EP 3:26 Chemsex Recovery: Acceptance Stage
6 Jul 2026 · 23 min
In this solo episode of the Aftermath Podcast, host Dallas Bragg explores the final stage—Acceptance—in his self‑crafted model that maps the five stages of grief onto the journey of chemsex recovery for men who have sex with men. Bragg clarifies that his framework is not a peer‑reviewed model but a personal observation intended to help listeners articulate feelings and find direction. He defines acceptance as an ongoing, active practice rather than a destination, rooted in the Latin meaning of “bringing something close.” The episode delves into the psychological work of embracing all parts of oneself that were involved in chemsex—lying, hurting, seeking pleasure, and the “man” who used—through shadow work and integration, emphasizing unconditional love without re‑empowering those parts. Bragg shares concrete, low‑stakes moments from his own recovery that illustrate how acceptance manifests in daily life (e.g., waking without cravings, passing former use locations without pull, sitting with loneliness). He outlines how the “2.0” version of the self should behave—routines, handling longing, loneliness, rejection, and joy—while distinguishing acceptance from forgiveness. Finally, he reminds listeners that grief is cyclical; acceptance does not end the grieving process but changes its relationship to the past, allowing repeated spirals through the stages with increasing skill. The episode ends with a call to community engagement and encouragement that the work is ongoing but worthwhile.
Chapters
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 Don't forget, there's a supplemental study guide that goes along with this episode. The link is in the show notes as usual. 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. All right. So you've been following this series. We've been comparing the 5 stages of grief to the journey of chemsex recovery. And again, I'm gonna remind you. This process outlined here is the world according to Dallas. There is no official peer-reviewed studies to back this up. There's nothing out there scientific, um, that will tell you that there is actual 5 stages of grief. This is what I've observed, and this is a comparison that I think helps quite a bit. So if you've been following and you see yourself in any of the examples, in any of the stages, my work here is done because my intent is not to offer a prescribed set of stages for you to follow, but to help facilitate articulating how you might be feeling and to offer some direction on that. So my intentions are very pure here. I want to ensure you. So we assure you— did I say insure you? I don't wanna insure you. I want to assure you. We have walked through the whole road together here, right? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression. The 4 stages that I propose each man in Chemsex recovery has to move through. Mm-hmm. In his own time, in his own order, sometimes circling back, sometimes camping out, but always moving toward their healing. And now we're at the last one, acceptance. If you don't go any further in listening to this podcast, I want you to really observe that— absorb this. Acceptance is not a destination. It's a state of being. It's an action. Acceptance is a daily orientation. It is the practice of inhabiting your new life instead of mourning the old one. It's taking your one foot out of the old life and putting both feet in the new, right? It's that moment. It's repeated thousands of times. When you stop fighting and you surrender to what is. So, all right. So let's go through this very carefully so that you can understand what acceptance is. So the root of the word, the Latin origins of the word acceptance, it means to bring something close to oneself, to hold it close. So I'm not going to break it down for you. You can Google it if you want to see all the iterations of the word to get the full picture. But so acceptance is an action word. It is the deliberate act of taking something toward yourself, of opening up your arms and pulling something in that you might have otherwise pushed away. Literally, acceptance means to do this again. And again and again. It is not a one-time motion. It is a practice. Acceptance is a practice, a discipline, a way of living. Acceptance is the practice of taking toward yourself the parts of yourself that you've been pushing away, the parts you've been rejecting. So there's a part of you who you've You've been grieving, right, through this whole process. That part of you has died. You distance yourself from him, the things he said, the things he did, things he was aroused by while under the influence. But acceptance in its root meaning asks something different of you now. Acceptance asks you to take him. Not to become him again, not to invite him back into the driver's seat, not to let him run the show. To love him. The part of you that lied, the part of you that enjoyed it, the part of you that hurt people, the part of you that wanted to use. Part of you that even now sometimes misses it. The part of you that picked up the pipe for the first time. Part of you that kept picking it up after you knew what it was doing. The part of you that did things in those rooms that you have never told anyone. All of those parts, you bring them back. You hold them close. You love them anyway. That was still you, and there's nothing bad about them. You have been rejecting them. You have been pushing them away. You have been treating them like a previous tenant who trashed the apartment, somebody you're glad to get rid of, someone you would never invite back in. But those parts are not a previous tenant. Those parts are you, aspects of you. They have always been you. And as long as you keep them at arm's length, Treating them as an aberration, an enemy, a stain, they will continue to operate in the basement of your life without your awareness. Shadow work, by the way, if you haven't listened to my podcast on shadow work, please do. They will surface in moments of stress. They will whisper in moments of loneliness. They will find ways to be heard. One way or the other, the way home is not to keep pushing. The way home is acceptar. Acceptar is that root word of acceptance: to take them