EP 3:50 Sexual Healing post-Chemsex: The Fuck Buddy

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 and this solo episode. Don't forget, there's a supplemental study guide that goes along with this episode. The link's 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. By the way, speaking of the study guide, so I added these solo pods in, and basically, um, when I do the solo pod, the study guide is almost word for word what I say. I use it as a— I don't know, something to go by. Oftentimes I'll record and then use the transcript as the study guide. That's not really a study guide. So I'm also going to add now, starting with this podcast, a study guide at the end of what looks like a newsletter. So it's a lot of repetition. Look, you can listen to it, you can read it, you can read it while you listen to it, whatever, whatever works for you. I like to give you the same information in several places, but there will be a study guide now. Similar to the study guides that come out with the episodes that I have the guests on for now at the link. You can also get the study guides in your email as well by going to my website, recoveryalchemy.org, and subscribing. All right. Now, let me tell you, in my earliest days of my recovery, after I had finally found a place for me and the kids to live, That's when my fear of relapse really hit in, kicked in. I was being drug tested several times a week by the drug court system, by the treatment center, and my probation officer. So using could not happen or Daddy was going to jail. So there was something very triggering about settling into a home again, getting life back on track, and having the kids around. Environmentally, it was like the same situation. Same scenario when I used before. So I started to get bad cravings. So, you know, anybody else would think that this would be an effective deterrent. Oh, look, he has his family back, but it's not. However, my meth brain's reward loop, it was firing. Look, firing with all the euphoric recall whispers it could. Ooh, now you have some opportunities to hook up. You have a house again. Ooh, now you can possibly use in your own room again. Ooh, I wonder what Grindr grid looks like in this area. So I started to get really scared about having sex again, the possibility of relapse, what was next for me. And not to mention, I was just beginning to wake up with a hard-on again, which meant to me that something was working down there now. And it meant that I was going to start getting hard again when I got aroused because in early recovery, I could get an erection, but I had to watch porn. To get that. So I had to put a plan in place to protect my kids and to protect myself. And I was not about to drag us back down the toilet. So long story short, although this is a long story longer, I invited a non-attached fuck buddy to live with me for a few months. He needed a place to live, and I needed safety as well as sexual healing. So look, I was very traumatized by the previous years of chemsex. I was deathly afraid to have sex. Plus, at the time, I was court-ordered to attend 12-step meetings, and they were all telling me that I needed to wait a year. I didn't want to. And you know how I feel about those fucking arbitrary rules. But at the time, I was naively following what they said. So I decided to use this guy, who became a really good friend, to practice with. He was also in meth recovery, so he understood exactly what I needed and how I felt. And for 4 months, he kept me off Grindr, And I made major steps forward in rewiring my brain. So by the end, I was getting erections again, and I was well on my way to enjoying sober sex. So why am I telling you all this? Because today we're going to talk about the art and science of utilizing a fuck buddy for sexual reintegration post-chemsex. So look, this is the work before that work though. I wanna put a disclaimer in here. Getting back into sex after chemsex is a very tricky terrain. It is like walking through a minefield. You never know what's gonna set you off and set the reward loop off in your brain and cause a trigger. So starting your sexual healing journey with a fuck buddy may be too much too soon. So I'm not saying go out and do this. Many men have to start slow and they have to start alone. Many begin with a pornography detox. Chem porn, And honestly, most porn is a direct line back to that old pairing in your brain. So cutting porn out may be a really good idea. Then devote as much time as you can to pleasuring yourself. Find ways to masturbate to sober scenarios, real memories that you have that did not involve meth. Hopefully you have some fantasies that you build intentionally. If you can't remember, Fantasize. This is a fun time to explore your really deep erotic fantasies. And this is where you begin to explore just how sensitive you are to the idea of sex, because your brain will start to wander, right? You know, notice when your mind drifts to chemsex memories. Notice when masturbation makes you wanna look at chem porn. Notice when the cravings show up and what sets them off. This