Dr. Dallas Bragg, a sobriety coach specializing in working with gay men addicted to crystal meth, shares his personal journey of addiction and recovery. He discusses the challenges he faced coming out and the rejection he experienced within the gay community. Dr. Bragg recounts how he discovered crystal meth and how it led to the loss of his job, home, and custody of his children. He shares how his relationship with his children improved after getting sober and how it inspired him to become a coach. Dr. Bragg emphasizes the unique challenges faced by gay men with addiction and discusses his approach to coaching, which includes meditation and visualization techniques. He offers advice for those struggling with addiction and highlights the epidemic of crystal meth in the gay community.
Dr. Dallas Bragg, a sobriety coach specializing in working with gay men addicted to crystal meth, shares his personal journey of addiction and recovery. He discusses the challenges he faced coming out and the rejection he experienced within the gay community. Dr. Bragg recounts how he discovered crystal meth and how it led to the loss of his job, home, and custody of his children. He shares how his relationship with his children improved after getting sober and how it inspired him to become a coach. Dr. Bragg emphasizes the unique challenges faced by gay men with addiction and discusses his approach to coaching, which includes meditation and visualization techniques. He offers advice for those struggling with addiction and highlights the epidemic of crystal meth in the gay community.
Eli Thomas (00:09.07)
Welcome back to the sober life podcast. We have Dr. Dallas Bragg with us today and Dr. Bragg is a sobriety coach and he, uh, he specialized in working with gay men that are addicted to crystal meth. So, uh, Dr. Bragg, thank you for joining us. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Hey, you know, anytime we can, uh, we can get the word out to whatever your niche may be.
We're happy to help. We're definitely happy to help. And Dr. Bregg, your story is interesting in that you were homeless not a whole long time ago, right? Yeah, no, it was about five and a half years ago. I was living under a tree for a while. Yeah. And was that directly related to your addiction? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I came out.
late in life. So I was 35 when I actually came out. I grew up in West Virginia and very in a Pentecostal upbringing. And so I grew up and into my adult life believing that I was demon possessed. So I was always trying to find ways to be exercised of that demon. Finally, at 35,
I decided I just couldn't fight anymore. You know, I had some suicidal tendons, ideations. I went into the hospital for a while and things just started getting worse. By that time, you know, I was married, well, I had married early and had two kids. And to me, that was the security for me that I would never be able to act out on my feelings. And so anyway,
came out and left my wife and went through a divorce and...
Eli Thomas (02:09.07)
That just kind of uncovered all of the trauma and the hurt that I had been bottling all those years. And I thought in my mind that when I came out, I would be kind of welcomed into this. I had this picture of these open arms and rainbows and glitter and all this stuff. The only thing I knew about gay people was Will and Grace. That was the show I knew. And then what I could see on the news about gay pride.
you know, and so I saw all the stuff going on at K Price. So I just, I don't know, I had this picture on my mind. So I came out and I went into that, that group, that crowd, the mainstream kind of clubbing crowd and was really abruptly denied. It wasn't what I thought. And it was, you know, looking back, I know it was the crowd that I went into. So it was a lot of.
established cliques and there was a lot of judgments and I heard more about my effeminate nature as a gay man than I did as a pretending to be a straight man. And so, you know, all this, all these years I was, I hid that and was embarrassed about that. And then when I thought that I could be natural and be myself, it was even rejected again. So, wait a minute, you were too feminine for the gay? Yeah, I was.
You know, I've heard them all now. Well, you know, it's worse. It's not as bad in the northern part of the country. In the southern part, you still have a lot of gay men with internalized homophobia. And they don't like other people to know they're gay. They don't want to be around a flamboyant, effeminate man. They're just, they still, they're still dealing with all the shame of it.
And so you'll see a lot of them on the dating apps say only masculine men. It's called mask for mask is the kind of code there. So there's a lot of that in the South. And so I didn't know that, of course, I didn't know anything about anything. I just was shocked when I would show up because, you know, all I knew as well in the gay culture, all I knew to meet people was this app called Grindr, which is supposedly it's a it's a hookup app.
Eli Thomas (04:36.174)
But I would meet a guy from pictures and he would say, well, I didn't expect you to be this feminine. So I'm not attracted to you. You know, so I would walk home rejected even again. So anyway, through all of that, pretty disheartened. I kind of went into my, my sex addiction came out. And so I just went into this whole spiral of getting on Grindr and sleeping and getting my...
validation from anybody who would sleep with me. And then in that process found Crystal Meth. And I had never done any drugs before, nothing. And he asked if I partied. And that's the code with a capital T. It's the code in that world for using meth because it's called Tina in the gay crowd. And so, you know, I got there and to the guy and he...
hand me the pipe. So anyway, I thought that I had found the answer to all my problems at that point, because when you know, people are on this, when guys are on this drug, they don't care if I'm effeminate. They don't care. They really don't care what I look like. It's just hypersexuality. And it's a lot of orgies. And it's just hours and hours and hours of this debauchery. And it was like, wow, I have found my place here.
