Episode 1:7 Listener Letter: Sober But Unfulfilled

When you wake up and you say, ah, this was for my good. How can this addiction be the best thing that's ever happened to me? And how can I work with it? Welcome to the After Meth Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Dallas Bragg, a former crystal meth addict, now sobriety coach. Join me on my mission to increase awareness around the epidemic of crystal meth among the gay male population. And create a repository of resources for current and past addicts, as well as, and especially for their loved ones. This is The Aftermath. Trigger warning, this podcast will contain discussions pertaining to drug and alcohol misuse. If you feel triggered to use or relapse, please call SAMHSA's National Hotline at 1-800-662-HELP. Also, if you are new in your sobriety journey and you feel like you could be triggered by discussions around drug, alcohol, and sex misuse, please do not listen to this podcast. All right, now on with the show. Hey guys, welcome to this episode of The Aftermath Podcast. Today I do not have a guest. It's just me and a letter from a listener. I read this letter and it prompted me to do some writing, and so I'm going to be referring to notes. I won't be reading it word for word, although maybe I should. It'd probably be better articulated that way. Um, but this will be a little different episode that I just wanted to address a few things that I'm seeing, um, a lot across the board. So I got a letter, and by the way, you can submit your letters, you can submit your questions through our website, aftermath.net. There are different categories there. If they don't fit in a category, just submit it. It's fine. We also have a phone number where you can leave a voicemail. This is a place where you can get things off your chest, or in this case, ask for advice. So this person calls themselves Messed Up. Kind of goes along with the themes of the names of the categories. I'm going to kind of briefly pair— I'm going to paraphrase some of this just because I want to keep it anonymous, and some of the things written in here could indicate who they are. This person is 6 years sober. But I still get triggered and I fight cravings a lot. I haven't had sex or dated. I am afraid to have sex. I'm afraid to be triggered, and it's really hard to have sober sex. I go to meetings twice a week, and my sponsor meets with me weekly, but my addiction is still doing push-ups in the parking lot. Um, that part When do the cravings and the triggers go away? I feel very isolated. Life was much easier when I was using, even though it was volatile and unhealthy. Where do I begin with this? First of all, I just want to say, if I hear anyone else use this cliché that their addiction is doing pushups in the parking lot, I'm going to scream. I don't know who started that and why it caught on so much besides it puts you in a victim place. It puts you in this mindset that you're out of control, that there's a disease. Sorry, I don't know what that sounded like on the other side, but there's a disease that's always after you. Called addiction. But I want you to stop saying that. And I want you to stop believing that. And this is a prime case of 6 years without the substance. Substanceless does not mean you're in recovery. I was substanceless for the first 2 years. And I was still not in recovery. I was still acting out of a sex addiction. I was still addicted to being sober, which means I was addicted to rebuilding my life back. I got my dopamine high from all the milestones. And when the milestones were over, I crashed. I had a comedown that led me into wanting to relapse. If you heard my story, it's episode, I don't know, 2. This person is living in fear, and I want to talk to you, Methed Up, if you're listening. And apparently you do listen. Um, I— it prompted me to try to explain a few things, uh, about addiction and how to approach it. I'm going to be referring to my notes, so I just want to tell you that This, and these are all my opinions. You can take what resonates with you and you can leave the rest. But the underlying cause of all addictions, and you can say that there's some kind of chemical hormone that once you want to, makes you want to drink more alcohol and those kind of things. The underlying cause of addiction is a separation from ourselves. We are separated from who we really are. This separation manifests as a disconnection from our destiny. Our destiny is a pre-programmed purpose that's imprinted into the very DNA of our cells. Think about this. Even if you don't believe in quote unquote God, infinite intelligence, the energy that creates worlds, higher power, just think of it as we are a part of nature. And if we are a part of nature, think about how nature works. Think about a seed that grows into a tree. That seed contains an unseen blueprint of a plan for that seed to grow into a tree, and it's going to do everything in its power through the encouragement of the universe and nature to fulfill its full potential. So we are the same, except that plan is in our cells, in our DNA, and it's pushing us toward our full potential. Living in your full potential is called being self-actualized. If you read my newsletters at all, You'll hear, you'll see, you'll read me talking about self-actualized recovery. Self-actualized recovery is getting better and improving and healing and growing a little more every day. This idea that addiction is evil has, has got to leave your mind if you want to live a self-actualized life. Recovery. We have created addiction to be a monster, a disease that's always waiting around the corner like a bully doing push-ups in the parking lot, just waiting for us to come out so he can beat us up. I think that's projecting. You may be projecting the childhood you had. If you were like me, the only gay kid in the village, you were bullied. Maybe it's easier to make people out to be enemies or make things out to be enemies because that's all you know. But that's not how the universe works. Addiction, just like anything else, is a neutral concept. What's left is the meaning we place on it. So if you want to place a negative connotation on it, then that's what it means to you. When we place a negative connotation on Our addiction, we are rejecting parts of our beingness. And that separates us from ourselves. So what I'm saying is addiction is part of you. And when you reject a part of you, or when you turn against a part of you, or when you criminalize a part of you, demonize a part of you, you are separating