is— Work, guys. And you are gathering data. That's the whole point of this phase. This process is like a lab experiment where you are the subject, right? It is trial and error and it's very sensitive. Now, I'm gonna give you a rule for how— I'm not gonna give you a rule. Sorry. I am certainly not going to give you a rule for how long to wait to get back into partnered sex post-chemsex. This whole field of sexual healing post-chemsex is uncharted territory. There are no policies, procedures. It is individual to each man. Some of you need a few weeks. Some of you need a few years, period. And if you have a coach, a therapist, counselor, a recovery team sponsor who can walk you through this, great. Use them. If not, you're gonna have to be careful day by day and be completely honest with yourself about what the data is telling you before you go looking for a fuck buddy. Okay? There's a disclaimer. Now, why a fuck buddy, not a boyfriend? Here's the rule. You want somebody in a situation with little to no opportunity for romantic connection. And that sounds maybe backward. Shouldn't healing sex happen inside love? Not yet. And there is science behind that. So I've made my way through Jack Morin's book, The Erotic Mind. Really great book, by the way. It describes what he calls the love-lust conflict. His research on peak erotic experiences found that safety, merging, and emotional weight that comes with romantic love can actually dampen your erotic desire. Rather than fuel it, gets in the way. Romance brings expectations. It brings the need to perform, to impress, to be good enough. It brings the fear of losing that person. So Warren's point is that eros thrives on a certain amount of separateness. And when the promise of love enters the room, oftentimes a lot of men will leave their bodies And go right into their heads. And being in your head is the exact problem we're trying to solve here. That's what I hear so much is I'm in my head when I'm sober, having sober sex. I'm too much in my head, right? You wanna get outta the head into the body. Your brain is relearning how to feel arousal without the meth, and it needs the lowest pressure environment possible. A romantic connection is a high pressure environment, no matter how loving the person is. So for this experiment, you want somebody you like, somebody you trust, and somebody you're not gonna fall in love with. Okay? So you wanna ask though, am I ready for this? Before you go looking for anybody, you have to ask yourself one big honest question. Am I ready to experiment with sober sex? And ready does not mean, am I horny? Ready means, am I ready to be 100% radically honest? Am I ready to be transparent? Am I ready to be vulnerable? Because hear me, those questions are where intimacy begins, not with the sex, with how willing you are to have deep conversations about your fear, about what you want, and to stand your ground about your boundaries. It means being brave enough to speak your truth Without hesitating. That radical honesty, it means not being afraid of being too much or too needy or being a burden on somebody. This is your sex life at stake here. Do not be meek about it. You do not want to be sexually anorexic for the rest of your sober life. This is serious work. And for many, many men, it takes serious preparation, serious patience, serious time. So let go of the fear. It is time to release this fear of sex, the fear of desire, the fear of intimacy, the fear of your own libido. And you can do this. And you can use it, do it through calculated risks, meaning I am going to experiment with sex. And I'm also going to make sure I am inside a safe container when I do it. I am not going to try this on my own. So I want you to define the container. Who is in it? Who is not allowed in it? What is not allowed in it? Take charge of your sexual journey, your recovery, and your life. Create this container. So I also want you to involve your recovery team. Your sex life here is not a secret. Tell your recovery team what you're doing, your coach, your therapist, your sponsor, your accountability partner, whoever is on your roster. You can refer to the podcast I did on selecting your team. Everybody should be on alert and everybody should know the plan. Sex is the biggest trigger most of us have post-chem sex. So this is important. Walking into it alone is how relapses happen. But if you walk into it with a team supporting you and watching your back, healing happens. Yes, even with life after Chemsex, when you're finished using the substance, oftentimes chaperones are still necessary. Sorry to tell you. All right. So let's talk about the if-then. So as a preparation for this, you want to develop an if-then plan. And you wanna share that with your fuck buddy. And you'll hesitate on your then if he doesn't know what's coming. If he's not aware of your if-then, you'll hesitate or it may go completely wrong. You must communicate this. This is time to be completely honest with yourself. Are you thinking about chemsex more this week? Are you romanticizing the old sex? Is euphoric recall creeping in? Have