At the time, I had just finished my doctorate. I was teaching MBA courses. I was an executive at a law school, their marketing executive. And, you know, was doing really well, making way over, you know, six figures. And so I then just dove headfirst into that world. And it's a whole network in the gay community. It's a network of people.
who they identify with the capital T or clouds or whatever, and then you have parties. And the parties are going on every single day, every single hour, and you can find them on Grindr at any time, anywhere you are in the country and the world, really. There's some parts around the world where it's not available, but for the most part, anywhere. Anyway, from that day that I tried it, three years later,
Eli Thomas (07:02.062)
I had been evicted, lost my job, had been arrested for felony possession charges four times, and was homeless again. Like I said, I was homeless and just lost it all. Lost it all. The kids, I had shared custody with the kids and of course they had to go back and stay with their mom. So I didn't have my kids either. And that was almost rock bottom.
I happened to, my mom fought enough to supply a phone for me. And so I called her finally, because she wasn't speaking to me by that point. And I said, I literally have nothing, you know, and I'm starving. So she drove from West Virginia, picked me up, and I went to West Virginia to get sober, which is, you know, from methods, you know, not the place to go get sober from methods. But I was there for a few months and made my way back to Charlotte and went back in jail. So.
But the end of the story of that is that the last time I was in jail, no one would answer my call but my daughter. She was 16. So she and my son picked me up when they let me out. And we had like a family meeting at a park. And they were like, you know, we need a father, we need a parent, and you know, we need you. So it was from that point that I decided to get sober and.
I thought that it was going to have to go to prison, but I went to drug treatment court and was in drug treatment treatment court, met all their regulations. It was tough rehab and all that stuff for a year and a half after the year and a half. My charges were all dropped and then I was able to get them expunged to 2020. Yeah, that is amazing. Through all of this, did you, did you keep some kind of relationship with the, with the kids?
Yes. So once I got, when they, when we didn't pick me up, you are through my, through my drug use or after. Well, you know, here kind of when you were out partying and just doing it real big. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Um, I was able to, I was able to, to a lot of times they just, they didn't know what was going on. Um, my bedroom had a back door.
Eli Thomas (09:27.694)
the back door of the house was in my bedroom. So I would have men coming in and out the back door. They didn't know. There was a lot of ways that I stuck it in until I started using IV, through IV use. And when I started injecting, it really messed with my brain chemistry and I couldn't hide a lot of things from the kids. I was starting to get paranoid.
starting to act erratically. And so they started to notice that something was wrong. And then it was about that time that I had my first arrest. So when the police came in and busted the door down and took me off, and we live in a relatively small suburb of Charlotte. And so it was the big news. My face was on the evening news, my mugshot. So that's when my ex -wife found out.
Yeah, and pretty obvious at that point. Yeah, obvious. And the charges part of the charges were that I would so when you use meth, a lot of times you also use GHB. So it's a kind of a it's called a date rape drug. But it's kind of ecstasy but amplified. It's a liquid. We use that. But anyway, the person who turned me in was someone that I had thrown out of my house.
And he had told the police that I was date raping. So that those were the charges. They were immediately dropped once they went through, because the evidence he said was on my laptop and my phone. Once they went through my belongings, the charges were dropped. However, before they were dropped, that those were the charges on the evening news under my mugshot was that I was date raping. Oh, yeah. The kids have their kids friends were all Snapchatting them.
pictures of me on the news. So it was pretty disastrous at that point. So that then everybody knew what was happening. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely doing it in a big way. Yeah. But it sounds like though through all this things back to normal with the kids now that you're you're a new man. Yeah. Yeah. It actually has brought us a lot closer. I mean today.
Eli Thomas (11:51.278)
We, the three of us are inseparable. We spent Christmas in a hot tub together all day. We do things non -traditionally. But yeah, they, you know, they saw all sides of me. And then when they, when they, when I decided to get sober, they just fully supported me. They came, they came alongside me and helped me. And then,
It took a little while to get their trust again. It took a little while for my son to snap back from everything because first I left him when I moved out and then I left him when I went to West Virginia and then I had mentally left him. But over the five years, I'm sober five and a half now, but over that five years, I just really focused on being present. I just...
I didn't date, I didn't do much of anything besides I worked, but I was just always there. And I didn't pressure, you know, I didn't, I didn't really, for a little while, I didn't try to parent or anything, I was just there. And so in that mix, we just, we came back together, but in a very much stronger way. And today we're like three best friends, to be honest. I mean, it's the, they're 22 and 20 now and, um,
The relationship we have is more like we, we FaceTime every day together. Um, we do all things together and yeah. And my son says he's never moving out. So that sounds great. I mean, that's, that's what you want with your kids, right? I mean, that's what everybody's after. Yeah. You know, I'm curious when, when did you decide that you wanted to be a sober? When did that come to?
Well, it was, I would say, so I made my story very, very public, my sober story, very public on all social media. And so people were following that and I was gaining a following really from around the world. And during that time, I would hear from guys like from London or from Australia or wherever in the States and they would say, I want to get sober, but...
