My Sobriety Story #crystalmeth #narcoticsanonymous #addiction

Hey there, Dr. Dallas Bragg here. Uh, I want to use this opportunity to give you my full story.

Uh, well, not everything. Some things need to be left out.

It's like asking a question sometimes that really shouldn't be answered, right? Um, and there's some things that just are, are just better left unsaid and kept buried. So I wanted to just give give everyone a context for and hope that someone out there might relate to this story and be inspired. And I feel like that that's my—

it's my calling here. That's my calling here on this earth is to inspire.

And so that being said, I have broken my story down into different categories or subjects, uh, chapters if you will. Um, let me make sure I'm looking into the right camera. Uh, but the first chapter is called Country Roads Take Me Home to the Place I Don't Belong. Um, and so let's go way back.

Okay.

Until I was born. I was born in West Virginia.

I was born to 2 teenagers, and these were teenagers that came from families that were very different. Polar opposites, actually.

One family was a strict Pentecostal holiness, and one side were what were known as hellions, right? So drinking, cussing, fighting.

The whole works. And so they couldn't be much different and polarized.

And somewhere in the middle of that, I didn't belong to either side.

I didn't feel like I was made for church, and I certainly didn't feel like I wanted to be like my father, which was the hellion side. Um, and so that led to me growing up feeling like I didn't belong, um, anywhere.

So this belief that I didn't belong came from—

first, I adhered to my mother and the Pentecostal church because, um, things happened that caused me to hate my father. There were some instances that happened that, that really imprinted on my brain. And my father was an alcoholic. And he was an abusive alcoholic.

Yes, he was physically abusive, but you know what was worse than that was the emotional abuse, the verbal abuse, the breaking down of your will.

Just the the harshness of making making me feel as if I didn't belong even more than I already felt, and it was comments like I don't think you're my real son, and it was comments like I think my. I grew up with his brother, who was my age. I was early, he was late. Um, was said to be Dad's real son, according to Dad, because they were so much alike and he and I were so different. What he didn't know was that he caused and escalated the differences between Early on.

By ostracizing me.

Um, and you know, if a little boy lays in bed and listens to his father beat his mom, you know, the thumps of the fists and the screaming, what is a boy supposed to think?

How is he supposed to react?

He's too young. I just can't comprehend what's going on. It's too big. So anyway, that was also an ancestral curse that came down, but that's another story.

Anyway, so I was imprinted with this belief that I didn't belong.

Soon discovering that I had feelings for the boys in the class really ostracized me from the Pentecostal church side, even though I kept adhering to that because that's where I felt the most accepted anyway. I felt the most encouraged to be myself, and I felt safe for the most part. Safe is a relative word when it comes to that because I also felt like I could go to hell at any second.

And so when I realized that I was having all these feelings for boys, then I felt like I had a demon and I needed to be exorcised and delivered many, many times. And so can you imagine living in this state?

Of trauma. This ongoing low-level trauma of, I don't belong. My dad tells me that I'm not his son, but also I don't—

I can't fit in here because I'm going to hell at any moment, because no matter how hard I try, these feelings won't go away. Where do I belong?

So this belief, I believe, was projected, and it was also confirmed in junior high, elementary, junior high, high school, because I did have feminine, effeminate qualities and mannerisms. Um, and if you can imagine the small town in West Virginia, before equality was a thing. It wasn't, it wasn't looked on too kindly. It was pointed out often.

And so the thing is, is that if you're told you're something so many times, then you just begin to believe it yourself. And being called a pansy and queer and Dallas Bragg, I pledge allegiance to the flag. Dallas Bragg is a fag.

That was a little rhyme that was cute that was made up for me.

Um, and then, you know, there's the sports teams at PE.

I was always picked last.

Not only picked last, but there were like—

it was a fight over who had to take me. Um, this kind of thing.

So, so this message of not belonging Not being accepted, being rejected, being excluded.

It was just confirmed and backed up, and the momentum was built on and on and on.

And there's different ways that I handled that.

