EP 3:27 Rewired for Connection: Life After Chemsex with David and Andrew

I did therapy, I did some work, but what was missing was peers to talk about these topics. I think at that time, any kind of recognition of sex or sexuality— this was in the height of the AIDS epidemic, so sex was kind of a death thing. People didn't go there at all. So it was always this kind of weird environment that didn't have any place to—

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. Glad you're here. Thank you for tuning in this week, and thank you for tuning in so much. We continue to grow in downloads every single month We're breaking a personal record. I'm glad to see that. And I'm glad that you are liking, sharing, continuing to give us a rate and review. It really does help get the podcast to where it needs to go. The algorithm takes it to the people who need to see and hear it. Also, it apparently is really helping AI because AI is suggesting the podcast to many people is what I'm hearing, is that that's how they hear about it is they are talking to their chatbot about their, their problem with chemsex, and the chatbot will say, have you tried the Aftermath Podcast as a supplement? So, um, because we are the only podcast in the world that's specifically for chemsex recovery right now. And so, um, keep talking to the chatbots and, um, we will get— continue to spread our impact around the country. So thank you for being here. So today I have 2 very special guests. Um, I'm gonna let them introduce themselves and then we'll tell you what we're talking about. But you should know if you've been, unless you've lived under a rock, who David Fawcett is. Um, but I'm going to let David introduce himself. David's been on the podcast, um, 2 times, 2 or 3 times already. Um, each season he comes back to see us. So we're glad to have you back, David.

Thanks, Dallas. Always a pleasure to be here. Yeah. So I've done a lot of work with chemsex. I'm a therapist and sex therapist. I've been recovering from alcohol for many years, but started working as a therapist with men, mostly gay men at that time, who were using methamphetamine almost exclusively. And then GHB and other drugs came on the scene. This is 30 years ago. But over that time, there was really no guidance therapeutically of what to do, how to do it, who to work with. And so it kind of just Felt my way along. And over the years, just really saw this thing kind of blossom into guys helping each other, more professionals getting involved, broadening out of our focus beyond one traditional approach into expanding kind of the lens, if you will, which is where my collaboration with you, Dallas, has been so great, just kind of expanding because not everybody comes and has the same needs and the same idea of what works for them. And so, The broadest brush possible, I think, is labels. So it's been a learning experience for me. I always learn on these podcasts. I'm always pleased to be here. Um, and I just finish by saying, done a couple of books, Lust and MMF, Sex and the Influence. And then just this year we released Dallas Bragg and I, uh, the study guide for Lust and MMF, which is an update. And it's been very well received and I'm very pleased about it.

Yes. Thank you. Welcome back, David. And if you all want a link to the book, Less Men and Meth or Sex Under the Influence or Less Men and Meth: A Study Guide. The link will be in the show notes. Okay, Andrew McDonald, new to the podcast. Tell us about yourself.

Yeah, longtime listener, first-time caller. I am a clinical social worker, a brand new one. I was just freshly spit out of my master's program. So I'm currently working as an outpatient therapist in a specialized addiction treatment program at a community mental health clinic here in Memphis. Tennessee. But I think more importantly, I am a person who has lived experience with Chemsex. I was really brought into the field by seeing David's book on the nightstand of someone I was using with. So full circle moment for me right now. Yeah. So really happy to be here. Whatever it takes.

Love it. Yeah, I love it. Andrew and I also, we met, we worked together on Controlling Chemsex, which we've talked about a lot on this podcast. You know what, I'll put Controlling Chemsex's link in the show notes as well. Controlling Chemsex is a nonprofit organization out of London who offers free coaching sessions for men who are struggling with problematic chemsex use. And also, they're also offering groups now. I think that, Andrew, you're still working with them in that capacity.

Yeah, yeah. So we've— we're about a year and a half or so into a virtual support group that I'm incredibly proud of. It's, it's been really helpful to the guys, I think, who participate. So I'm very proud of that.

