EP 3:38 Hidden Chemsex Trigger: Unspoken Conversations

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 Aftermeth 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. In this solo episode, 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 get the algorithm to place it in the ears and eyes of those who need it. So many people have asked me, how the hell do you produce the amount of content that you put out on social media? You know, there's 3 or 4 reels that go out a day, 2 weekly podcast episodes, all the material generated for the program, the study guides. One would think all I do is sit around and write, and don't get me Don't get me wrong, I love to write. In fact, my dream is to write full-time, and we're getting there. But no, my content comes from my daily experiential learning as I interact with current and potential clients. You know, it's between the daily emails, the DMs I get from men around the world, as well as the hours I spend in front of the laptop one-on-one with real men dealing with real issues. I'm constantly jotting down ideas for content, not to mention pulling from my lived experience. So there is literally an unending flow of material when it comes to chemsex and recovery. But today's podcast is based on one of those aha moments I had working with a client who just could not stop returning to use. He was so focused on horniness and sex as the culprit of his chemsex misuse that he was missing the core cause. Getting to that core driver to use is the most impactful part of your chemsex recovery. Once you get to the root, you can sustain a meth-free life. Instead of white-knuckling it for years. And when we get stuck in our heads that the driver is sex only, we're missing out on the integrative healing. The aha moment came when we dug deeper into his emotional dysregulation. We found that several people in his life were making his life miserable, or he was allowing them to be. And neither one of them were aware that he, that they were making his life miserable. He was avoiding the conversations. And by choosing not to self-advocate, the pressure inside him grew and grew until he was about to explode. And then he would get on sniffies and be using as a way to release the valve. Wasn't about sex. It was about avoiding difficult conversations that led to difficult emotions. And once he discovered this, we solved his chemsex misuse. So over time, I've noticed this recurring with men. Men avoiding what they perceive as difficult conversations. And today, I'm going to use another client example to illustrate this. The client today is named Marco. That's not his real name. But most men, when I ask them about their chemsex triggers, they'll immediately rattle off Grindr, sniffies, horniness, 2 AM, sex, men in the gym, unexpected text from user buddy. Like, that's some of the The ones that you hear. But I have found that this list and most anything sexually related is not the core trigger. Basically, they are treating the effect and not the cause. So if you look at a timeline of relapse, where it starts is where we miss. We go in the middle when we get horny or we want sex, right? What I have found is that an emotional trigger happens first. Which then activates the system, making things like a Grindr conversation move quickly into a meth conversation because you are emotionally primed. Without that emotional activation, the man could more easily navigate Grindr without falling prey to the smoke emojis, right, on the profile. Your emotional state is the most important metric to monitor in chemsex recovery. And what causes emotional dysregulation is often totally unrelated to sex and hormones. For today's discussion, we are looking at conversations left unspoken, which in my experience has never been listed as a chemsex trigger, but it belongs near the top. So it's just nearly invisible 'cause it doesn't feel like a risk. It doesn't feel like a trigger. It feels unrelated. It feels like being reasonable, like I'm just keeping the peace, right? In the moment, it feels like the grown-up choice. But today I'm gonna use Marco as a case study for this. So what actually took him to the edge wasn't an app and it wasn't a party, and it was a 4-minute phone call at work. A supervisor called Marco to tell him that he was no longer included in the department-wide business trip to open up a new location. The reasoning was based on the supervisor's surmise of a performance issue with him. This performance issue was based on others' feedback. All he said was, "Oh, okay." That was the whole event. He drove home in a bad mood. He was anxious the rest of the day. Then he got home and didn't want to do anything. He's already emotionally activated, and guess what? This happens every time. He received a sup text from a number he forgot to block. Those texts always come at just the right time, or arguably the wrong time. Marco had often received these texts. He had already received them during his recovery, but they never affected him yet. He would just simply block and delete. But this time, his brain helpfully, obligingly, the way it always has, offered him the solution it's offered a thousand times before. He stared at the text and he slipped into a state of euphoric recall. His imagination went wild, and soon, yes, he was horny. His body was beginning to be taken over by a chemsex craving.

But you know what?

Marco didn't use that night, but he came closer than he had in months. And the pressure that got him there had nothing to do with a dealer or a hookup. It came from the deafening silence of, oh, okay, when everything in him disagreed and everything in him knew that the supervisor was wrong. So here's the mechanism and how it happens as a pressure release. For Marco, the drug was about that pressure release. Like, euphoria was almost beside the point. And unspoken conversations are among the most reliable pressure generators a person can carry because they accumulate silently and remain stuck as unexpressed emotion. And he said it better than I could. The unsaid thing sits there and boils.

And then...