It came out in social anxiety and awkwardness, and I didn't want to go to the dances, and I didn't want to be seen. I would try to, you know, hide in the shadows.

Then that turned into obnoxious behavior. Like I was trying to I guess number one is trying to bring people down to my level. Number two, I was trying to beat them at the pass in terms of exerting this facade of aggressiveness, you know, and so that it would kind of temper off the—

The aggression. The bullying. I still got bullied a lot, you know, stopped in the hallway and said they were gonna beat me up and they're gonna meet me after school and all this kind of stuff.

You know, it was all that kind of thing. And everywhere I went, there was snickers, you know, snickering and jokes and laughing and, you know, all that whole thing.

So anyway, that, you know, didn't help the image that I had, of course.

So let's move on to graduating high school. I graduated high school, and at the end of high school, I had a girlfriend. And, you know, we were best friends. I mean, we just loved— we were just same sense of humor. We were best friends. Um, we both hated our fathers. We both hated Monroe, where we were, the county we were in. And we wanted to get out. Could not live together at the time, you know, so what's the option?

Getting married. So on my end of things, it felt like a ticket out because I knew that if I went to college or if I went out into the world, I would be faced with the challenges of what if I meet a man, or what if I'm flirted with, or whatever. Um, and having a girl like me want to marry me felt like— again, it's called a beard, you know, it's about a protective mechanism. Um, but it felt safe, and it felt like, uh, this was the answer to my anxiety.

And not only, not only that, but I did You know, I loved her, just not in the— not in the way that you want to love your wife. So anyway, we got married and started life. So trying to cut this story short, that marriage fell apart because we realized we're just friends. I joined Homosexuals Anonymous.

Anonymously. She found out, my first wife.

I, you know, I was in this— I wasn't really in this program.

I got some information mailed to me and had a phone conversation with a gentleman who—

he said the first question was, describe your relationship with your father. And when I said, you know, when I explained to him what the relationship was like, he was like, that's why you're gay. And I've come to realize now that he's not all completely wrong.

That's probably going to get a lot of @s at me, um, but that's a whole other video.

Um, I, I'm dealing with a lot of— with my sexuality right now. But, um, anyway, I, um, went from that marriage and jumped into another one. And the second woman, again, she was attracted to me, and this And I was very attracted to her. Um, I really was. And it was a personality thing first.

From there, we ended up having children right away. You know, we weren't even married a year yet and we already had a daughter.

So it also felt very safe.

It felt like an answer to my prayers. It felt like, okay, so I'm married. I'm not going to cheat, but now I have kids, so I'm really not going to pursue this. This is going to keep me safe, keep me pinned in.

I'm not going to pursue being gay.

I am not going to get out there and do anything with any man.

Um, in between marriages, it was only about 3 or 4 months, um, and in that time, you know, I was pursued by a man at the bank that I was I was very tempted, but I never gave in.

It was too scary.

I did make calls, you know, about—

I mean, we didn't have internet yet. Well, we did, um, but it was, you know, dial-up and all that stuff.

So I would call 1-800 numbers and 1-900 numbers and talk with men.

Um, you know, that was going on. What was the first time you had sex? That was going on a lot, actually, even after being married. And it felt safe, but it also felt— it felt like that's what I really wanted.

I knew that's what I really wanted. But I was hiding in plain sight, you know. I knew I was gay, but I decided to make a go of it. What happened was I attracted a woman who really needed an emotional crutch and needed someone to take care of her.

And the kids came along and they needed someone to take care of them. And so my self-worth became defined by how well I could solve problems.

Um, I, in my point of view, and she might disagree, but it got to the point where no one had to feel. No one had to feel an emotion or resolve an emotion. No one had to really do anything because Daddy would take care of it.

Or your hubby, Daddy Dallas would take care of it.

That's for me where I got my worth. And it allowed me to compartmentalize and push everything else to the side that I was going through.

Also, I was, you know, I kept pursuing more degrees and more degrees and more education because it was also a way to distract myself from the real world. That's what I need to tell myself.

And so eventually that led to suicidal ideations.