Very nice. Yeah. And you could also get access to psychotherapy, psychosexual therapy through Controlling Chemsex as well, to some degree. So check that out if you are— can't really afford a coaching program or treatment right now. Okay, so why are we all here? Drum roll. We are offering the 3 of us a retreat, an in-person retreat. It's called Rewired for Connection, Life After Chemsex. And so if you are not interested in the retreat, do not click off the podcast. Do not stop listening. Keep listening because I think you'll get value out of what we talk about even if you don't want to come to the retreat. Also, if you want to listen to the full podcast, you can suggest the retreat to someone who might be interested in it. But we, David and I, We were at, we, we went into this, uh, project together to write Less Than a Method study guide, and we didn't really know each other that well. Right. Um, and then we took off to London together and, and Antwerp together. Uh, we, when we noticed that we went to, we, when we spoke and went on a podcast, we're like, this is working well. This is gelling. So let's do something else. And so what's, what we saw, what we, what we feel like is needed is an in-person retreat adds a value there, but also something that looks at what do I do after I've quit? You know, and if you're on the outskirts of quitting or I'm finished and now I'm just— there's a lot of men who will say, now what? Because it's— there's— I know for me, in my early recovery, I was addicted to the dopamine of milestones, you know, because I started at ground zero with nothing. So each milestone was, oh, I got a new pair of shoes. You know, and then I got my car and I got my license. I got my house. I got, you know, I graduated from drug court. All of that rolled into a year and a half to 2 years. And then I was, you know, 2 years meth-free. And then I was like, now what? I don't, I haven't thought about life after this. Um, and then that's where some of us flounder and we get, we feel unhappy and we feel misguided a little bit. And then there's the sexual component. And so we want to offer, the 3 of us offer something for you. That is going to be 12. It's going to be limited to 12 people. It's going to be a 4-day weekend of interactive workshops, a lot of fun. It's going to be in Florida. And so we want to offer something that you can take with you and into your next step, your next chapter, your next phase, because what is life after chemsex? What is that all about? And we want you to get unstuck and move forward. So Um, we're excited to offer this. And I just want to ask you two, I'll start with you, David, and then I'll ask Andrew. For you in your recovery, if you're, you're thinking about what happened when you quit the substance, what helped you kind of, I don't know, uh, recalibrate in, in, in the rest into the next phase? What was something that helped you and what would you wish you would've had?

Right. Go ahead. Powerful question. And I think I realized, didn't realize quite at that time how much of the life handbook, if you will, that I didn't have.

Mm-hmm.

I had really no skills to living. And my addiction was all about my own internalized homophobia and my coming out process and all that stuff. And there was just no support for that. And so I turned to addiction as kind of a way to to regulate myself and to deal with all that stuff, or rather to not deal with it, just to kind of put it on the shelf. And so when I got sober, my way of, my escape valve, if you will, was gone. And so I had no idea what to do and I really clung to the meetings and that was my sole source. And meetings can carry us to a point, right? Most of all, in hindsight, meetings helped me get sober. And, and then to, to back to your question, Dallas, then, then what? Right. And, and I, I did therapy, I did, um, some work, but I, what was missing was, um, peers to talk about these topics. I think at that time, any kind of recognition of sex or sexuality, this was in the height of the AIDS epidemic. So sex was kind of a death thing. People didn't go there at all. So it was, it was always this kind of weird environment that Didn't have any place to talk about it or connect with other guys who were going through the same thing, let alone leadership. I ended up kind of teaching my therapist whatever I needed them to know in a way, which is not the ideal situation for any kind of therapeutic situation. So I think just really wishing that there was people out there that understood what I had gone through, people that understood what I needed. And most of all, people who were just there and ready to be able to connect with. And I think that was what was so— it was beautiful in a way, 'cause I did get more of that than I ever had before. But there was so much more that I could have used, just this ability to learn how to be vulnerable in front of other gay men and not have sex, right? To learn how to communicate, to learn how to trust, all those life skills that I sort of had no format in which to do that. I had my meetings, that was it. And so what I really would've really loved to have seen is some kind of structure, like a retreat or like a program or like a place to go and just connect with other guys as we work through this on our own with professional help, however we do it. But to find people that are kind of along the journey with us, and those people were few and far between. When I got sober.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I like what you said about you didn't have an escape valve anymore. It's— I almost think of it like an ejection button. You know, it's like we just— when we get— when things got too much for us, it comes to sex or whatever addiction we're in, we can hit the ejection button and be gone for a while. But that doesn't work anymore. You don't have the substance.

Right.

And so, yeah, I really like That I want to say you're talking about, you wanted a place to connect in a more vulnerable way. The meetings were great, but there's this something about this act of building a deeper connection, sharing something that's hard to share, maybe, maybe even having repair conversations with people, you know, just difficult conversations, that kind of level of intimacy can be practiced in a retreat setting, in a protected container. And for chemsex recovery, to me, there's a big question here of how do I return to intimacy? Don't you think, do you agree with me that it starts with one-on-one connections, having vulnerable conversations, saying the hard thing, asking for help? Those actions and those behaviors can lead into physical intimacy is what we think of what we want. But that kind of one-on-one with a gay man, don't you think that that is such a great step toward actual intimacy?