you found yourself searching for meth-related porn on X? Do you have to think about chemsex-related images to even come? Observe it. Don't be scared by it. Just create a safety net by developing this if-then. So before you go into the sexual situation, if I've been craving, romanticizing, or searching in the In the 24 hours before we meet, then I cancel. Then I cancel or postpone. There's no guilt in that. And there's also no explanation needed or required by you. He just needs to know if-then. If he shows up high, if he mentions party, brings anything with him, then over that day and for good, right? Okay. So during the sexual experience, if I begin to think about meth during sex, then I stop And I use my exit. Talk about that in a second. If I find I have to think about meth to get hard or to come, then I stop. And here is my aftercare plan. If I go numb, check out, or start performing instead of feeling, then I stop. Okay, after. If the craving shows up later, then here is who I call. Here's my— here's my Set rules. If shame or the crash shows up, the dopamine dive, then here is who I call. Shame after sober sex is what's going to send you back to the app and to the substance. Now, you wanna define that exit, not I'll figure it out in the moment. You have a safe word or a signal and what physically happens next. Right? This is your exit. Do I immediately cuddle? Do we stop and cuddle? Does one of us have to leave? Are the lights turned on? Do you take a cold shower? And you may make these decisions in the moment as well. You can have an if-then, but also you wanna be flexible enough. You wanna have a happy medium between planning what your exit is and being flexible. And as you get more in tune with your body, you'll be able to follow your intuition and you'll know what you need. But right now, having an if-then prescription set in stone is your best bet. You wanna write it down and you wanna share all of this with your buddy. The more collaborative this is, the more this is a co-creation of your sexual healing, the more comfortable you're going to be. And the safer you're gonna be and the more successful this is gonna be. Write your objectives and your sober sexual values down. Sit with a pen, right? Here's— use some journal prompts. They may be like, these are the things I want to see in sober sex. Write that down. These are my sober sexual values. Write that down. This is something I have my clients work through within our Sexual Healing Workbook. So I want you to zoom out from the sexual value. Zoom out. Be very specific with what you need. A list could be, here's a list of some values: presence, eye contact, slowness, laughter, play, authenticity, connection, playfulness, presence, safety, adventure. Freedom, passion, tenderness, power, vulnerability, joy, curiosity. So when somebody asks you what you into, tell 'em tenderness, play, adventure, right? A little bit of a different answer than you normally would give, but you wanna know what those values are and you wanna, and that other person needs to know what those are too. And that's gonna give you a metrics so you can really identify and evaluate whether this sober sexual situation was successful or not. Did it meet my values? So you read through these and then you see how your body responds when you read like a list of those values, see how your body responds to those words. And then you choose the one that has the most interact— or the most visceral response. There's gonna be ones that resonate more than others, right? So you wanna discover your top values because they're going to help you better articulate, again, what you want, what you need, and how closely the situation with your fuck buddy met those needs. And you wanna write your boundaries, but do not overload them, right? Because there's a trap here. You don't wanna turn your boundaries into a list of expectations. And there's no pressure. You wanna make sure there's no pressure to ejaculate, no pressure to get hard, no pressure to do anything. You want somebody who gives you the kind of space that gets you out of your head and into your body. So again, I'm giving you guidelines. I'm giving you ideas. But don't get so much into it that it takes you out of the experience either. You want a space also that means non-judgment from that person, from yourself too. That space means patience. That space means taking the time you need to do what you need to do to get your brain back on track. Whatever that is. That might mean after 5 minutes of being naked, you say your safe word and you take your exit and that's it. That's the experience. It might mean the other person gives you no feedback at all in the beginning because one comment, even a kind comment like, I didn't like that, could get interpreted by your brain as shame. As rejection. Shame and rejection will put you right back in your head. Whatever it means for you, write it down. Okay? So pick your fetishes on purpose. So what fetishes do you want to pursue in your sober life? Meth hijacked your kinks. It did not create all of them. So some of what you were