sure. Thank you. Thank you so, so, so much for this.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's fun.

Yeah.

I hope somebody found something helpful.

Yes.

I hope so.

Yeah. No, I think, I think you're, you have helped a lot of people through this. So I appreciate it.

So good. Thanks again.

Yeah. Thank you. And for the listeners, if you could remember to like and rate and review the podcast, that will get it in front of more people. Who need to hear this podcast. Also, if you'd like to be connected, we have a Facebook page, The Aftermath. We have a Discord server called The Aftermath, a website called theaftermath.net. And also with each week, we are doing a supplementary blog, working blog post that will take the concepts from the, the blog, I mean, the podcast, and turn it into journal prompts, reflective questioning, sometimes guided meditations, just so you can kind of incorporate and retain more of what we talk about in the podcast. So check that out at theaftermath.com or my website, drdallasbragg.com. That being said, we will see you next time. Welcome to the first post-commentary of The Aftermath Podcast. I guess in Sports terms, this would be what, the after-show debrief? I don't know sports, I have no idea. Something like that, you can imagine. So we're going to try this and I want to hear your feedback. If you just are already closing down the podcast and don't want to hear it, or if you do listen to it and wish that it had more, please let me know. Tell me in the comments on YouTube, the comments on Spotify, you can email me. Call me, look me up on any of the plethora of social media outlets you can find me on. This episode with Ken Howard was a good one. I have found it very, very, very, very enlightening and informative. So I wanted to dig into a couple of concepts that I know that you guys are reaching out to me about, and that is sex addiction. If you remember in episode, I think it was, I don't know, four, I guess four with Robert Joseph. He talked about the fact that you know sex addiction is not actually a diagnosis. It's not found in the DSM. The what diagnostic? I can't I can't remember what it is now. Sorry guys. But the DSM has all of the the diagnoses for Psychological mental illness. Anyway, sex addiction is not a thing according to that. So there are some, you know, some theories around that, and we could get it— go down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories about legal implications and insurance, all that kind of thing. But we're not going to do that today. I did want to say, you know, in the past, for me personally, I called myself a sex addict. And it was when I got sober from crystal meth, I had nothing left to kind of fill those voids, had nothing left to anesthetize my shame, as Ken says in the podcast. And so I turned to sex. I became a sex worker, but I called myself a prostitute. I do think there is a difference. Um, you know, I think there are sex workers who There are people like me who were selling my body because it made me feel good. It replaced the dopamine spikes I was getting by using crystal meth. I needed money, yes, but I also found it very easy to buy a used massage table off Craigslist and suddenly, voilà, I'm a masseur. And so, I proceeded to to to go that route. So I want to frame this discussion by saying, and and by the way, I have notes for your benefit. I have notes to keep you on track today. But I do want to frame the this the the commentary here by saying that what's right for one isn't for another. What's wrong for one isn't for another. Everything, especially in the recovery. industry, in the community, when your sobriety is conditional to you, individual, and related to your own thoughts and behaviors and backgrounds and what motivates you. You know, like I've said before, for instance, one, one of my clients can use poppers and it doesn't trigger him to use crystal meth. Another client can't use poppers. So you can't just paint this broad stroke and say, you can't do this, period. No matter who you are, what addiction you're coming from, what's your background, what it— you know, you just, you have to use this. You have to be very fine-tuned into the person. You know, there are some techniques. There are some, you know, things that are tested and proved by science to work. I get that. However, even those techniques may not be the best technique for you. So I just want to frame that, because when I say— when I talk about hypersexuality, when I talk about going out and doing things in public, and you can't, you know, in doing fetishes and kinks and stuff like that, I am not saying those things are I am saying those things were bad for me, and I'm saying those— these things can be bad for you based on why you're doing them. What's the motivation behind them? Just like Ken says in the podcast, one, one man's baseline of sex, sexual activity, could be 6 times a day. To another man, that could mean hypersexuality. But you can't just look at a number and say he's a sex addict.

Right.

Or you can't look at your number and say, I'm a sex addict. So what you have to boil it down to is most of the time you're not addicted to the sex. You're addicted to the feeling that it gives you, what it's numbing for you. You're addicted to the behaviors of it. There's a lot of things that if you start peeling back the layers, you figure out. Like for me, I hadn't done any of the work when I got sober on myself. The work that went back 30, 40 years. I was still searching for affection and connection and approval and connection. I said connection already. A lot of connection. I was searching for a lot of things outside of myself and it was hinged on the behaviors of others and who wanted to have sex with me and who didn't. That's what I replaced shooting up meth with. So in that sense, I was a prostitute and I was I was playing off of an addiction. I don't know that it was sex though. So I hope that's clear. Is this negatively affecting your life is the question to ask. So a way to see whether or not hypersexuality is affecting you or it's something that you need to address is, like he said in the, in the podcast as well, is Is this negatively affecting my life? Am I missing work? Am I calling out of plans with family and with friends? Am I staying in bed so long because I'm watching pornography? What is it that— can you see signs and symptoms of where it's negatively damaging your well-being? If that's the case, there's an issue to look into.

Right.

