EP 3:54 Chemsex Recovery: The “Good News” Trigger
In this solo episode of the Aftermeth Podcast, host Dallas Bragg examines a less‑discussed relapse trigger for men who have sex with men (MSM) recovering from chemsex: positive emotional events and milestones, which he calls “feel‑good triggers.” Drawing on G. Allen Marlatt’s cognitive‑behavioral relapse model, Bragg explains that celebrations, promotions, anniversaries, and other good‑news moments can activate the brain’s intensity‑based reward system, prompting cravings for methamphetamine or other chemsex drugs. He shares personal anecdotes about how key‑tag milestones repeatedly led to relapse for him, and he describes the brain’s learned rule “big feeling → use,” which applies to both negative and positive high‑arousal states. Bragg then offers concrete relapse‑prevention strategies: naming the trigger, informing a support team, planning celebrations in advance, conducting “fire drills” to rehearse coping responses, maintaining consistent daily routines even on good days, and using supportive self‑talk instead of entitlement language. He emphasizes that proactive, network‑based safeguards—not willpower alone—are most effective, and he encourages listeners to share their own experiences with feel‑good triggers. The episode concludes with a call to action to engage with supplemental study guides and related podcast episodes.
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 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, if you could possibly forget, there is a supplemental study guide that goes along with this episode. The link will be in the show notes. And don't forget also, please remember to like, subscribe, rate the podcast so we can get the algorithm to place it in the ears and eyes of those who need it. Okay, so before I was forced into recovery by the North Carolina justice system, I made I made many, many attempts to stop using, and especially after I was arrested the first time, because I was put on court-ordered probation, and a contingency of that probation was I had to attend so many 12-step meetings. And I remember the first one. I remember just slinking into this Methodist Church classroom. And I also remember giggling because I was like, meth-odist. Yep. That's what I am, a meth-odist. At first, I really did love receiving those collared key tags. They marked the milestones of your consecutive meth-free days, if you're not familiar with NA, Narcotics Anonymous. I loved that until— until I found myself relapsing after each ceremonial key tag was given to me. In fact, the day I was released from probation, At the courthouse. I drove straight from there to pick a guy up to party. I was on Grindr sitting in the pews as they, they looked like church pews waiting to be called up. By the time I had been arrested 3 more times, I was under this very harsh thumb of drug court. I could really see a pattern here. Milestones were a major trigger for me. And I recall expressing that fear the day I completed treatment and again the day I graduated from drug court. I really wanted to celebrate, but I also felt my stomach clenched because I was in this anticipatory fear of, wait a minute, milestones make me relapse. And I want to know, does that sound familiar to you? Because most likely it does. And most likely the feel-good trigger is one that has gotten very little attention from you and from the people that have helped you. So today we want to talk about why you want to use chems when life is looking good. So there is a clinical case for this. So let's look at a little research. In G. Allen Marlatt's cognitive behavioral model of relapse, which has been the foundation for a lot of modern relapse prevention work, the trigger for a return to use is called a high-risk situation. I call them danger zones. And the taxonomy that Marlowe built from studying actual using episodes, they divide them into situ— they divide the situations, they divide 'em up into categories, right? So the 2 biggest categories by far are what you normally would expect, negative emotional states like anger or anxiety, depression, boredom, loneliness. And the other is interpersonal conflict. Right? So they accounted for more than half of all the relapse episodes in his analysis. So direct and indirect social pressure also accounted for more than 20%. So social pressure won't bother you if you don't put yourself in a social situation. Anyway, but then there's this other one, positive emotional states, celebrations, good news, wins. It's a minority of the episodes, and that's why it probably gets a little little attention, but studies show that at times users specifically try to enhance already positive emotions. It also affects that reward loop in your brain. So you're not trying to escape something, you're trying to amplify something. And meth does the amplification better than almost anything on earth, right? Which means for a man in chemsex recovery, A celebration is not a neutral event. A celebration can set off that reward loop. And why your brain does this is that there's this mechanism, as plainly as I can understand it, is that during active use, your brain learned a rule. Big feeling, use. Not big bad feeling, but big feeling. So the nervous system doesn't file pleasure, pain, good, bad in separate cabinets. It just files intensity, emotion. So a promotion at work and a breakup are gonna both spike arousal, both flood you with dopamine, both push you outside your normal operating range. And if the learned response to intensity is going to use— is for you to use, then intensity itself is gonna be your reward. trigger. So regardless of whether the intensity is good or if it's bad, it's just intensity. And then there's that big one that I remember. I remember this whispering in my ear, I deserve it. You deserve it. I deserve it. That's that same whisper that will convince me to eat a double cheeseburger, fries, and a side of milkshake after I've been in the gym for 30 to 60 days and I've been fasting and I've been exercising and I look better. I deserve this. It, it, it doesn't make any sense. But so you've been white-knuckling it here. You've been saying no to everything. And now something genuinely good has happened. And there's a voice that's telling you that you've earned a reward. And how meth become a reward, who knows? But in your, your brain doesn't know that it's meth, just knows reward. It sounds very reasonable, and that's what's gonna make it dangerous for you because there's this logic of, I deserve a reward. And that comes exactly at the moment when your defenses are low because everything's going good. 