Historically, to lance the boil, he would use. So that's the arc worth understanding here. An unspoken conversation builds. It doesn't stay neutral. And for a lot of the men I work with, chemsex in these moments has very little to do with the— with pleasure or connection or validation. It's an escape from that emotion. It's about releasing the pressure that has nowhere else to go 'cause you're not having the conversation. The conversation you avoid at 2:00 PM becomes the pressure you're trying to discharge at 9:00 PM. So what is sitting underneath? Marco is an excellent advocator for other people, and if you knew what his job was, you would know he built a career on it. When it comes to advocating for himself, he goes quiet. Having the conversation is about self-advocacy. So then we went one layer deeper and we found the core belief that was actually running in the background. The belief that has shaped his whole identity, his whole life. Some call that a limiting belief. So I asked him, what would have to be true about you that would make you cower and not advocate for yourself? So that's a good question for you to keep in mind. Now, he couldn't answer it at the moment. He was still thinking. So I followed up with another question. When is the first time you remember knowing that what you needed to be, needed to be said, But you didn't say it. Knowing what needed to be said, but you didn't say it. So he kept— he thought, and after a minute, memory came to mind. He was sitting at the dinner table listening to a parent tell him he didn't deserve to go on a school trip because of something he had done. The reality was he didn't even do what the parent charged him with. But when he tried to speak up, defend himself, the parent told him that his opinion didn't matter.

Boom.

That's it. There it is. My opinion doesn't matter. That's the underlying belief that's been operating his show. He didn't decide during that call with the supervisor. He learned it decades ago at a dinner table in a house where his opinion wasn't welcome. The nervous system wasn't running some cost-benefit analysis on his job performance. It was running a much Older program. It went into a triggered response because the body doesn't know. It doesn't read a calendar. It doesn't know he's not that boy again, 'cause the body organizes by emotion. There's no linear timeline. During the work call, Marco became 8 years old again. The anger he carried around all evening had nothing to do with his supervisor. It was aimed at himself, not for what she did, but for what he didn't do. And the belief that my opinion doesn't matter. So how does the belief that my opinion doesn't matter contribute to chemsex misuse? What happens is that these beliefs are not recognized by us.

Okay?

This is like shadow work. So we interact with others in life and we respond through that perspective. My opinion doesn't matter, or we don't respond. In Marco's case, believing that his opinion doesn't matter is his own flavor of I am not enough, which really is the thread that connects all of us. who have used chemsex as maladaptive coping. So the tension and the pressure of feeling like not enough is relieved by getting high. And the brain knows how to relieve it, so it produces euphoric recall. Let's get this going, right? That will lead to the physical relapse. And once you are using the substance, yes, you are having sex, but in this case, sex is not the trigger. So here's some coaching questions that you can ask yourself. What lies beneath this avoidance? So if you recognize yourself in this, here are some powerful questions, okay? And you can also journal with these. So what am I afraid of happening if I speak my mind, if I speak my truth? All right? A job, a friendship. Marco's answer was rejection, which is true, but not deep enough. So yes, you're afraid of rejection, but that's not why you kept this to yourself. So then you ask, where in my body does the unsaid thing live? My chest, my jaw, gut, shoulders. Find where it lives in your body and breathe into it. Sometimes that sensation simply needs your attention and it'll dissipate. Next, whose voice is telling me to stay quiet? 'Cause it's an older voice, I promise you, than the one you're hearing. It wasn't the supervisor's voice for Marco. It was daddy, right? When did you first learn that speaking up was dangerous? Whose table were you sitting at, right? Metaphorically, who said that to you? 'Cause I'll bet that voice sounds like them. When was the first time you remember feeling this way? Sit quietly and allow a memory or memories to come to mind. Marco was transported back to the dinner table. What would I wish someone had said to me in that moment? So you talk to that past version of yourself and you tell them what you wish you would've heard. Who is my anger actually aimed at? When the resentment shows up after an avoided conversation, trace it back. It looks like it's about the other person, but really check if it's really about them or about what you didn't do, or the person originally telling you. Like that, right? Does this magically cause you to stop using meth? No, obviously not. But it does offer you an impactful piece of the puzzle. And a sharp direction for your recovery. You no longer live under, I must stop using meth. That's my recovery. And you enter into, how can I live in peace? How can I live in peace? How can I live in peace is the question that excavates the deeper reasons of why you can't stop using because you stop looking past the meth and the trigger into the rest of your life and you look farther into, out, You get to zoom out of the whole process. This is deep recovery. So this week I want you to make a list of every conversation you're currently not having. The one with your boss, with your brother, your partner, about the thing from March, the friend who keeps doing the thing. Look at the list and ask what it costs you to carry it, where it sits in your body, what it makes you reach for at 9 o'clock at night. When did you first hear it? Then pick one. Write out what you want to say to the person. Read it out loud and read it to nobody. You're not at the dinner table anymore, but the part of you that learned to stay quiet doesn't know that yet. So you wanna talk to that part. You wanna talk to that part and write it a letter too, right? That's the real resolution. But go ahead and write those other letters as well, because it's time for you to speak your truth. It is time for wholeness, for healing, for meth-free living. All right. I hope this helps, guys. If you have any questions, let me know. You can comment on Spotify, comment on YouTube. You can DM me or catch me on social media. Have a good day.