Grieving Your Meth Self

Hey there, Dr. Dallas Bragg here, recovery coach for gay men who wanna break free from the addictive patterns of chemsex and live their best and highest life. Today we're talking about grieving the life you built when you were in the chemsex world, exploring how to validate yourself for the grief and the process of moving through it so that you can get on with your life. If that sounds enticing, hang on through the whole video. On this channel, you're going to find lots of other resources to help you break free from Tina or chemsex and attain your best and highest self. Don't forget to look for my podcast on this channel as well. It's called the After Meth Podcast. After Meth Podcast. I drop a long-form video like this one every Saturday, so please turn on the notification bell and subscribe to the channel so you don't miss any content. By the way, if you're interested in my one-on-one coaching program, it's called Recovery Alchemy. The link to apply is in the show notes. Through weekly one-on-one sessions, weekly Group sessions and daily accountability, your life could look much differently in six months than it does right now. You know, I remember walking out of the old Cricket storefront. If you are not from America, you're not aware of Cricket. It's about the most basic phone you can get. But I was just frowning at this new phone—an Android of all things. I was really offended by that. But this was my new phone, and it had my new. Phone number that no one from my old meth life had. And, you know, I, I should have felt really victorious about that. It should feel good to get a new life, right? A new identity. But it was as if I was on the precipice of this great beginning, and I should have been winning at recovery, but instead I felt like this crushing emptiness, sadness that scared me. More than any craving I ever had. I was in grieving. It felt like a knife to my stomach to change that phone number. That's who I— that's who I was. That's what my life was built around. And changing that phone number was like chopping my own arm off. It just felt mournful. And no one told me that was coming. I wasn't mourning the meth. You know, I was mourning him, that Dallas that I had created, that version of me who felt powerful, desired, uninhibited. The Dallas who could walk into any room and command attention, at least in my head anyway. The one who had a tribe, a purpose, a place where he belonged, a subculture. That Dallas was dead, and I killed him. And nobody, not a therapist, not a coach, not an addiction counselor, a well-meaning friend had prepared me for the funeral, right? Recovery conversations love to talk about what we're gaining, the transformation and the clarity, the new life waiting for us. And if you follow my content, you'll hear me often say that kind of stuff. And I'll say that recovery is about becoming your best and highest version. And that is true, but it's not lost on me that sometimes those phrases are too broad And they're too vague and they come through as meaningless. I do understand that for sure. So let me share some real talk for you. You are going to lose your identity, not just your using identity, your entire sense of who you are. The clever one, the sexual one, the adventurous one, the one who knew how to have fun. You're gonna wake up and not recognize the person in the mirror, and it's terrifying. You know, I was known in my circles as the Wild Card. It was a title given to me by a Russian dealer, and I wore that reputation with pride. I found an identity that felt edgy, wild, totally opposite to the straight-laced church boy that I was forced to be growing up. But you're going to lose your community. There is a community in the meth world. We know this, right? Those weren't just dealers and fuck buddies. They were friends. They were people who saw you, really saw you, even if it was through a toxic lens. They were your Friday nights, your inside jokes, your witnesses. You're going to lose your privacy. Part of the chemsex thrill is the secrecy of that underworld. But this part of your life has been set aside just for you. It was your own little secret. It was a way to escape the constant pressure of work and friends and family. It was like your sanctuary, your chemsex sanctuary. And now you must expose it all, open it up to everyone, feeling like you have nothing left of your own. You're going to lose the future that you imagined. All the fantasies meth sold you. The perfect body you'd finally achieve. The uninhibited sex god you were becoming. The creative genius about to emerge. Those all die too. And grieving dreams that never existed feels kind of absurd. But what you're feeling is real. The pain is real. You're going to lose your relationship. With pleasure itself. Food doesn't taste the same. Music doesn't sound the same. Touch doesn't electrify you anymore. You're not just meth-free. You're numb. And you start to wonder if you'll ever feel alive again. If this is resonating with you, don't forget I do help gay men break free from the addictive patterns of chemsex and become their best and highest selves. My one-on-one coaching program is called Recovery Alchemy. It's a 6-month intense program that can literally change your life. I accept 2 new clients per month. If you wanna apply, the link is in the show notes. All right, so let's get back to this, the grief timeline that even doesn't exist, right? Here's this mindfuck about grief in general, but grief in recovery. There is no timeline. There's no stages. There's no neat progression. There's no 5 stages that go from one to the other, from denial to acceptance, right? Some days you're fine. You're grateful even. Other days you're irrationally angry at everyone in recovery who seems to have it figured out. You're angry because you wanna go use. You're angry because you had to give it all up. Sometimes you'll catch yourself romanticizing those days. You know, you wanna, you start to edit out the horror, the despair. You wanna highlight that connection, the good times, the freedom, the intensity. You'll find yourself angry because you want to go use and angry at yourself for being angry. Other days you'll throw a full-on temper tantrum because your inner child really wants to play and chemsex is the only time you allowed him to. This is all normal. This is grief, and grief is not linear. It's a spiral. You'll revisit the same losses, but at different depths as you heal up the spiral. The first time you delete your Grindr account, You're making a practical choice. 6 months later, you might be grieving the ease of connection that Grindr provided. 