toward you, to bring them close, to love them anyway, unconditionally. This does not mean celebrating what happened. It does not mean approving what you did. It does not mean rewriting the harm into something it wasn't. It means standing in front of the mirror and including everyone when you look in there and loving yourself anyway. The man who hurt people, he is you. Love him anyway. The man who lied, he is you. Love him anyway. The man who chose the pipe over his family, he is you. Love him anyway. The man who did things in those rooms that he still cannot name out loud, he is you. Love him anyway. The man who, in spite of all the work, still sometimes feels the pull on a Friday night, he is you. Love him anyway. The man who enjoyed it. This is often the hardest one. The man who, in the middle of all the destruction, had moments of pleasure, connection, ecstasy, and belonging that were real. He is you. Love him anyway. Loving these parts does not mean letting them drive. It means letting them sit in the room with you. It means stopping the war you have been waging against yourself in the name of recovery. It works against yourself. Men who skip this part of acceptance build recoveries that look beautiful on the outside, but remain brittle on the inside. You know these people. They've done all the right things. They have processed denial. They have moved through anger. They've closed the door on bargaining. They've sat in depression. They look— they have arrived at what looks like acceptance, but underneath, they are still at war with the man they were. They hate him. They have not pulled him toward them. They have only pushed him. Further away. This is why some men, years in recovery, suddenly relapse with no apparent trigger, 'cause those exiled parts of them— you've probably heard this in IFS, Internal Family System— the ones they refuse to love eventually demand to be heard. And the only voice those parts know how to use is the voice of using. If you love them now, while you are chemsex-free, while you have the tools, while you have the support, they do not need to scream later. They can sit with you. They can be a part of you. They can be integrated into the man you are becoming instead of haunting him. He informs him. They inform him. The man you were in that scene is not your enemy. Tina is not your enemy. He was a man in pain who found a temporary solution that became a prison. He is not someone to defeat. He is not someone to pull toward you, to take into your arms, to love until he no longer needs to fight your attention. That is what accept are. Actually asks. That is the practice of taking yourself, all of yourself, toward yourself. That is acceptance. Okay, so how did this show up? How did it show up for me? I don't have a single dramatic story for this stage, right? This is what kind of makes it a little bit harder to talk about, but the other stages had tangible thresholds, right? Eviction, jail, the moment I knew I was being arrested, the moment I sat in the cell and the weight of everything finally landed. Acceptance was different though. Acceptance happened in little pieces. It happened in the mornings when I woke up and I realized, hey, I have not thought about Tina in 3 days. Not because I had been working hard at not thinking about it, but because my mind had quietly turned its attention to other things. Books I wanted to read, a workout I was looking forward to, a friend I was excited to see. It happened in the afternoon. I drove past the place where I used to use and felt a flicker of recognition, but without the flicker of the pull. That place is just a place. The version of me who had been there was not me anymore. I didn't hate him anymore. It happened in the evening while I was alone in my apartment, and the loneliness came the way it always comes for men in this work. And I noticed that the loneliness was not asking me to use. The loneliness was just asking to be witnessed, to be sat with. So I made tea, wrote in my journal, and I went to bed. And in the morning, I was still here. It happened in the conversations with my mother where I heard her voice and registered with something close to like a wonder. Wow. I was the man she had been praying for. I was her son again. I had become him. The man she had hoped existed underneath all that chaos was actually here in this body, on this phone call, call telling her I loved her without performance, without anger. Those were not dramatic moments. They were very small, but they begin to accumulate. That is what acceptance looks like. It's not a single dramatic ending. It's not a— it's not running across the finish line. It's not a thousand. It's a thousand small. Affirmations of new life, each one quietly proving that that old self is gone and the new self is real. So in the opening of these— this series, I introduced you to the 2.0 version of yourself, the man you are becoming, the man on the other side of this grief. Acceptance is the stage where you stop talking about him, And you start being him. This is the work of the rest of your life. And it begins with a very clear picture. Who is the 2.0 version of you? Who is the highest and best version? How does he wake up in the morning? What does he reach for? Does he reach for his phone or does he sit with his coffee? Does he scroll or does he stretch? Does he check the apps that used to feed his hunger or has he deleted them and felt the freedom? I'm having no notifications waiting. How does he move through his day? Does he take his time? Does he eat real food? Does he take his time chewing? Does he look at the men around him without immediately calculating whether they want him or whether he wants them? Does he move his body? Does he work with focus instead of frenzy? Does he keep his word? How does he spend his evenings? Does he have a practice for those hours? Does he have a routine? Does he read? Does he cook? Does he call someone he loves? Does he go to bed when he's tired instead of staying up trying to find some feeling that the night used to provide him? How does he handle the longing? Because the longing comes back. Even after years, it comes back. He does not pretend it does not exist. He does not panic when it shows up. He acknowledges it. He