Dallas Bragg, a chemsex recovery coach, explains that relapse doesn't happen suddenly. It starts weeks or months earlier with an emotional relapse triggered by strong feelings, followed by mental relapse where you romanticize past use, then finally physical relapse. Catching it early at the emotional stage stops the whole cascade.
Number one comment I hear from my clients is, I just decided to relapse. It came out of nowhere. I just got the fuck-its. And I call BS on that. Hi, my name is Dallas. I'm a chemsex recovery coach helping men who have sex with men. Listen, when you begin to be aware and look for the emotional relapses in your life, you will more accurately detect the first domino that started the whole relapse decision. And I promise it did not come out of nowhere. By the time you physically use, The decision was already made, not consciously, neurologically, weeks earlier, months earlier. It starts with emotional relapse, where you're not thinking about using, but some moment in time activated your emotions, both up or down. Maybe life is going really good and your brain is lighting up with dopamine, which can trigger the chemsex pathways. Or maybe you have a big argument with your partner or something really Bad, which primes your mind to find the doom and gloom in every single perceivably bad thing that happens after. These moments are not to be ignored in recovery. They are to be noted as possible relapse triggers. Then a mental relapse will come. The bargaining, the romanticizing, the euphoric recall, the maybe just once. And then the fuck-its arrive, and they feel like they came out of nowhere. But they did not come out of nowhere. The train had already left that station a long time ago. In Foundation— Foundations, which is my 12-week group coaching program, which comment group below if you want to be a part of, this is one of the first things we map together because intervention works best at the emotional stage long before the momentum builds. You don't have to wait until the pressure blows and it feels like it came out of nowhere. You want to understand yourself, and that's what we do in my program.