into during active chemsex use is worth keeping. But some of it was the drug talking. And as a meth-free person, you get to decide what comes forward with you into your sober sex life. So you pick 1 or 2 things that you're curious about, add them to your objectives. And this is all part of the experiment. So then you wanna build the scene, go into your senses, the right sights. Like, do you want Colored lights in the background, the right sounds. What do you want in the— what kind of music do you want? The right feels. What's the ambiance? The right smells. You like body odor? It's fine. The right person. Your brain has years of pairing sex with a pipe, a dark room, a phone screen, and a stranger, probably. You're building a new Every single detail down to the kind of sheets you use, the temperature, every detail is a chance to tell your nervous system, this is different and this is safe. And you want to interview this person. Yes, I'm talking about an actual interview. If they're not familiar with chemsex, make them familiar. They need a clear understanding of what you have been through and what your objectives are. You are looking for somebody who is willing to try, at least. Somebody who is open, someone who won't judge you for what you want. And more than that, somebody you can be completely unguarded and vulnerable with so that you can say something like, you know what? This is triggering for me. Can we stop and feel safe about it? And know that's gonna be met with a healthy, Healthy response. It's going to be okay. Make sure that this person understands the assignment. If they do not, they are not your guy. Keep looking. You want to use them in the nicest possible way. Look, this person is your practice partner, your experiment, your own personal sex toy, and they need to know But this is what is happening here. This is your chance to have the freedom to ask for whatever you want, to try whatever you want, and to not have to worry about the implications it might have on a relationship. There is no, what does this mean about us? There is no next morning to manage. There is just you learning how your body works without meth. Now here's the other half of it. They might not want to try something, and that is okay. You actually want that because you also want to get in the practice of being in a space where you do not get exactly what you want. And you want to pay attention to how you receive that information from that person. Because do you take it as information or do you take it through a filter of rejection? I'm not good enough. I'm rejected. They don't like me. Maybe I'm not attractive. Maybe I'm too much. If that's where your mind goes, good. Now you know. This is something you get to look through and process before you get into a relationship, before you start dating, before you have connected sex with somebody you love. Work through that shit. This is such a great opportunity to clear out that static, those limiting beliefs. This is shadow work that you get to use this person for. So you kind of do hope they do. Kind of say, that's not something I wanna do. So with somebody where the stakes are so low, so when the stakes are high later, you're more conscious. Okay? One other thing is you might consider a sex worker. It's a little bit non-traditional. It might be a good idea to incorporate a sex worker into your sexual reintegration. Obviously, you want one who's not going to use. If you are going to use rent men, make sure that PNP is nowhere on their profile. Make sure you read everything. You ask direct questions. Do your due diligence. There are sober sex workers out there. Trust me. But a sex worker can give you something that a fuck buddy might not. They will be and do whatever you the hell you want them to be and do. No negotiating around their needs. No wondering if they're asking for too much. If you're asking for too much, right? You're they're here to. to please. You set the scene, you set the pace, you set the boundaries, and they're gonna hold those. It's good practice for having fun sober sex. That's how you begin to rebuild the pathways of pleasure. Now somebody's gonna say, I don't wanna pay for sex. I hear you, but you're not paying for sex. Think about what you're actually paying for here. You're paying for a recovery tool. When you hire a sex worker to help you sexually heal, you are paying for an IOP, period. Something to think about. All right, guys, I want you to have fun and let's go get that sexual healing. But I want you to go slow, get a team, put on a lab coat, run the experience. Hey, maybe you can role-play a doctor-patient scene. So I'm also gonna provide in the study guide a tool that I have created for my clients. It's called the Sober Fuck Buddy Planning Sheet. That link will be in the study guide. Study guide link is in the show notes. I hope this helps today. It's kind of fast, but you might have to listen to it again. If you have any questions, let me know. You can join the conversation on Spotify, on YouTube, or send me a DM on social media. I'm everywhere at all times. Have a great week.