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things I work with on clients is reframing intimacy, if you will, because a lot of times they think of it in only a dyad or, you know, a sexual loving relationship with one other person. Intimacy has all kinds of flavors, right? And including, intimacy between 2 guys who are not sexual at all, just friends. We can have intimacy in groups and levels of intimacy, layers of it, if you will. But I think, yeah, having a place to talk about that and learning how to interact, learning how to take a risk, learning how to, you know, stay with somebody who doesn't agree with you, like exploring the slightly risky edges, if you will, right? Getting out of our comfort zone a little bit in a safe— you said the magic word— safe container where we feel Safe enough to explore this, take a risk, and the rewards are just unbelievable. And I've seen it. I've seen it in groups where that magic happens. And I think the real retreat is really the ideal place for that kind of formula to take effect.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's important because there's one thing that we've stressed on the landing page, the website for the retreat, which we'll put in the show notes too, is this is not a tantra retreat. Like, we're not going to, you're not going to have to take your clothes off, you know, and that's kind of it. So this is kind of, that's fine, I think. for later. For, for some men, they want an in-between, right? Like for me, I, I, when I came out of my recovery, I was traumatized by gay men. And any man is, was a physical, like, uh, okay, do I fuck them or do I not fuck them is the, my only question. Well, and then it was just, and then I always kind of thought they're, they're going to, they're going to victimize me or there, there's, you know, there was such a fear. around men because my exposure to them were in the chemsex world. So this kind of retreat can really heal a lot of that misnomer and that trauma around your experiences in chemsex, don't you think?

Absolutely. And I think, you know, it's not just the trauma that happens in the course of chemsex and happens unfortunately a lot, but it's also the trauma that most of the gay guys that I've worked with have experienced from an early age, right? There's a high percentage of guys who've had very traumatic experiences, not just sexual abuse, but sometimes physical abuse, emotional abuse, bullying, neglect. There's all kinds of ways to result in trauma. So, and having a place to really talk about that and experiment with how to break out of old patterns and old beliefs. And this is the other thing I found that The person that really kept me most locked up was me. And I learned all that from messages from the world, right? From bullying and laws and discrimination and stigma and sometimes violence. But ultimately, what I learned, what I took away from that is like, I have to just be me and I have to kind of live in the back, you know, very compartmentalized and not take risks and not be authentic. And I think That having a place where we can start to practice that authenticity.

Absolutely.

And really, and I think for me, it took a while for the dust to settle in my recovery to kind of know who am I anyway? What are my values? Where am I going? But once the dust kind of cleared on that, to really start to kind of try to live within those, right? In a way that allowed me to show up at different levels of emotional. Maybe it was, I went to a situation, maybe it was a group of friends, but it just allowed me to to take the risk of being vulnerable and talking about it. And that was tremendously healing.

Yeah. Yeah. Lovely. Lovely. All right. Thank you very much for that. And I'm going to ask you, Andrew, same question.

I have a very similar answer. Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, I, I like David, uh, really got a lot out of meetings in early recovery, right? Um, I, I, got sober early on in the pandemic, so everything was on Zoom. I could hop on my computer and go to 5 in one day. And this was a really transformative experience for me. But I think early on, addiction recovery is a lot about avoidance of people, places, and things, right? So you're avoiding a lot. And it's—

Mm-hmm.

There's sometimes a culture of like fierce adherence to the certain structures and certain conversation topics, ideas within whatever program you're working. And that was really helpful to me early on. And then I think what I felt down the road was like this hunger to graduate to a more nuanced level of discussion. One thing I noticed, especially in a lot of the meetings, was it was a lot of newcomers, right? When we're talking about a drug like crystal meth, we're talking about a very high rate of relapse pretty often. So a lot of people with pretty young sobriety. What I was sort of looking for were people With some long-term recovery under their belts who were socially reintegrated into society at large, who, who, for whom the addiction recovery meeting wasn't their primary source of social interaction. Not that that's a bad thing, right? I understand why that happens. You're able to be your authentic self in those rooms in a way that sometimes people carry a lot of shame Into the outside world. Um, but I think what I wanted was conversation partners and role models to discuss, okay, how do I hop outside of— how do I use these rooms really as a microcosm for learning intimacy skills and, um, use that as a trampoline to hop into the outside world? And, um, that's a really difficult process. I didn't have much of an idea of exactly how to do that and kind of had to carve my own path out there. So, um, I think that's where we can be really helpful in creating creating this retreat.