yourself from yourself. You're disconnecting from your whole self. You're fragmenting. And when you do that, it creates such a barrier between you and self-actualization. When we have this mindset, it allows fear to drive our mindset and our thoughts. Fear. When we operate from fear, that's what a character defect is. If you've been through the 12 steps, if you read the big book, character defects are mentioned a lot, right? Let me tell you what a character defect is. All it is is a belief that we hold about ourselves that has disconnected us from living our full potential. What's a belief? A belief is the thought we keep on thinking. I have to give credit to Abraham Hicks for that. A belief about ourself that was caused by incidents, by words said to us, by events Situations, circumstances, external things, beliefs that we adopted about ourselves, or thoughts that we adopted about ourselves became beliefs. Fear-based beliefs, fear-based character defects are our I am not enough version. Every addict Every addict has some version or flavor of, I am not enough. I am not pretty enough. I am not skinny enough. I am not normal enough. I'm not straight enough. I'm not something enough. That's what fuels us to try to— if we're not enough, we need something to make us enough. And that's where we get— we find addiction. When we approach recovery as a battle against addiction, we're seeking a win-lose scenario. So when we do this, it leads to more and more fighting in our lives of the same circumstances that led us to addiction. In the first place. So let me explain. If we're going to battle with addiction, we're battling ourselves. We're fighting against our defects instead of working with it. And when you do that, when you turn on yourself, no one wins. And when we do that, this battle shows up over and over and over. It shows up in our relationships. It shows up in our jobs, in our circumstances, in our mindset. And we're in a cycle that repeats over and over and over until our stubborn ass learns. You know, I— we talk about the 12 steps a lot on this podcast, and I, I think the 12 steps are great. Uh, I have nothing against the 12 steps. What I do have a problem with is what some people have made them. Same thing with Christianity. I don't have a problem with Jesus. I do have a problem with what we've made Christianity. And it's not every Christian, but there are some. It's a mainstream thing, right? So we see this battle a lot in people who participate in the 12-step programs, and they've passed on this battle mentality. This waging war against this bully doing push-ups in the parking lot. We take that battle stance instead of a healing stance. So it puts you on the offense. And so the universe, when you put yourself on the offense, is going to continue providing opportunities for you to be on the battlefield because it wants you To finally give up. The healing perspective is when you embrace addiction and you seek to work together with it to mend and fulfill the full potential of your life. All of this is the universe encouraging that seedling To reach its full potential, you are the seedling. And if addiction gets you there, then that's what it takes. Another thing: if you've read my newsletters, I talk about the ego mind. When I talk about the ego, it's capital E, capital G, capital O. It is not ego as in arrogance, although that's a version of it. We really need to come up with a new word. The ego mind is— how can it— how can I be explained? So in Christianity, they refer to the devil, right? The adversary. This entity trying to always get you to do bad, right? Always pull you back. That's basically— they're talking about the ego. The ego mind. The ego mind is what makes us human. It's what separates us between the spirit self and the human self. It makes us— it wants us to continue patterns, right? And it tells us things like we are separate from each other. And in reality, we're all the same. But that's a whole other discussion. But addiction is fueled by the ego. Even though it's part of us, this ego wants us to stay in this loop of feeling incomplete and finding that completeness through addiction. So, The ego wants us to believe we are separate from it, but we're not. Addiction is part of us. But when we see it as separate, we feel helpless and we feel controlled by something outside of us. But truly, addiction, the, the patterns formed by addiction are there as a mechanism to protect and help us. Sometimes, somewhere along the line, we came up with character defects, beliefs about ourselves. We felt incomplete. Well, addiction helped us feel complete, but it was only temporary. Addiction saw— addiction sees that it helps us feel complete, and it is this instinctive pattern, this animalistic behavior to protect us from feeling bad. So along that vein, Whenever you feel I am not enough, right, it's magically fixed. You, you, you come to believe that you have to have it. It feels safe. So to begin changing this perspective You have about addiction. You must accept something, and you must accept that life is happening for you, not to you. And if you accept that life is happening for you, everything is ordained, everything is on purpose. That does not leave out addiction, the whole addiction experience. Some of us are chosen To experience addiction. The entire reason for it is to get you to fulfill your full potential, to clear out what's blocking you from becoming that tree. The universe has one mission, and that's to help you evolve. The universe is neutral. It doesn't know the difference between something that we perceive as negative, like addiction— we've given it that meaning— and something we perceive as positive. It only sees what will help us if we allow it. So the thing is that all of us are wounded. Addiction came into your life experience to heal your wounds. The way that we, the way the ego Helps us do that is temporary because the ego lives off patterns. So if we fulfill a temporary wound, we put a Band-Aid on it with addiction, then we have to do it over and over and over again. So how do we go about this? It's called emotional detox. And Bill W., king of 12 steps, Talked about emotional sobriety, and I believe this is what he meant. After the 12 steps, after you've gone through, then you live a life of emotional sobriety, which means reaching your full potential through processing, releasing, identifying, bringing up hidden emotions and trauma. Things are bound within us. Old memories, shadows. These energies, these emotions have to be fully expressed