I remember It's just this, you know, you can only live so long in this cycle of going up to the altar and getting delivered. And then slowly it's creeping back.

You have a fantasy, or you see a man on the street, or you see a commercial or a movie or whatever, and then all of a sudden your mind's racing, and then you're watching pornography. Um, And then you go into this tailspin of hate for yourself.

You go into this, please forgive me, God, you know, and then you go up to the altar and you get delivered again.

How many times can you do that? How many times and how long can you live with this war inside?

How much self-hate and shame can one person feel?

So, you know, there was a time when I could be driving down the road and the voices in my head were so loud of just this battle raging on. And I would turn the radio up as far as I could. I'd roll the windows down. I'd scream. Just to get some type of relief. And, um, so I, um, I had picked out a tree on the way to work that I was going to slam my, my car into.

And, um, I didn't know what else to do. I felt like that I was doing a disservice to everyone else in my life, especially my kids, uh, by living this secret life. And they deserved a real father. They deserved a real man.

You know, so I ended up—

so long story short, I ended up checked into a mental hospital, and that's when I—

first time I came out to anybody. And, um, there's the counselor there, and in order to get out, I had to come out to my wife. So, um, and I kind of— I did, but in a way of, I'm having these unwanted homosexual tendencies.

These unwanted thoughts, can we pray them away?

And that's the context that it was in.

Um, and we never talked about it again after that.

Um, I didn't want to mention it, she didn't want to mention it, but then, you know, she eventually found gay porn on the computer.

And, um, you know, it—

the, the cycle raged on, but I began to seek some answers. And I began to see myself in a different light.

Um, there's a book that came into my existence called—

in my experience called The Four Agreements, uh, Dr.

Dyer's book Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life. I read those books and there was something about the messaging there that felt right. There was something about the way they presented God that felt right, you know, in alignment.

And it wasn't that I needed an excuse to be gay.

It was that I needed to know that the God that was portrayed to me through hurt humans was not the God that Loves me, not the same God that's there. And I needed to experience and create a relationship of my own with God and Jesus Christ. Um, and that this is part of me and it's not going away, and I'm not happy. And life—

I have to now—

it's— I'm doing a disservice The real disservice was staying in this capacity and not being honest with my wife and kids. So I came out.

Came out. As they say, I didn't just come out of the closet, I busted the door down. Because once I decided and once I felt that click into place, That that taste of freedom, of clarity, of lightness, of ease, of identity was just I I couldn't get enough of it, and I was not going to turn away no matter who was upset or who was coming against me or shun me or whatever anybody had to say. This, I had a taste of it and I was going for it. And so moved out, 2 weeks later jumped right into the gay community. And that's the section that I call, I'm here, I'm queer, nobody cares. And, uh, that was when I ventured my way into the gay community. Um, the only thing I knew about gay people was what I saw on Will and Grace. And little did I know that what I saw on Will and Grace was absolutely nothing like the real gay community.

So, trying to make this concise, um, I still carried with me—

and I'm saying this now out of retrospect, I didn't realize it then—

I still carried with me this belief that I wasn't accepted, that I was abnormal, that people didn't like me.

That I didn't belong. So still carrying that with me projected a new reality just in the gay community. So what I faced was not this— what I thought was going to happen was this welcome to the family, rainbows, butterflies, unicorns, glitter. It was, you have to prove yourself, and who are you? And you can't just insert yourself into our groups and those kind of things. Um, it was a challenge. And then I started getting a lot of feedback about, you're too feminine. And I was like, well, fuck. I mean, I had spent 36 years trying to hide my effeminate nature. And now I still have to hide my effeminate nature. Um, ah, you know, it was just such—

it was so disappointing and it was such a letdown.

Um, so anyway, I turned to what I knew, what I could only do was Grindr and Scruff. These were the dating apps that Hookup apps.

Let's not call them dating apps. Some will say they are, and I guess they are if they use it that way.

But for me, I used it for validation. I used it to feel included. I used it to feel something because now my reasoning for my purpose, which was pouring myself into my family and making sure everybody was okay, was gone. I have nothing left.