Yeah. Yes. Yes. What would you say is the most helpful? What was most helpful for you to carve that path? What did, what qualities did you have to have, you think, characteristics?

Courage, a lot of courage to lean into discomfort, to trust, to trust that a person's reaction to the idea that someone like very privately suffered from crystal meth addiction, wasn't going to be completely devastating. There's always a level of shock there, right? And sharing— when I'm at a party or something and someone notices I'm not drinking, you know, why aren't you drinking? You know, are you driving home? Whatever, whatever. And you're like, oh God, do I really need to give them the whole Chemsex rigmarole? And because that's a little exhausting.

Yeah.

It took a lot of courage, I think, to place myself in certain social situations, in certain sexual situations where things could be very triggering, or I was still kind of navigating arousal, you know. Yeah, a lot of courage.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I don't want to go down too, too much of a rabbit hole there. But what has— do you mind to tell us a little bit about how you have navigated arousal and sexual reintegration? Absolutely.

So I would say there was a big shift for me, and I always try and, like, instill hope in people at about 8 months of distance from active use. That was where I remember finding myself, like, in the grocery store, like, lusting after the arms of, like, middle-aged men. I was suddenly, like, very—

Yeah.

Overcome with arousal in a way that I had been kind of dulled to it for those first 8 months.

Yeah.

And really, I, I did try and utilize a lot of conversation partners to explore, you know, not demonizing wild sex, like really thorough communication about, you know, something as simple as like, hey, do you want to come over and just like make out in our underwear? You know, can we start there? Really titrating my reentry into I think sexual pleasure again. It was, it was a very, it was a long game that I was playing. And I think what was really helpful there were other people in the rooms and taking it one step at a time.

Yeah. Yeah. Love that. Love that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. So for, for me, I, I didn't find solace in the meetings like you two, only because I just had negative experiences and I was court ordered to go. So I wasn't really in it. Um, I had some, some, some pretty bad negative experiences in the area that I was in. Um, and so I was kind of left out there on my own. So I did, that is where I discovered Dr. Fawcett, Dr. Fawcett's book, Dr. Fawcett's podcast in the very beginning of my recovery of, is there anybody out there? You know, I thought I was the only man who had come out late after being married and then got into chemsex. I really did think I was one of the very few. That I had the story, I was going to write a book and a movie and all stuff. And then once I got into it, I'm like, this is, I am not special. This happens all the time. Uh, but for, for me, I had to, my, my, what helped me and what I wish I had guidance, more guidance with was finally discovering, just like David said, who am I? Who the hell am I? Because I had pretended to be, you know, I had, I'd be closeted almost all my life. And then when I got into the gay community, I still pretended to be someone different. In the chemsex community, I took on, I tried to take on this butch dealer-like persona of this tough whatever I was. I don't know what I was, but I wasn't me, right? And so I'm just spit out on the other side of all of this thinking, who the hell are you? And how do you, how did you have 2 kids and how in the hell are you going to help them if you don't know who you are. And so I had, I dug deep into some shadow work, some, some really deep look into what are the thoughts I'm thinking about myself that have turned into beliefs that have turned into my reality of how I filter through the world. I'm still learning this, but once I started to look at, oh, like how I see the world isn't exactly how it is. And maybe I, maybe there's deep down in here, there's some parts of me that I've rejected and maybe I can love them and really understand what does it mean to love yourself? Because you're just told over and over in recovery, just, you have to love yourself. You have to love yourself. And how can you love anybody else if you don't love yourself? What does that mean? I never understood. What the hell are you saying? Like self-love to me, okay, take a bath. I don't know, go get a massage. That is, that's self-care. Right. And so my track was bumpy and it was harsh and it was like I had to do it myself. But I wish if I had other men to relate with and to help me through that, because I was still— I had still a lot of trauma around men. So my recovery group that I adopted were all women. They were middle-aged hippie women. And we would go out in the woods and do, I don't know, rituals and stuff like that. And that's That helped me get over a hump and figure out some other new things about me. But the act of being around men and not being expected to have sex and not expecting them to have sex with me, that was something I had to learn the hard way. It's not easy to do, but once I did, that has helped. That has set me free and helped me. So this, to me, this kind of retreat, I would have jumped all over it. Because this is going to be facilitated by people who have already done this. I would have really loved that in my early recovery. So speaking of, I'm going to move on to specifics of the retreat. I want to ask you, David, I want to ask you, Andrew, kind of what your portion is of the retreat that you're going to bring. You don't have to be real specific. Just tell us kind of what, what you're planning to talk about, but also kind of what you'd like a man coming to the retreat to leave with after he's gone through the whole retreat, but specifically your part. You want to go first, David?

