EP 3:20 Chemsex Recovery: Anger Stage

Chemsex, sexualized drug use among men who have sex with men, typically involving methamphetamine, mephedrone, and GHB, among others. Chemsex misuse is a worldwide epidemic that needs attention, dialogue, and hope for those lost in it, which is the purpose of The Aftermath Podcast. Please note the views expressed by the host and guests on this podcast are not to be taken as medical advice, and the content around sex and drug use can be triggering.

All right, welcome back to The Aftermath Podcast and this solo Don't forget, there's a supplemental study guide that goes along with this episode. The link is in the show notes. Please remember to like, subscribe, and rate the podcast so we can get the algorithm to place it in the ears and eyes of those who need it most. All right. So last week we walked through the denial stage. Denial is a part of the 5 stages of grief that I propose many men go through along their chemsex recovery journey. This is not research-based. This is Dallas's anecdotal view. View of the world. We talked about the filter that has to come off. We talked about the comparison trap that keeps you stuck and the evidence list that finally breaks that spell of denial. So once that filter has been lifted, you start to comprehend the totality of what you've done and where your life is going. And you admit that you have to quit. Some people, I think there's some programs who call it the You admit your life has become unmanageable, right? But when you have to make this admission, it may make you angry. So welcome to stage 2. This one is hot. This one is loud and it is unfair. And if you don't move through it carefully, it will keep the embers of chemsex hot in the background. And that fire can be ignited easily. And that's going to prevent you from moving through the subsequent stages. So you could stay here for a while. All right. So what anger actually is. Anger gets a bad reputation overall, but in recovery spaces too, especially in the gay community, because we're, we're, so many of us are taught that early on that anger was unsafe. You know, my, my dad used to say, don't, you know, don't cry or I'll give you something to cry about. Right? Anger was ugly or masculine in the wrong way. It's a thing to be managed, minimized. Prayed away. But anger is typically judged as a sign of emotional dysregulation. However, I feel the imbalance stems from a misunderstanding of the value of anger in this process. Anger in grief is different. Anger is typically a secondary emotion to fear. So this stage is about fearing the notion That we will never get to go back to chemsex. We will never get to feel that way again. We will never enjoy sex again, right? When you are anger— angry in the grief of chemsex recovery, you are not being immature and you're not being ungrateful for your sobriety. You are not failing the program. You are responding correctly to the discovery that something real has been taken from you. Anger is the part of grief that says, that mattered. This was not nothing. I am not just going to walk away from this, pretend it did not happen. This was not just about a chemical. The problem is not the anger itself. The problem is what most men will do with it. We either bottle it up, become depressed, or we weaponize it, burn down our relationships, or numb it and reach for the substance that started the whole damn problem in the first place. It's that cycle, right? Anger needs to be moved through the body. It's asking to be witnessed. It is asking how to be expressed. So how did anger show up for me? So in the last podcast, I told you about my eviction. That's the Standing on the curb in shock, and what did I did not tell you was what was next, right? After the shock came rage, and that rage did not point itself at me or meth. The rage pointed itself at the people who love me: my mama, my sister, the two people who had spent years keeping me alive while I made decisions that should have killed me. Somehow. I made the eviction their fault. The two people who had picked me up at hours I cannot remember, fed me when I had not eaten in days, paid my bills, got me new tires, prayed for me when I was unreachable. I remember once yelling at my mom on the phone because she wouldn't pay my electricity bill. My friends, quote unquote, and I stole a bunch of extension cords and we Plugged one into the neighbor's outdoor outlet on their outdoor patio, run it over to my condo, and we lit everything up in my condo, all the lamps, because we needed to see well enough to inject. So how ungrateful I was in my chemically induced state, how furious I was with them for interfering, for cutting me off, for setting boundaries, for not letting me destroy myself in peace. I was a grown man throwing a hissy fit, as they say, because my candy had been taken away from me like a child. Why could I not just enjoy myself? Why could I not just live the life I wanted? Why was the world so cruel as to make the thing that felt the most alive be the thing that killed me? That is what anger and grief looks like when you do not understand what it is. It misfires. It points at the wrong targets. It punishes the people closest to you 'cause they are the safest to punish. The anger was right that something had been taken. The anger was just wrong about who took it. So who, what are the targets of anger? So when you start to move out of denial and into anger, the anger will start looking for places to land. Right? And it's not very picky. So almost anyone in your life is going to do, usually those closest to you first. You will be angry at your dealer. He sold you poison, called it medicine, right? He smiled while charging you for your own destruction. He pretended to be your friend while watching you fall apart. You will be angry at the guys who introduced you to the scene. They handed you a pipe, called it freedom. They knew what was coming. They wanted something outta you, either your dick or your hole, and let you walk into it anyway. You will be angry at the community itself, right? It welcomed you, embraced you, made you feel chosen, and then watched you drown or G out. That same circle that gave you belonging gave you the means of your own undoing. You will be angry at yourself. You'll be angry for being so hungry for connection that you walked into it willingly, for wanting to be wanted so badly that you would pay this price for it. Damn, this is hitting hard for me. And I wrote the damn thing. Okay, stop. Breathe. For ignoring every red flag because the high overrode every alarm. You will be angry at your family for not understanding and angry at the family for understanding too well and angry at your family for being there and angry at your family for not being there sooner. You will be angry at your coach, your therapist, your sponsor, your counselor, the people trying to help you because they are asking you to grieve something. They didn't lose. They're asking you to do work that feels impossible from where you're standing. It's angering. It's frustrating. You will be angry at recovery itself, the slowness of it, the patience it requires, at the way it asks you to feel things that you spent years numbing. You don't want to do it. At the way it strips you of the only tools you knew How to use. You'll be angry at the gay world, at the way it produced this scene in the first place, at the way it celebrated it, at the way it still celebrates it on the apps, in the parties, in the back rooms, while you're over here trying to just rebuild your life. Leave me alone. You'll be angry at God or the universe, whatever the hell you call the force that arranged your life this way, for making you gay in a world that made you ashamed, for wiring you for hunger, That the scene fed, for asking you now to put it all down without giving you a clear picture of what comes next. That's where we get stuck. Listen, all of this anger is real. All of this anger has a point, and all of this anger is dangerous if it does not get processed. So there are 2 wrong turns men typically take with anger in this stage. The first wrong turn is suppression. You tell yourself you should be grateful, you should be focused on the positive, you should not be wasting energy on anger 'cause it will not change anything, right? So you push it down, push it down. You smile in your meetings, you say the right words to your coach, you say the right words on social media, you journal about gratitude, and underneath that anger is sitting there fermenting and rotting and turns into depression. Or it turns into sudden explosive relapse. Suppressed anger does not go away. Suppressed anger becomes the next thing. It becomes the depression of stage 4. It becomes the resentment that poisons your relationships. It becomes the bitterness that sits behind your eyes when you smile and look around the room in the meetings. It becomes the relapse that you cannot explain. Because from the outside, everything's going so well. That second wrong turn is weaponization. You let the anger run the show. You text your dealer at 3 in the morning telling him off. You tell him exactly what you think of him, right? You confront the friend who introduced meth to you. You burn that bridge in flames. You scream at your family. You quit your job. You blow up your relationship. You take the heat of your anger and you spray it everywhere like a flamethrower 'cause you cannot stand to feel it sitting in your chest. Weaponized anger gives you the temporary illusion of relief, and it distracts you from actually doing the work. It feels like you are doing something by doing that. It feels like you're taking your power back, right? But it leaves a trail of damage behind it, even more damage. And the damage becomes more grief. But there is a third option here. There is a way to move anger without suppressing it, Without weaponizing it in that way is what this stage is asking you to learn. So underneath all of the misfired anger, there is a deeper anger that's completely righteous. You have a right to feel it. You are right to be angry that you grew up in a culture that made your sexuality a source of shame. You are right to be angry that you were given so few models of healthy gay manhood. You are right to be angry that the first place that welcomed you to— was fully— welcomed you fully was a place that also poisoned you. You are right to be angry that this scene continues to operate openly while men die in apartments, saunas, hotel rooms, alone, holding pipes, getting G'd out, getting taken advantage of sexually. You are right to be angry that you had to figure this out yourself. You are right to be angry that the recovery world is still catching up to chemsex as a distinct issue. You are right to be angry that so few people understand what you actually went through, what you actually lost, and what you actually have to grieve. This anger is not a problem. This anger can be fuel. This anger, if channeled correctly, is exactly what will keep you out of the scene when that pull to use returns. This anger, channeled correctly, is what builds your new identity. This anger says, I'm not fucking going back. Because I see clearly now what was done to me and what I was doing to myself. The work is not to get rid of anger. The work is to name it and use the energy it gives you to build something instead of burn something. Anger needs to move through the body. It cannot be talked out. It cannot be reasoned out. It cannot be journaled into submission, although journaling helps. Move it physically. Run, box, lift heavy, swim, yoga, get on a bike, take a long walk. Do something that demands your body's full attention and lets that chemical residue of rage burn through your muscles.