I didn't know who I was.

I thought that being gay was my identity. I thought that coming out would take care of all of my problems, and it only exacerbated them because I had held on for years saying, if that happens, or when that happens, I'm going to be free. You know, if I could come out, I'm going to be happy. And then when I got it, I was worse.

And so what do you do?

You know, you're just deflated. And so, um, Grindr was my only way, my, my bridge to at least temporarily feeling something. And that fed into the underlying addiction that I had, which was a sex addiction. The sex addiction was Would bring me validation and purpose and meaning and connection and acceptance, at least temporarily. So eventually met someone who stuck around, didn't leave the next day. The first one that came around that showed me any attention and wanted to see me again, I clung to, and that was a trauma bond. Of epic proportions. I was definitely anxious attachment, if you know anything about the attachment styles. He was avoidant. Wow, we did a whole dance for about a year and, um, poured myself into him, poured my soul into him, and, um, it just Didn't end well. So putting that aside, next, um, I started making friends in the gay community.

Yay!

Somehow, some way, I began to make friends, and I had a friend group. We would go out to the bars Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, every weekend. Um, and I finally started to feel like I was accepted, but still, you know, if you have an exclusion wound or an abandonment wound, you will find any reason, whether it's subtle or not, to feel like you're not included. You will find any reason to set yourself apart. And so I was the old one, and that made— and I was the less good. I was They were all good-looking guys. They were muscular, masculine, you know, all this stuff that— and if you're a, you know, a straight-acting muscular gay man, you're at the top of the totem pole. You have your choice of all the subjects. And, um, I was not, you know, I was not muscular and I was feminine and I was old. So, and again, a lot of that is my own image, but a lot of it is true. And so I had to make up for that by being wild. You know, I was the wildest. I had the most responsibility of all in the group, but I was the craziest. Up on the bars and doing the things and taking my clothes off and whatever. Whatever I could for attention, you know, wearing hair extensions and makeup, whatever. So I was liking that, but I still didn't ever feel like You know, I never got attention that I wanted. I never got a boyfriend. I never got people who lasted, you know. It was all— I, I, I— there were so many instances where these— if I got attention from gay men, they were trying to get to my friends, you know. They're trying to use me to get to them.

So whatever.

So that led into the next phase of my story, which I call hot mess. Um, I was a hot mess. Um, I, you know, the stories I've been— I've told so many times, but I was in the sun reading a book, had Grindr on. I saw a new grid, a new square on the Grindr grid, if you're, if you're familiar with Grindr, and someone I didn't— wasn't familiar with. And in his defense, his profile stated, party boys to the front. Um, and, um, okay, I party. I partied every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, you know. Um, so anyway, we started talking. He's like, come over, we're already partying. Uh, this was Sunday morning, so I was like, okay, we're gonna day drink, which I used to do with my boyfriend. We're gonna day drink and have a little fun, hook up, whatever. And, um, And I was like, we? It must be a party, you know. Again, we and a party. So I get there and, um, it was only him and one other guy. The other guy left, but it wasn't a party. There was no alcohol. There were porn— there were like 2 TVs with porn going, a sling hanging from in the living room, and, um, And I sit down and everything, and he hands me a pipe.

Yeah.

Um, which, by the way, I had brought a condom and asked him if he would use a condom, and his response, I remember, was, if I have to. Um, which is so funny now that I think— now that I know what I know about the meth community. Um, anyway, uh, so he— I did ask what it was. He told me. I did it anyway. Started smoking from the pipe, and then I also took GHB. Yada yada yada. It was about 24 hours later.

We had moved it all, moved the party back to my house, and he and I, you know, did the thing you do on meth for a very long time until the next morning.

Yeah, I was up for 3 days.

It was miserable. I missed work, of course, on Monday, which, you know, that's the first sign.

It's the first sign when you start using, you start calling off work. Um, and, um, so that started it. I had not used any drugs before. That was my first drug. And, um, I went in full force because crystal meth is the perfect drug for a case.