Sure, sure. Much of my professional work over the last 15 years really has focused on the particular aspect of chemsex recovery that Is this what we call sexual reintegration, right? Because we know chemsex can really hijack or make or disappear someone's sex life, at least a sex life that, uh, in terms of performance and functioning and self-worth and all that stuff that sex can come to symbolize. So really a lot of times, in fact, how I got started in chemsex work was as a sex therapist. Um, I had actually worked in addictions for 10 years. I got kind of, I got burned out on addiction. I said, I don't want to do that anymore. I'll become a sex therapist. And And do that. And people— I became a sex therapist and hung out my shingle with a gay men practice. And guess what showed up? Guys on chemsex with sexual problems. There it was. So it came around and said, okay, I get it. Oh, I'm going to do this. But that idea of sexual repair, if you will, there are some tools in the field of sex therapy that are relevant, that can help. But I think this, the unique aspect of chemsex when it's tied up with the cultural stuff that gay men carry and still, you know, the internalized homophobia and some of the abuse and then the fear of other men and so on that we carry on all affects this idea of sexual recovery. So to really help people start to explore it, what does it mean? And one of the aspects of chemsex, meth particularly, is that it can really change what we call our arousal template, our— because of the escalation due to tolerance, right? What, what was enough dopamine last week to be really hot isn't doing it this week. I need to do something a little bit more, a little bit more, right? So a little rougher, kinkier, edgier. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, and that quickly, quickly gets us down into some trouble. And when we get sober, if we get sober, hopefully, what we're left with is often an inability to function sexually, at least at first. And I really applaud what Andrew said because he kind of figured this out on his own. And I just, just the way to really do this, I think, is to put it on its head and not start physical, but really start with just that connection at a friendship level, having coffee, having a conversation, getting to know the person.

Mm-hmm.

And that was the scariest thing for me, much more scary than sex, right? In different ways, the really showing up as a human being in front of another human being. And I think When we drill down into a vulnerability like sexuality, that's what I'm hoping to talk about is how do these, how do we, how we feel about ourselves and how we see ourselves and how, um, how we carry ourselves, including all the stuff that we believe about ourselves as gay men in this particular era of different generations, which is another thing I love about our little team here is that we represent different aspects of the gay experience.

Yeah.

There's a lot of wisdom across the ages here, but I think what I'm hoping people will get, walk away with is some ideas about, first of all, you know, I'm not broken. There's hope, right? Because so often there's this hopelessness and a lot of that is just brain chemistry with dopamine. It's just doing a number on our dopamine transporters with meth, particularly just wiping it out and dopamine downregulation, all this kind of neurological things that I won't go into, but it It's a brain thing. And then we, the brain isn't getting enough dopamine and that translates into not being able to find pleasure, not being able to get aroused, not being able to help you enjoy our favorite comfort food, right? We, all that stuff has to be kind of reframed. And I think so learning patience, learning that there's nothing wrong with what's happening. It's normal. Learning how to kind of start to reintegrate in ways we were talking about earlier in this podcast of trying to figure out what can I do in terms of beliefs about myself? What little steps can I take? How can I really start to redirect my arousal? And it's there. It's just kind of really buried in all this high-intensity dopamine stuff, right?

With chemsex.

Mm-hmm. But I think just rediscovering that. And another thing I really want to convey is that oftentimes the strategy I see for guys to start to get functional in terms of having an orgasm or having an erection, is, um, you know, going for ever so brief a moment to think about some chemsex fantasy, even though there's no drug in their body, but that's the way they can kind of get over the edge. And every time they do that, of course, it reinforces the bad weight. So I think just all these little, there's some tricks and tips, but I think a lot of the knowledge about how the brain is healing, how we can heal ourselves as sexual beings. And I'll just close my little part here by saying, you know, when I was doing The Lust for Men and Meth, the original title subtitle was something like Reclaiming Sex and Intimacy. And I realized there's no reclaiming here, right? I think most of us—

Right.