Yell.

Where no one can hear you, like your car with the windows up parked in an empty lot, the shower, the water running, the pillow you scream into. Let the sound out. Let the throat unclench. The voice is part of the body. The voice needs to release the pressure too. Write unsent letters, one to your dealer, one to the man who introduced you to it, one to the version of yourself who walked in willingly, one to the version of yourself who keeps wanting to walk back in. Do not hold back. Say everything in these letters. The point is not the letter. The point is the release. Talk to a witness. Find someone who can witness you, not somebody who's going to fix you, not somebody who's gonna give you all the answers. Somebody who can hear the rage and not be afraid of it, not correct it. Hopefully a coach or a therapist, somebody, a sponsor, a trusted friend. The anger needs to be witnessed, held in a container. Anger spoken out loud To a calm witness loses a lot of its charge, its voltage. It becomes manageable. It becomes information. It's expressed. Just stay away from the targets while you are processing this. So you may have to reserve yourself. You might have to isolate. You might have to step back. Do not text your dealer. Do not confront the friend who introduced you. Do not blow up at your family. Move that anger. Out of your system first. Then if there's still something to say, once that heat has dropped, you can say it from a place of clarity, regulation, clear mind instead of fiery hot, right? Anger is not the end of the road here. Anger is the second of these 5 stages. It's supposed to be moved through, not lived in. If you have been camped out in anger for a long time, Ask yourself, what am I protecting? What am I afraid of? What am I avoiding? Anger sometimes becomes a place to hide because it feels safer than what comes next. Anger feels powerful. Depression feels like weakness. So we stay in that rage to avoid what's next. We know depression's coming. Intuitively, you know sorrow's next, but the sorrow is where the actual healing lives. Anger is the second wave, and then sorrow is the deeper one. You have to let yourself be moved by both. So in the next podcast, we're going into bargaining. Negotiation. Like you can negotiate with crystal meth or monkey dust or methadone. You're looking for loopholes. The ghost of denial wears a mask, comes back as bargaining, and that voice whispers, maybe there's a way to have all this. Spoiler, there is not. But the bargaining stage is where most relapses are going to happen. So we do have to understand it very clearly. But for now, let your anger speak. Let it move. Let it tell you what was taken. Do not aim it at the people who love you most. They are not the enemy. Guess what? There are no enemies. Hope that helps.

Love you guys.

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