Dallas BraggFormer crystal methamphetamine user, I help men who have sex with men break free from the addictive patterns associated with Chemsex. Currently expanding my expertise by seeking to become a Certified

Here's what almost none of my clients say when I ask what happened right before a using episode: "I

15 Aug 2026 · 2 min

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In this monologue, a chemsex recovery coach shares a pattern observed among clients during relapse discussions. He notes that clients rarely cite simple sexual arousal as the initial cause; instead, an emotional relapse (e.g., loneliness, despair, rejection) typically precedes a mental relapse characterized by euphoric recall, which then generates sexual arousal and leads to a physical relapse (chemsex use). The coach stresses that focusing solely on horniness addresses only a middle stage of the cycle and can result in misguided strategies like sexual abstinence or porn avoidance. Sustainable recovery requires digging into the underlying emotional avoidance and core belief of “I’m not enough,” which drive the need for validation and ultimately chemsex use. The speaker urges clients to explore these deeper motivations rather than treating sex itself as the problem.

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Here's something quite interesting that I'm finding in my clients in my Chemsex recovery coaching program. And that is, often when I ask them about a relapse or what we call using episode or data point or any other word that doesn't have stigma attached to it, I'll ask them about what happened beforehand. Hardly ever do I hear, I got horny and then I wanted to use. It's interesting. Or if I do hear, I got horny, It came after some type of emotional activation. I would say 9 times out of 10, it's an emotional relapse that leads to a mental relapse. The mental relapse would be the euphoric recall. The euphoric recall gets you horny. Then you have the physical relapse. It's not about the sex, guys. It's not about being horny. You have sex while you're on it, but oftentimes that's not why you're doing it. It is very important to make this distinction. If you want long-term sustainable recovery, you must dig down to the core of why you keep going back. And if you keep focusing on being horny, then you're only getting a part of the process. You're only— you're getting it in the middle. And so oftentimes you'll stop having sex or you'll stop watching porn or you will become sexually anorexic. Because you think that's where the problem is, and it isn't. Find out what it is. Escaping emotions, perhaps. Not, you know, whatever you're avoiding. Like you're avoiding loneliness, or you're avoiding despair. You're avoiding rejection. You know, you need, you need attention. You need affirmation. You need validation. Those are the reasons. Now, you can also go even deeper than that to find out why you need those, right? Because all of us have a flavor of I'm not enough, and that I am not enough is why you keep using chemsex, not sex.