—really knew how to have sex and intimacy that was satisfying or healthy for that matter, although I don't like that word, affirming. So yeah, so I think just really helping men understand that they're right where they should be, there is a pathway out, and there are other fellows and friends who who are there to help. And we are a community of healing. And that's the key.

Thank you. I like what you said. You used the word repair. So if you're listening and you've thought to yourself, I'm sexually broken, or I'm damaged goods, I hear that a lot. There's repair available. The pro— the issue is where do you go? You know, where do we go as gay men to learn about sexuality? Do we go to pornography? Do we go to social media? Do we go to Dan Savage? I don't know. You know, like, where, where, where do we go to learn about sexuality? And the word arousal template, you know, I mean, it's, it's like speaking another language sometimes when I, when I use that word. And it was something so new to me only Probably, I don't know, a year and a half ago, two years. No one ever said that to me. So there's a lot here that you can learn, that that you can have a resurgence of hope. And it's not only rediscovering your sexuality. A lot of you listening never discovered it. You know, it was put on you, right? Your your sexuality was put on you by all these external forces. This can give you an opportunity to. create, to write, to start over. It's a clean slate. Like, you're in charge now of your sexuality, and Dr. Fawcett can help, can help do that.

And start mapping it out. I'm just sorry, sorry, Kael, just to start mapping those kind of exercises in this group setting and processing and talking about it. You're not doing it.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And listen, just being in a room with 11 other men who are experiencing the same thing, that is like 60% of the healing, oftentimes when you feel a part of, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else there for you? Did I leave anything out?

No, I mean, that's, that's the highlight. I think just one of the things you mentioned, I think the retreat gives us an opportunity to explore a little bit with other modalities. You mentioned shadow work and I'm a big shadow work fan. I'm a big fan of somatic work, you know, Paying attention to our bodies and breath, breathing, breathing techniques, that kind of stuff, ways of different ways of approaching the same problem, right, with kind of finding or discovering ourselves sexually, sometimes for the first time. And that's just not an intellectual job, right? That has to be— we have to really have some body awareness. And so there's ways of doing that as well. And so we'll be talking about a lot of that.

Yeah, great. Good. I love it. I love it. Okay, Andrew, How are you?

I am well, and I am eager to describe to potential participants, like, really what I want to bring to this retreat is, like, I want to walk people through 2 things that were really helpful for me on my journey. One of those is Stoic philosophy, which I think gets sort of a bad reputation. I think when we think of someone as Stoic, we think of them as sort of emotionally repressing a lot of what's going on. But When you really look into the ancient Greek philosophy, it's very closely tied to the Serenity Prayer. That's sort of how I pitch it to people who have struggled with addiction. And where I think it's valuable in this retreat is that social reintegration, right?

Mm-hmm.

Maybe you have found great solace in the world of addiction recovery and you're sort of eager to reintegrate into the rest of the world. I think Stoic philosophy is a great thing to be in conversation with because it's very pro-social. It's very process-oriented. I think we've both worked with men who are eager to expand their social world and they go, just tell me what to do. Like, what do I do? How do I make friends? What do I do? And I'm like, I don't have a magic wand, but buckle up. It's a process. It is a process of stepping into an uncomfortable situation, noticing what is coming up for you there, and trying to avoid complete emotional collapse at something that's kind of uncomfortable there, right? It's about getting up, kind of dusting it off, taking a look at what was happening for you, and building, as the Stoic says, that inner citadel, that strength through experience, that, oh, okay, I can handle this. And so I think there's a lot of really interesting material to chew on within introducing Stoicism to people. And then the other thing that I really want to bring in is like a very nuanced discussion on sexual ethics. One thing that I was— I mean, I used to be such a maniac. I would pace around my bedroom thinking so deeply about how oversimplified a lot of our conversations around sexual ethics are. Right. I think consent was sort of the beginning and end of the conversation. in a lot of ways after the MeToo movement. And of course, that conversation had to be had, right? There was a lot of really abhorrent behavior going on kind of in plain sight that people really didn't want to take a good look at. But beyond consent, I think what most people who participate in this retreat will probably agree with is that gay sex culture, it's kind of normless, right? The normal codes of politeness that exist when you're having a conversation with someone at the grocery store or whatever, they often don't exist in a space like Grindr, right? The anonymity brings about behavior both from ourselves and from the person we're talking to that is really uncomfortable, and we're really shocked by it and really disheartened by, I think, potential for intimacy there. And so what I want to do is explore that spectrum of sexual ethics from, you know, sex as a very meaningful kind of spiritual, you know, physical expression of love and care All the way to, okay, what, what ethical code do I need to abide by should I want to reenter some of the more wild sexual behavior that I think we do really appreciate as gay men, right? We're not here to demonize any of that. We're here to celebrate it. And that's a beautiful part of being in this culture. But especially when we have a history with chemsex, we have to really take a good hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves, okay, how what might lead you astray there.