2 years later, you're processing the shame of why you needed that kind of connection in the first place. It's all a process. It's layers, and each layer is valid. Each wave of loss deserves to be felt. Unlike other losses, unlike other grief, This one you can't talk about openly at parties. When someone's partner dies, people bring casseroles, right? When your meth-using identity dies, people expect you to celebrate. You should be happy. Aren't you glad this is behind you? Think of everything you're gaining and look at your life now. And you are, you are glad. You do see the gifts. But that doesn't erase the hole where the life used to be. This is ambiguous loss, is what it's called. Ambiguous loss. It's mourning something that society tells you was never good in the first place. It's grieving a relationship everyone says you're better off without. The gay community has experience with the kind of grief anyway. We mourn the straight versions of ourselves we had to kill to survive. We mourn the adolescence we never got to have. We mourn acceptance that we'll never receive. This is another layer of that same process. And just like coming out, it requires us to sit in the discomfort of becoming someone new while everyone around us expects us to just be fine. You quit using meth, you should be happy, right? But here's the work, because ignoring the grief doesn't work. Here's what I had to learn. Unprocessed grief is the silent relapse trigger. That no one's talking about. Unprocessed grief from your past life. That fuck-up moment when you drop all of your recovery habits and you run head-on into chemsex. It's not about craving, Myth. It's about unbearable sadness that you feel like you're not allowed to have, that you don't know how to hold. So how do we grieve what we're supposed to be happy about losing? Here's some ideas. Number 1, give yourself permission to mourn. It might sound obvious, but it really isn't. You're allowed to be sad about losing parts of your life, even the destructive meth parts. So try this. Set a timer for 10 minutes. Write a eulogy for your using self. What did he give you? What will you miss about him? What do you wish you could thank him for? It's not romanticizing. This is integration. This is closure. This is processing. Number 2, name what you actually lost. Get very specific. Don't just say, I lost my community of friends. That's too vague. I lost Marco, who always texted me good morning, even when we were both high. I lost the feeling of walking into the Eagle and having 5 guys wave me over. I lost knowing I could feel wanted in 30 Seconds or less. The specificity matters. Vague grief is going to stay stuck. Named grief can move. Number 3, create rituals for relapse. Grief needs attention. It needs witness. It needs form. Some men I've worked with have written letters to their using self and burned them, created playlists of their meth era, Or, or they already had playlists, listen to them fully, intentionally, and then archive them, delete them. They made a photo collage of that time, put them away with intention, burn that too. Had actual funerals for their old phones before switching numbers. Find what resonates with you. The ritual matters less than the intentionality behind it. And number 4, honor what that life gave you. We all have gifts from meth. We all have chemsex gifts from that era in our lives. This is advanced work, but it's transformative. What did your using life teach you about connection, about desire, about community, about survival, about you? Those lessons don't disappear just because you stop using meth. I learned how to be comfortable in my body, in my skin, being naked in front of anyone without a second thought. I spent most of my life with only my doctor, my wife, and my kids seeing me with my shirt off. But this taught me to be comfortable. I learned about presence during 12-hour conversations about nothing and everything. I learned about connection. I learned about my capacity to endure the worst of all withdrawals, my resilience. I learned a lot about myself. And I get to keep all those lessons. I just don't need meth to access them anymore. So here's what you wanna do to build a bridge between these identities. You're not completely abandoning who you were. You're just evolving. What parts of your using self do you want to keep? The spontaneity part, the openness, the courage to be seen, being comfortable in your own skin. Your work is figuring out how to embody those qualities. Without the substance. The Dallas who was magnetic on meth is still here. He just shows up differently now. He's quieter sometimes. He's more intentional, but he's not dead. He's just transformed. So the truth that took me years to understand is that this grief is the doorway to your authenticity. Once you get it out into the open, when you mourn, you're using identity. You're clearing space for the new identity, for something real. Not the fantasy version of yourself that meth sold you, but the persona inside, the person you are on a soul level, the actual you, raw, imperfect, glorious. And yes, that person is sometimes boring, sometimes anxious, sometimes lonely, sometimes awkward as fuck, but that person is the real you. And that person can build a life that doesn't crumble when the high wears off. The grief is the price of admission to your actual life. And I promise you, I promise you that that life is worth the cost. Here's some questions to think about. What version of yourself are you actually grieving? Get very specific. What did your using life give you that you're afraid you'll never find again? Who have you lost in recovery that you genuinely miss, even if the relationship was toxic? What rituals might help you honor this transition? What qualities from your using self do you want to bring forward into recovery? Listen, grief isn't a sign you're doing recovery wrong. It's a sign that you're doing it honestly. You're not supposed to skip this part. A lot of people do. You're not supposed to be grateful every single minute. You're not supposed to pretend that nothing of value was lost from your past life. Something was lost. Many things were lost. And acknowledging that doesn't mean you want to go back. Doesn't mean you're romanticizing. It means you're brave enough to be honest, transparent. So grieve. Grieve the life that almost killed you. Grieve the person you had to stop being to survive. And then when you're ready, and not a moment before, turn toward the life that's waiting for you. It won't look like what meth promised, It'll look like something better. The truth. Okay, guys, if this resonates, reply in the comments. Tell me what you're grieving. Put your eulogy in the comments if you want. But I see you, and I honor you, and I believe in what's coming next for you. All right, see you next week.