Dallas Bragg, a chemsex recovery coach, addresses whether being exposed to meth without consent counts as relapse. He argues that labeling it relapse increases shame and suggests instead treating it as a learning opportunity to recognize warning signs and ask direct questions about drug use.
I had a shard shoved up my ass. Did I relapse? That is a main— a big question I get. My name is Dallas. I'm a chemsex recovery coach helping men who have sex with men. So sometimes accidents do happen. You want to hook up like a normal person, but the person doing meth, their capacity to feel empathy has been cut off, and it's a little bit of a fetish to get somebody high without them knowing. So you want to bottom and you had a shard shoved up there without you knowing, or it was put in the lube. Unfortunately, some of you are guilted and shamed by other people in recovery who says, yes, you relapsed. That is not the case always. And even if you did relapse, you did not lose time unless you're in a magic time machine. You don't lose time. The only thing you did in that scenario was gain. You gained experience, you gained knowledge, and you gained a new appreciation for what it takes to do due diligence in the world today if you're going to hook up. And that is ask the right questions. You need to ask if they're using. Ask them plainly. And here's the thing, you're going to know because of your experience with this drug. You're going to know there's going to be a still small voice, a little intuitive nudge to say, hmm, I think this person's using. You know, their responses are really delayed. Uh, some of the words might be misspelled, spaces where there shouldn't be spaces, right? Like, I had this incident the other day where I was going to go hook up With actually a throuple, and it was gonna be this really hot 4-way. And then I could tell by the way he was communicating. And then they said that, oh, sorry, we just spilled water all over the place, we have to clean it up. And it was like 30 minutes later, I was walking into a messy situation. I knew that, so I decided not to. Look, you're going to know. And if you say no to that still small voice, if you go even though you have suspicions that they're using Then you could be at fault here. But here's the thing. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It happened. And if it could have happened any other way, it would have. So let's stop trying to focus on, did I relapse or not? Do I have to start my days over? Did I make this big mistake? It doesn't matter. What happened is you learned a lesson here. You didn't listen to that small voice telling you. You didn't ask the questions. You walked into a situation that happened. And it's going to be more common and more common in the world we're living in today because more and more men are using this drug. So instead of asking, did I relapse? Ask, what did I learn? And how can I build a stronger recovery in the future?