Mm-hmm. I like that. I like that. I was glad you said that because I was gonna say sometimes a listener may hear ethical code and think vanilla sex, but it's actually not. The two does not correlate. It's ethical. You can have high, high levels of ethical code and be as piggy as fuck if you want to be, right?

And right, I think it brings about the best sexual experience, right? Because, well, whether it's like, you know, polyamory non-monogamy, enjoying a lot of, you know, the many events that exist, fulsome, whatever it is for a person, it's not licensed to be an asshole, right? I think people who have the best sex are people who are very kind at their core and who are really interested in other people's pleasure. And I think that you have to really kind of put on paper what that looks like for you in order to proceed in a way that where you're not violating your own ethical—

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the idea of social reintegration, I mean, we're seeing clubs, gay clubs shutting down all across the world right now because they don't, they can't, the gay club here in Charlotte just shut down to one night because the gays aren't coming out. You know, they have Grindr, they have the apps, so they're not They're not socially interacting anymore. Um, and so this idea of how do I meet people if I don't go to the clubs, you know, if I'm not on Grindr because of the— maybe I choose not to be because of the dangers of chemsex or it's a trigger for me— is how I get this question all the time. Well, I don't know. How do I meet somebody? And how do I even have, like you said, the courage to go to walk up to someone and talk to them face to face? What is that? What is that like? You know, what is that all about? So I really like this idea of reintegrating into social skills and the process thereof.

Including kind of social sexual skills. I joke sometimes in my era, we cruised. Cruising, hot tub deck, hanging clothes, all that stuff, right? There's other ways to do it. We didn't do that stuff before the apps existed. So yeah, yeah, it's absolutely true.

Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Yeah, it's great. So I want to take the opportunity to talk about my portion of the retreat, which will be in the beginning. And that's where I, the life after chemsex, I really dug into that in terms of who are you after chemsex? And like I said, well, I didn't know who I was, but let's, let's define kind of the ideal self. How do you want to show up? And in my program, this is the first thing I do with my men because a lot of men haven't thought forward. They just focus so hard on quitting that again, after you've quit, it's like, oh yeah, I also have to rebuild relationships. I want to build my job. I want to know, I want to be able to sit with myself at home alone. I want to make new friends. I want to live in a certain place. I want to do, you know, who am I? And so what I want to do is lead you through a process of defining your dream, your ideal self, a vision of who you are next, because how are you going to move forward if you don't have a North Star vision of an idea of who you are or where you're going? And so a lot of times we want to, we want to identify that dream, but also in between what's holding us back. So that comes through the shadow work part. What are the limiting beliefs? That maybe you are in your own prison, as David said. It's a subconscious prison. You have the key to it. So we want to talk about different types of subconscious prisons and where you might be, what fears might be holding you back, and what limiting beliefs. And then we're going to work in groups to get to also work together on this. But we want, I want you to leave with a really clear idea, a visceral, I want it to have a visceral response in your body. Of this is how I show up. This is the ideal who, this is who I'm becoming. And I'm going to become that person more every day. I'm going to cast a vote. We use the book, there's a book Atomic Habits where you cast a vote for who the person you want to be. I want you to cast a vote for that person every day and move the needle 1%. So you're going to leave with a little, some workable materials too, because I don't want you to, it's, you know, I don't want it to be one of those retreats where you get a little handbook and you throw it out On the way at the airport, on your way out or whatever. I want this to be something that you use every morning and every night in a daily routine to really dig into a metrics of, did I show up the way I wanted to show up today? And if I didn't, what iterations could be made? What could I revise? And let me celebrate any possible tiny win that I have a glimpse of the person I'm becoming. So I want you to really to dig in and to be, to come with preparation to be self, to be intrinsically looking inward, but really like really to be self-aware, really ready to be self-aware and clear out a lot of the filters that have been running your life so far. And so that's good. That's going to be sort of the beginning. We're going to roll into the sexual, the David's part, and then we're going to end with Andrew's part. And then at the very end, and we're going to have some activities. Also, obviously, but at the very end, we're going to do a little ceremony, a letting go ceremony. I'm planning to do a cacao ceremony. It's the raw chocolate bean. You drink it. It's a little bit bitter, but it opens up the heart. We'll do a little letting go ceremony. We're going to open up the heart and then David's going to lead us through some breathwork. So we're really going to end it on a really high note. And I think it's going to bring us all together in a very special way. Anything you two would add to that?