and processed. Without addiction, we may have lived our entire life without even knowing that we were harboring These emotions. But addiction is the arrow pointing us toward release. But when we fight addiction, when we see it as the enemy and something outside of ourselves, we're missing the point. We're missing the value of what it's showing us. We miss the chance to heal. Messed up. You're missing your chance to heal here. You're missing it. You're living a life of fear. Like, sober sex is so hard. How do you know? You haven't tried it. I don't mean to be insensitive or lack empathy here, but there is a better way of living for you. There's a difference between sober and recovery. So when we position ourselves as being in relationship with addiction, so if we want to come together with someone else or something else, addiction is part of us, but if we want to integrate it, then we want to create a relationship with it. Two become one, right? When we create this relationship, we create a space of mutual benefit and growth. And here's how. Addiction wants us to be safe, wants us to be happy. Addiction really wants to fulfill us. It wants to safeguard us against emotional triggers, sadness, despair, etc., etc. You are also seeking fulfillment, lasting fulfillment, permanent fulfillment, your full potential. So in essence, this is a trauma bond, right? It's a trauma bond you have with addiction within yourself. So like with any relationship, be it personal, romantic, whatever, you're going to have to ask, how can we both Get what we need and live together in harmony. This is shadow work. This is shadow integration. This is contradictory and counterintuitive for some of you, but it creates a sacred space. It's a sort of hospital for the soul because addiction's giving you the gift of awareness. Awareness of your wounds. Awareness of those stuck energies, those old memories, those unexpressed emotions. After 5 and a half years of being without crystal meth, I finally started to feel my emotions. To let them Come out and through me, through, up, and out to fully feel the anger that I had built up. Because when you don't let those things out, they stay in like a pressure cooker inside you, and they, they let off steam once in a while. When they do, it comes out in other ways. Right? Emotional triggers. So what you want to do here, seek completeness all on your own. When we have to see a sponsor every week after 5 years, go to a meeting every 2 times a week, if you do those things for Fellowship, for social networking, for other reasons other than I have to do this, that's fine. But when you're going because you are still seeking external things to complete you, and this is what we do too with romantic relationships, is we're looking for somebody to complete us. To fix us, to enable us. But when we approach addiction with curiosity, as we would a mate, someone in relationship, what are you showing me right now? What is this about? What in me attracted this experience? Because it is all about you. Everything in your life experience, it was brought on by you. And when I say you, I mean you and the universe, the Holy Spirit, whatever you want to call, whatever it is, higher power. Nature, instinct, whatever you want to say. All for the purpose—I hate to keep repeating this—for you to be self-actualized, to reach your full potential. So when you see this is happening for me, when you wake up and you say, ah. This was for my good. How can this addiction be the best thing that's ever happened to me? And how can I work with it? How can we work together? Because when you feel complete in and of yourself, when you find wholeness without using an addictive pattern or without anybody else or anything else outside of you, addiction is transmuted. Addiction has lost its— it gets what it needs. You're not triggered anymore. You're not in despair anymore. You're not living life in this fear, this constant— when do the cravings and the triggers stop? They stop when you do the work. Now, all of this is easier said than done, I'm sure. But I just want to give you a roadmap and give you a change of perspective because I'm hearing from people every day who have been told to be scared, who have been told to fight. Who have been told that they can't do it on their own. So I'll just end it with this. If you're interested in guided meditation, you can go to my YouTube page. I'll put the link in the show notes. There's a guided meditation there called Meet Your Addiction. At least it's a first step because when you meet your addiction in this guided meditation, you understand that it's part of you. And being part of you means that— You can change it. You can observe it. You can begin to work with it. But also, it's not your identity because the goal is to integrate it, integrate it into yourself. I hope that makes sense. Try the guided meditation. Let me know what you think. You can Comment here or send me a message, whatever you want. But think about this, and I hope and pray that we can begin to change gears in the recovery community, and not only addiction but relapse, and shift the way we're treating it, shift the way that we're making people feel helpless and like They can't do it without something else. All the power's in you. When it's decision time, when it's 2 AM and you wake up horny and you grab your phone and you open Grindr, God's not going to put it— not going to strike you with lightning so you don't touch that phone screen. Because at that point in time, that's your decision point. You have free will. At that point, it's up to no one but you. But if you've done the work and you are fulfilled, your inner addiction is integrated, you're not even going to think about having Grindr on your phone at all. Or if you do, you'll use it responsibly. This, this, this thought that we have to have something outside of ourselves is an old program. It's a fear tactic. You need me. You need something else so I can control you. And I'm here to tell you, you don't have to be controlled. You have the power to do this. You just have to step into it. Thank you for listening today. I hope you enjoyed this. Love to hear your feedback and your comments. If you want to join the community, we have a Facebook page, The Aftermath. We have a Discord server called The Aftermath. We have a website called theaftermath.net. Um, and what else am I missing? Can't remember now. Uh, find me on any social media outlet you could think of at drdallasbragg.com, or that's my website, @drdallasbragg. All right, have a good day.