Dallas Bragg, a chemsex recovery coach, asks clients two questions: who are you leaving behind, and who are you becoming. The first gets vivid answers about shame and meth use. The second gets silence. That silence, he says, is the problem. Your brain needs a felt destination to do the hard work of recovery.
All right, so here's a powerful question I ask all of my recovery clients. Hi, my name is Dallas. I am a chemsex recovery coach helping men who have sex with men. I ask many men this question: tell me about the man you're leaving behind. And they will go on forever and ever. The shame, the patterns, the person meth made them into, the things they did. Very vivid, specific, detailed. Then I ask, tell me about the man you were becoming. Silence. That silence is your plateau, and that silence is why you feel bored and stuck. You don't have a compelling enough vision of who you're becoming to pull you through to the future. Listen, you cannot drag your past into the present and expect a new future. The brain needs a destination it can feel before it can commit to the difficulty of the path ahead. So let me ask you, who is the man on the other side of this?