observes it. He asks it what it wants. He gives it what it actually needs, which is almost never the substance, but almost always some form of connection, presence, or rest. How does he handle the loneliness? Because the loneliness is the most consistent companion of the man in this stage. You're starting over here. He's got the tools for it. He calls a friend, he goes to a meeting, or he goes to a group. He writes, he walks, he lets himself feel it. Without it becoming a big crisis. He has learned that loneliness is not a sign that something is wrong. It's just a feeling. Feelings are fleeting. Feeling is healing. He can be with it. How does he handle rejection? Because this new life is not going to be free of rejection. The men he wants will not always want him back. The opportunities he reaches for will not always open. The vision he has for his life will not always materialize on his timeline. He has developed the capacity. To be disappointed without disappearing, to grieve a small loss without using it as evidence that he should give up. How does he handle joy? The chemsex life had its own version of joy, right? And the new version is going to ask you to develop a different one, a slower one, a more sustainable one, a natural one. The 2.0 version of you can sit in a moment of joy without needing it to escalate, without needing it to document it, to share it, or protect it. He can let Let it be what it is, and then let it pass. Because he knows more joy is coming. This man is not a fantasy. He is real. He is the one you are becoming. Every day in acceptance is another day of growing and evolving into him. Now, I wanna be careful here because some teachings about acceptance get tangled up with forgiveness, but the two are not the same thing. Acceptance is not forgiving yourself for what you did. Acceptance is not forgiving the people who hurt you. Acceptance is not absolving anyone of anything. Forgiveness may come in its own time through its own work, or it may not. You may forgive some people and you may not forgive others. You may forgive yourself for some things and not for other things. What acceptance asks of you is to let go of past stories and change the narrative so it doesn't define you anymore. Who you are today, or even in this very second, doesn't have to be a reflection of your past. It can reflect the future through the vision of who you're becoming. You've accepted the challenge. Acceptance is taking steps forward toward your best and highest potential until you look nothing like the man you were. You don't have to be okay with any of it. You do not have to bless it. You don't have to find the silver lining or the spiritual lesson or the redemptive frame. You just stop being that man. Period. Stop dragging your past into the present. Because it will not let you move forward. How did you show up while you're in active use? I'll bet you were inconsistent, volatile, emotions were volatile, unresponsive to texts and calls, unreliable, chasing instant gratification. Now, how can you show up in recovery? How can you show up as the best and highest version of you? Somebody who doesn't use? Simple answer is to do the complete opposite of all those behaviors. Acceptance is not the end of grief either. I need to say this because the structure of the 5 stages can make it sound like acceptance closes the book. And you're going to say, when is my grieving over? But it doesn't. Grief comes back in waves. It comes back on anniversaries. It comes back when you smell a particular cologne or scent. It comes back when a song plays in a coffee shop that you used to listen to when you were high. It comes back when you see a man on the street who reminds you of someone you knew before. It comes back in the slow afternoons. And quiet evenings. In moments when your guard is down, you're lying down for a nap. Acceptance does not mean the grief is over. Acceptance is when the past has lost its meaning. You don't panic anymore. You do not interrupt the return of grief as evidence that you have not done the work. You do not assume that because you are feeling this way that something is wrong with your recovery. You're not catastrophizing anymore. You are someone new. That is a past life. You may grieve it. It may come, but it's not an emergency. You let the grief have its visit. You acknowledge it. You sit with it for as long as it needs to be there. You let yourself remember, feel, cry if crying comes, and then when the visit's complete, You return to your life, no problem. This is the end of the series, but it is not the end of the work. The 5 stages of grief are not a road that you're gonna walk one time. It's a spiral that you keep returning to at different elevations throughout your recovery journey. You will hit denial again in some new form. about some new layer. You will move through anger again. You will catch yourself bargaining. You will sit with depression. You will return to acceptance over and over until you are a best and highest potential of yourself. But each time you go through this spiral, you go through it faster. Each time you go through it with more skill, More learning, more maturity. And each time, you come out a little more whole. That is what this work all is. It's not a one-time graduation. It's a practice, a discipline, a way of being a man in the world who has lived what you have lived and is still standing. You are doing it. You're not behind. You're not too late. You're not too damaged. You are right on time for the life you're growing into. Grieving is real. The losses are real. The man you were really has died. Now you get to pull that part of you, him, you get to pull him close, embrace him, and you drop the shame of the past. You're not angry at him anymore. You're not ashamed of him anymore. He's gone in memorial, right? Pulling these parts close to you, that's integration. That is when you're going to feel whole. When you accept it all as part of you. So I want you to keep going. The man you are becoming is worth every second. Hope this helps. I hope that you will join me in the conversation. You can comment on Spotify, you can comment on YouTube, you can DM me on social media. I'm everywhere at all times. Love you guys. Talk to you next week.
