Dallas Bragg explains why anger surfaces in chemsex recovery: it's fear underneath, fear you'll never feel that intensity again. The danger isn't the anger itself but how you handle it, whether you suppress it, weaponize it, or use it as an excuse to use again.
Anger in grief is different. Anger is typically a secondary emotion to fear. So this stage is about fearing the notion that we will never get to go back to chemsex. We will never get to feel that way again. We will never enjoy sex again, right? When you are anger— angry in the grief of chemsex recovery, you are not being immature and you're not being ungrateful for your sobriety. You are not failing the program. You are responding correctly to the discovery that something real has been taken from you. Anger is the part of grief that says, that mattered. This was not nothing. I am not just going to walk away from this, pretend it did not happen. This was not just about a chemical. The problem is not the anger itself. The problem is what most men will do with it. We either bottle it up, Become depressed, or we weaponize it, burn down our relationships, or numb it and reach for the substance that started the whole damn problem in the first place.