Yeah, can I say something about, you know, you ask what, what do you want people to walk away with? We can't guarantee any outcomes, right? We all pitch that to people when we begin working with them. I can't promise you anything. But what I can assure you is that you're working with someone who cares a lot about creating an experience that's very healing for you. And I think we all want this to be highly experiential. That is, I mean, to use a metaphor, I would say, think of a movie that has like profoundly affected you, right? It probably dealt with something very existential. It stays with you long after the 2 hours of viewing it. I mean, I think that's really what we are trying to create here. And so if I can give people some confidence that you're in the hands of 3 people who think a lot about this, how to create an experience that you will, that will stay with you for years to come. I think that's really how I would pitch the value of this.

Love that. Love that. Yeah. Great. Okay. Anything for anything else from you, David, that we may have left out?

Yeah, absolutely agree. And I like what both of you have said a lot. I think especially when it comes to sex, when you match that with some of the beliefs you've been talking about, Dallas, it kind of can get overwhelming for people and we kind of easily can lose ourselves. So to really say, I would like my part of my conversation to be really grounded and people just staying really present and know that there are There are a lot of things that have been discovered in the last 20 years about sexual healing from chemsex. I mean, 20 years ago, we didn't know very much, to be honest with you.

Yeah.

But we know a lot, and it can be done. And there are guys in the rooms who, you know, have been at the other side of this process and living the lives they want to live. And I think just knowing that's possible and really knowing some specific methods and pathways to do that is what I would like people to take away with them, along with more of a vision. I'm not sure if it'll be a visceral vision, but a vision of maybe who they are spiritually, because I think it's emerging. It's an emerging process. But yeah, definitely.

Yeah. When I talk about visceral, I like to incorporate affirmations, visualizations. You know, I like, there's a, I'll probably do a meditation too, a guided meditation with you guys, but there's There's a meditation that has helped me a lot, and that's, it's a third-person vision of me in part of, so if I have a line from my vision, I want to create a 5 senses vision of, of, of that, a, a, a 5 senses visualization of that part of who I'm becoming. And then I, I, I imagine that in the third person, I see how I am, how I show up, my state of being. I even will hear what the words that I'm saying, And then I emerge and diverge into that. So I'm third person and then I come in and I feel that viscerally in my body. And it sounds magical, but there's so many things that have come to life from that exercise for me that suddenly I have déjà vu, but I'm like, oh my God, this is something I've been visualizing for myself. And so I just, I feel like I think something like that, if it's tied somatically, like you said, can help you really, really tie into, wow, this is possible for me. Like, there is a next chapter for me in so many different ways. And that's what I want. That's what I want you to leave with is a real clear hope that, you know what, this is behind me and now I'm marching forward with agency and empowerment and I'm writing my I have been— the script and the narrative has been written for me by the outside world all of my life. Now it's my turn. All right. Well, thank you both for being here. Really do appreciate your time coming on the pod, on the Aftermath podcast. I'm glad that we all got to meet you, Andrew, and hopefully you'll come back.

Yes, hopefully.

We'd love to have you back. For those of you who are listening, again, if you're interested in the retreat, The link is in the show notes. There is always a study guide with every podcast. So there will be a study guide that will draw out and extract the principles that we talked about today. Um, that will be emailed to you and or on the website, totally up to you. If you want to join in the conversation, you can comment on Spotify, you can comment on YouTube, or you can DM one of us, all of our contact info. Oh, Andrew's not on, uh, social media, but yeah, but you can, you could do it.

Very analog. If you want to write me a letter, I'll drop my address. In the description below. Yeah.

All right. My son just asked me the other day, he goes, what's a stamp? What do you mean a stamp? And I'm like, I was like, oh my God, I did a terrible job raising this child. Um, but anyway, yeah, you could DM any of us, uh, David or I on social media. We are everywhere at all times. So we really appreciate you and we will see you all next week. Thank you again, Andrew and David.

Thank you, Dallas.

Good job.