'Cause why would you be defending yourself against good news? But I believe the brain also knows exactly when to say these things. How to say them in what tone individually to you to talk you into this. In the church, they say they use this phrase that the devil learns from your mistakes even when you don't. So that's true, but let's talk about the devil. Little do some of these Christians realize the devil is the part of your brain. Talking to you during this state of being. Some call it the ego, E-G-O, which could be, could stand for edging God out, right? But that, what it is, is the old thought patterns, the neural pathways pushing to get their way. The milestones are the sneakiest version of this. 30 days, 60, 90, a year. Get a chip, you get a coin, you get a key tag, you post on social media, you get an alarm on your app that you're keeping your days, keep track of your days. Congratulations from everybody who loves you. Underneath all of that, you start to hear that whisper. I've proven myself. I can do this. So maybe I can handle a little one. Maybe I can do one. Maybe I'm at a point where I'm stronger now. My resistance has built up. That's okay. Those are natural. And it's not proof that your recovery is all wrong, that you're failing and you're bad. It's just proof that your brain is doing exactly what a brain does. But this is going to land the hardest on your milestone days. Milestone days are precisely when nobody also is going to think to check on you, to ask you those questions because you don't— You don't think that you're in a danger zone, a high-risk situation, 'cause you look like you're winning. You look like you're fine. And this is exactly the kind of information to share with your recovery team as soon as you understand and see and are aware of the process. So I want you to go and listen to episode 348, if you haven't, of the podcast. And I talk about hiring and training your team. Your team needs to know this information so they can be there to support you in the right way. You have to train them. You have to inform them, help them understand how your brain operates, especially if they've never been in any kind of addiction. And then you proactively put your safeguards in place before a milestone arrives or whatever positive emotional event. Might be coming up. So name this category for yourself. You don't need a term for it. Some people, I had one client call it an inflationary experience. But what you do need to accept is that good news is, can be a high-risk situation, a danger zone. Write it on your list. Could be the promotion coming up. You meet a guy, it's a new relationship, seems to be going well. Reconciliation with family. Of course, the milestone, going on vacation, the first really good week and months, you're feeling good, your body's looking good. Those are the days you need your guard up. There's something in the 12 steps that they say. What is it? When you're feeling, when you're feeling bad, go to a meeting. When you're feeling good, go to 2. It's the same thing. Plan the celebration. You wanna plan this celebration in advance. You don't wanna let go of this proactivity you need in recovery. The relapse rarely is going to happen at that party. It happens in the transition, the hours after when the dopamine dives, when, when the, when you want to go higher, when the event is over and you're alone with this residue of this big feeling and you don't have a plan and you're, you're by yourself and you're left to your own devices. Chances are I deserve it, right? I needed a reward. You, so you wanna decide before the good news arrives how you're going to market. So I'm all about doing like a, a fire drill, practicing beforehand. Okay, I get great news, I go out on a great date, um, whatever it is, right? This is what I do after. This is who I contact. They know, they're on alert, they know what to say, they know how to contact me. You want to know who you're going to be with after? Don't be alone. Who's going to be with you or where, what are you going to be doing at 10 PM, midnight? When you talk about Marlatt's model, it calls for, he calls this a coping response. And the point is that this all has to exist Before the situation comes. You do these fire drills until the actual really— until the fire really happens. Keep your people on alert, not just standby, but alert. The men who do this best in my program are not the ones with the strongest willpower. They're the ones who can be proactive. They're the ones whose support network knows How to check in, when to check in, why to check in, and when something good happens, they're also on alert. So tell the people close to you, when I get good news, that's a red zone for me. Call me. So in this state, you also want to keep the consistency. You want to keep doing boring things also on these good days. You want to keep doing what you were doing as if you were in new recovery for a while. Consistency, consistent daily action does not get a day off because you feel happy. You cannot base this on how you feel right now till you get a handle on it. In fact, the good days are the ones that's gonna test whether your recovery is just a set of checkboxes and habits, or is it a real strong infrastructure? If your routine only shows up when you're struggling, That is not a routine. So I want you to go and listen to also to episode 346. That is, You Already Want It Bad Enough. So in that episode, I'm talking about wanting it is not enough. Being willing to do what it takes is what gets you through. So the thing I want you to take from this is that, again, you are not weak. You're not failing. You're not doing bad. If good experiences, you're not self-sabotaging. I want you to get away from all these self-defeating, disempowering words. When you use after good news, that's just part of it. You're human and your nervous system learned a rule a long time ago that your conscious mind, the prefrontal cortex, is not agreeing to. It doesn't make sense inside, but you have to stop treating your life like a threat assessment where only the bad days are dangerous. The bad days, they'll be obvious. They announce themselves, right? You're gonna feel them coming and you're gonna brace yourself. The good days, those are the ones that slip through. They don't announce anything. They just feel good. It feels like relief, which is why you have to learn to hear them coming too. Now, this is not the rest of your life, and I'm not saying you have to be on guard and your addiction is not doing pushups in the parking lot. What I'm saying is, in a certain stage of this, plan for the inflationary experiences, the good news triggers. Plan for them. Put your safeguards in place, get through them several times, and you are creating new neural pathways. You are creating new habits and new self-trust in yourself. And then eventually you just get to live your life. You get to have good days, you get to have bad days, and you're not going to use. You just get to be a normie. I don't know what length of time that is, but this is the way This is just how it works. So I want you to tell me in the comments about your experiences with feel-good triggers, and I'll bet you milestones are one of them. But how do you deal with them? I'd like to know how you deal with them. And I'd like to know your thoughts on what I have to say today. All right. I hope this helps everybody, and I'll see you next week.