What happens when we label ourselves as a sex addict, then we start behaving as a sex addict, and we become a sex addict? Because we are attached to an identity. And that's what I did. Once I came out of my meth addiction, I was like, oh, okay, well, I was a sex addict, I think, before I was a meth addict. So since I'm still a sex addict, I'm going to do these things because it's I'm at least I'm not using meth, you know, but it still was— I was still sick. So the big question that, that you have as listeners, that when you message me and you call in, and one thing I want to extract from this episode as well is sober sex. And here are some things I want you to realize. So it is so much easier To wire your brain in sexually, to like certain things like porn, to like meth, because the dopamine is so high and it imprints, right? It creates such a high emotional— it's like a high emotional event in your life, like a graduation or a wedding or when your child is born or divorced or something like that. There are certain days certain times that are imprinted into your nervous system that you cannot ever forget. And those things wire your brain in a certain way. So the same thing happens when you are having sex with— when you're having chemsex, right? So in order to rewire the brain, it takes some of the following.

Patience.

It takes some personal grace. It takes you putting in the work. It takes you dropping expectations. And many times it takes finding a practice partner. So we have patience, number one. This is not going to happen overnight. Ken says 6 months is the typical period of when you can expect to like sober sex again. Of course, that's just a number. That's going to be individual to you. Six months is actually not that long. I don't think. I think it takes a little bit. May a lot of times it takes a little bit longer, depending on how long you've used. But the point is, is that it's like it's like gaining and losing weight, right? It's so much easier to gain weight, but to lose weight, what does it take? It takes patience. It takes consistency, and it takes discipline. Those are the things also that it's going to take. If you want to rewire your brain to like sober sex, to really enjoy it, to redefine intimacy. But be patient with yourself. It's going to take some time. Nothing in life is permanent. It's all temporary. This is a temporary stage in my life where I'm learning how to like sober sex again. I am currently learning how to like sober sex. Those are some sentences you can use instead of, this is taking so long, I'm never going to have sober sex again, why is sober sex so boring, I'm not going to like it, where is my libido? I mean, you, you're focusing on the states of being that you don't want instead of focusing on the states of being you want, which is enjoying Sober sex and having an intimate experience again, and liking it and loving it and wanting to do it. Right? Patience. Next is grace. Giving yourself some grace. This is trial. It's error. The first time you have sober sex, it could be messy. It could be blah. It could be a lot of things. But you are giving yourself the space. To try. You're giving yourself the space to say, I have put my body and my mind and my spirit through hell. And so it's, I am now gently moving myself forward to enjoying a better life. And in that life is going to include sex. So provide the space and the grace for yourself to try and fail and keep trying and keep learning and wake up every day with a positive attitude about it, right? Third is putting in the work. It's going to be work. Listen, I have to— when, when I started this process, this journey, um, I could not get an erection. And you probably, most of you, from what I understand, from what I hear, Can relate to that, right? You're— not only is your libido gone, but sometimes your parts don't work, right? And so, to— for me, I, I— if I looked at porn, like even the 5 seconds of porn, all of a sudden I'm at full mast, right? And so if I can wire my brain to get hard while watching porn, I can wire my brain to get hard while not watching porn. Right? It's just as hard. It's going to be a longer, a more difficult process. Maybe it won't be for you. It was for me. It was daily working on this. I would— I had to cut porn out altogether, and I had to get into my mind and imagine. I imagined the perfect man for me. I imagined the perfect scenario, where we were, how it felt, where we had been that The night before, you know, leading into the sexual encounter. And then I started to explore my body. What did I like? What did I don't like? And I was actually surprised. Oh, I didn't know I liked to be touched there. And wait a minute, I always thought I wanted my nipples played with, and I didn't. Well, I do, but I'm just— that's an example. But there was— it wasn't nipples, it was something else. I don't remember now, but there was something that I thought that I liked that I told guys I was into. And then when I started experimenting with it, I wasn't. It was not my nipples. So anyway, it takes some time to rediscover yourself. What do you like? What do you not like? But also to get the— to get sex, to get your parts working in a way that you're turned on by a different type of sex. So you got yourself into this, you gotta get yourself out. Dropping expectations. So when you go into this with expectations of how long it's going to take, when you go into this with expectations of what sober sex is going to be like and what isn't going to be like, you're just setting yourself up to be disappointed, and, and you're setting yourself up for failure. So drop all expectations of it. Take it day by day. Find a practice partner. Luckily, I had this— someone who gave me space Understood, because guess what? You also, in going back to giving yourself grace, sometimes you have to do things in the meantime that are also temporary to get you where you want to go. I had to watch porn to get hard to even have sex with somebody. That's the way it was. Luckily, I had a partner. Well, a sexual partner, a a person wasn't a. A relationship partner, but someone who gave me the space, who understood my— where I was coming from and let me do that without being offended, without saying, hey, why aren't you— why aren't you turned on by me? Um, you know, and all those kinds of things. But we worked on it together, and I was okay with the fact that right now, today, I had to watch porn to have sex with him. Tomorrow I may only have to watch less. I could watch less porn. I don't know. But you have to kind of just take it day by day and be okay with incremental results. So drop the expectations of it all going to be perfect and what it's going to look like. Now eventually, yes, I did have to get out away from porn. Eventually I went into sexual transmutation where I didn't have sex at all. I took the sexual energy and I did some breathwork and I moved this shit around and I used it for other things. So it's been 6 years of trial and error, um, and I'm still not where I need to go. Listen, I mean, I'm getting up there, so sometimes I have to pop a Cialis anyway. And not that I even have sex very often, but sometimes I do have to get some help there. But I think it's that partly is my age, right? Um, but partly is, is the aftereffects of meth. But, um, it's It's less and less that I have to do that. So I'm happy about that. So patience, grace, put in the work, drop expectations, find a practice partner. Those are my top 5 suggestions for getting back into sober sex. I hope that you enjoyed this commentary and add-on to the episode, and I do look forward to hearing from you. All right, we will see you next time.