Amen. It took away the shame, took away the pain, the trauma, made you feel invincible.

It made you uninhibited. You didn't care anymore about being judged.

You just did it, you know? And, um, I felt accepted.

I felt sexy.

I felt like I had found my tribe.

I really did. I was like, this is great.

Um, so that started the, uh, the collapse of my life, the life as I knew it.

And, um, I, uh, you know, I don't want to go into too, too many details, but I was making 6 figures a year at the time. And I had plenty of money. So I could buy the supplies.

Um, duh.

What didn't occur to me was I had a crowd of people around me because I was always supplying, you know. And then when the supplies were gone, they were leaving. Um, I could not tell you the amount of days because it became an everyday thing eventually. First it was only the weekends the kids aren't here, only smoking, you know. And then it eventually got to the point where I was Using IV, and it was every day. And so, but the amount of times that I collapsed on the floor screaming in agony because the guy left, because I was convinced for the previous 3 days that we were together, that he loved me, and this was the— this was the man for me. Every single time.

Every time.

And every time, You know, the emotions would hit, the dopamine would drop and whatever, and until I finally fell asleep. So after 3 years, I had been arrested 4 times for drug possession, felony drug charges. I lost my home, lost my car twice, 2 different cars. Of course, lost my job. And then couldn't get a job because I had the charges. And, um, of course lost the kids. You know, the kids were with me every other week to begin with, and then they had to go back with their mother full-time because I couldn't support them.

I couldn't even feed them.

So yeah, um, once I got evicted, uh, near that time, the, the months leading up to that, I became addicted to shoplifting.

That was—

I got into this little gang Of 3 of us, sometimes 4 of us, and we'd start the day with zero and we would have to steal and whatever, forge checks, whatever we had to do to get enough money for drugs.

And if we wanted to eat food, food was second priority.

Um, and, uh, when I lost the house, I was abandoned by these friends, uh, but I was also doing some weird shit. Like, I was— I had, um, Somehow gotten into this other meth user's Hilton Honors program and was going to—

was trying to, you know, get a room based on that. And the police showed.

I finally got to the room at 3 AM, into the hotel, and he found out. The police showed up. I ran through the woods with 2 bags of stolen goods.

And my clothes and a laptop and ran through woods, over fences, through yards, and ended up under a tree by the airport. That was where I lived for a few days until I called my mom.

And so I did have a cell phone. My mom made sure that I had a cell phone. Bless her heart. She had totally, you know, totally just given up on me, but she did make sure I had a cell phone. So I called her and asked her to come get me, and she did. Right away. No questions asked.

She picked me up and brought me back to West Virginia where I tried to get sober there.

And I don't know why I would think West Virginia would be a good place to get sober, but— I ended up back in Charlotte. I ended up thrown out of a car. Losing all my stuff again. All I had was my clothes and just turned myself in. I had all these charges, I had APB for my arrest, I hadn't showed up for court. I just turned myself into a police officer. And, um, that's when I got sober. Um, the only people that would answer my calls for the 4th time in jail was my daughter.

So my daughter and son picked me up from jail and, um, We went to a park and some situations were going on with their mother and they said, we need a parent and we need you.

So that was my incentive. You know, I was lucky enough to have kids to begin with. Most gay men that I talk to in this, in this, uh, addictive community do not have kids. And, um, You know, they have to find other ways to get sober. But luckily for me, I had kids and a mission. So that's when I, uh, you know, I got a job right away at a restaurant. I got 2 jobs. And I, um, lived on the street for just a couple nights for a little while and then started staying in a pay-by-week Really bad hotel. Blood on the ceiling. The door wouldn't shut all the way. But I was on a mission. So I also, in the meantime, my mother, sweet mom, after driving the bus every day for a while, gave me my car back. It's another story.

I lost the Jeep, took my car, and— Oh, sweetie.

And I became a prostitute. And because— so with an eviction on my record, criminal charges, who's going to rent to me? We needed to raise a bunch of money to find a house to rent. So between the 2 jobs and the prostitution, I was able to get some of my belongings that were getting ready to be auctioned off in a rental facility, raised enough money to pay a Yeah, I, um, first month's rent, first month's rent, security deposit, and second month's rent. Um, all the, you know, deposits for the, for the utilities, all the supplies needed to go in the house, you know, I've got all that raised.

And, um, once we got in the house, I stopped being a prostitute, um, thankfully. And, um, but I had to do what I had to do.

And, um, So anyway, we finally had some normalcy again.

I got a job at an upper-class restaurant, at a steakhouse, and was making enough money to get us supported, and we went on from there.

So it's been 5 years, and what a journey. When I first got sober from meth, I was not sober because I still had a sex addiction.

I still had an addiction to affection, attention.

I still felt like I didn't, couldn't be accepted anywhere, and that became my reality everywhere I went. Um, I had to go to rehab. I went to— I was going to rehab, I was going to drug treatment court, I was getting drug tested 4 or 5 times a week. I was working 2 jobs. I was being a prostitute. I was then traveling to Mooresville by bus. It was an hour on a bus either way. Finally got a car. There was a lot going on. And it was a mission, you know? And once I got there and I got out of rehab and I graduated drug court, my charges were expunged. I was making some money. We were on the right track. And then I got bored. You know, I was looking around one day. I was washing dishes and I was like, eh. Adult stuff. This is not comfortable. This is where I was before I got into addiction, and I really just want to use again. You know, it was what I wanted to do, and I just got so scared. I got so scared of losing everything again that I ran outside, left the house, and I ran outside into the woods. And I just remember the scene, and I have a picture of it somewhere. The sun coming through the trees.

And I just reached my hands out and I was like, somebody please help me.

You know, I looked down at my phone and I went through and I deleted all the contacts I had to get drugs and whatever and the apps and everything.

And I just heard this voice in my head say, we've been waiting for you. And I just sat there in the silence and I was like, And then it said, they said, you have to do what this tree is doing. And I looked over and there was this rotting tree on the ground. And I was like, oh, I have to die. Yeah.

Everything about me has to die. So that started my spiritual journey, um, my official spiritual journey. Um, I then started researching like crazy, everything I could, from chakras to spirits to angels to whatever. And, um, it was a good start, but I'll tell you that it took years. It took up until now, to be honest, to Really uncover what got me into that state in the first place. To really dig deep, unpack, unpeel the nastiness, the pain, the, uh, the realization that my memories were not real, that I had trauma. And, um, to really get in there and just work around it, with it, and heal it. And I used, I did use plant medicine in my sobriety journey. Ayahuasca and psilocybin, if you consider it plant medicine. Those helped me kind of shift perspective. And, you know, I've come to learn that sobriety, spiritual journey, it's all about personal growth.

It's all about one perspective shift after the other.

And that they helped me shift the perspective about myself the same way that The Four Agreements and Dr.

Wayne Dyer did, you know, years before.

And that I started to see the world in a different way.

I started to see myself in a different way, and love started to grow. Love for myself began, you know.

But I also had to You know, it's a track of forgiving my father and forgiving myself, and then understanding what really went on with my father, and empathy and compassion. And, you know, it's just been this journey, uh, and I hate to keep using that word, but it is a journey.

I mean, it's been this, you know, you think you're there and you're not there, and you think you're there and you're not there, because you really, you never get it done, and you can't get it wrong, but you just keep seeking more clarity and more healing and new perspectives. And, um, so that's my story up until now.

Um, after 5 years, you know, it was in my 5th year when I started my coaching business. I decided I wanted to give back. Um, I, I know that there are so many people out there suffering From not just addiction, they're suffering in sobriety too. They're suffering in sobriety because they still know that something ain't right. They still know they haven't got it yet. They still know that they have a sex addiction. It's just a little more manageable than a drug addiction. There's just something left. There's a missing piece. And I want to give them that.

I want to help fill in that piece for them and live in the state that I'm living right now, which is complete for the most part clarity, peace, freedom. That's immeasurable.

It's invaluable. So that's where I am right now.

I can't wait to see what the next 5 years holds.