Eli Thomas (14:18.99)
There just doesn't seem to be people who I can feel safe talking to because, you know, when you've been on crystal meth, you've done all this debauchery. I mean, you do things that you cringe and you just don't want to tell another soul and being on it and the way you think and the come down and all that stuff. A normal, a therapist or a coach or a clinician or whatever, a rehab counselor,
not all of them can relate in a way that helps gay men feel safe. And so I kept hearing from guys saying, reading your post has helped me, it's not used tonight. And reading your post and seeing what you're doing lets me know that somebody else out there is going through the same thing because I would admit everything. I made a post about being regretful about how I would get so mad at my son for getting up after I put him to bed because I was having a party in my room.
You know, and I would hear from parents saying, I would never admit that to anyone, but you are making it public and it just really, there's something about that that heals me, you know? And so when I kept hearing that all along, I kept thinking in the back of my mind, I want to do something to help and I want to do something to give back, you know, and, you know, recovery is about service as well. And I also felt like I had a lot of karma to every day.
It was, I started, when I was injecting, I, you know, wasn't working. And so I got also addicted to shoplifting. I was very good at it because I dressed really well and I was white and I could walk into Target and load my cart up and walk right out. And it was, you know, the stuff that I did was just, you know, I just felt like, wow, I need to do something to kind of make up.
for the things that I did. And so that's part of the reason why is I knew I could give a safe space. I knew I could give relatability and yeah, I could be a sponsor in that kind of thing, but I just knew there was a gap in the market. And what I saw was the amount of gay men who are functioning, they're keeping jobs, they have a partner, they're doing this, but they're relapsing in secret every two or three months.
Eli Thomas (16:46.638)
and they can't stop. And those are the ones that come to me for coaching. Sometimes I do help someone right out of active addiction, but I suggest they get into A12 steps so they have somewhere to go every day. They have an immediate connection. They get their head straight so they can be coached. But there's many, many, many men out there who are just thinking they can do it recreationally, but it's slowly killing them. It's killing their...
They're living this double life. So mentally they're always on guard and they need assistance with unpacking what it is that's driving them back to it. And so that's what I felt. I saw the need and that's what I got into it. You know, and it's strange that you mentioned that. I was just thinking, and I've been in several rehabs, which I'm proud to say I'm not a one and done. You know, the one thing that, that I, I just,
the
Eli Thomas (18:14.25)
Women a little different, you know, there were several gay women. But I mean, and I met hundreds of people. This is out of literally hundreds of people. Never occurred. That's strange. Yeah. Because there was plenty of everybody else there. Yeah. Any other group, any other group was well represented. Yeah. And there are a lot of sober living and rehabs now that are focused.
toward the LGBTQ community, queer community, because they can relate and they can have people who can focus on their needs. Because, you know, gay men are a traumatized population already. And there's religious trauma, there's sexual trauma, there's all this trauma they bring with them. And then you put addiction on top of that. Not that anybody else isn't, but, you know, it is a different flavor that end with different needs that have to be met.
There you go. Hit the nail right on the head. It's a different animal. And obviously being a, being a gay man yourself, you feel like you have a unique approach and that you can, you can speak the language is you know what kind of things affect these men. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, when they describe to me,
what they're going through when they get on an app or they want to get on an app or the enticing part of it. I know exactly what they're feeling and I can go in and kind of guide them on what I did. And yes, the lingo and what it means to...
what it means to want intimacy but never truly have had it. The biggest inhibitor for a gay man to come out of crystal meth addiction is they don't want to have sober sex. Because you've had sex up here, this intense animalistic 16 hour or more experience, you don't want to just have sober sex. And most of the time,
Eli Thomas (20:31.854)
That's what keeps them in is they think sober sex is going to be boring and life is boring. I mean, you know, when you've had that high dopamine, because it blasts your dopamine, you know, so high, everything seems so intense that just everything's so dull to them. But that's the biggest, I think that's the biggest need for me is to kind of get them.
understanding that it's not the sex they're wanting, it's the connection, it's the intimacy, it's other things that are driving them to get to that place. But you have to peel back a lot of layers first to understand that it's not the intense sex you want. It may seem fun and it may seem what you're doing, but it's really underlying is that you need help. You need something else that's driving you toward that. It takes a while. It takes a while for
for them to get there.
Dr. Bragg, do you work with all types of addictions? I mean, is it just the meth or? I have. I've had a few clients that aren't crystal meth addicts. And I tell them, you know, upfront, you know, I can break down an addiction. I can help you with different things. That's just, so yes, the answer is yes. But definitely my specialty and what I can roll with easily is that is a gay man addicted to crystal meth.
Or I have worked with, you know, game in with alcoholism. Yes, for sure. Sex addiction. Definitely. Because that's basically anybody that comes to me with a meth addiction has a sex addiction as well. Got to go one and one. Yeah. Any, anything that you do different as far as your approach? I mean, do you, do you, do you focus on anything specifically? Do you get into meditation, spirituality, that kind of stuff? Yeah. Yeah. So.
Eli Thomas (22:30.83)
There's a lot of spiritual spirituality components to my coaching and it depends on how much they want. But at the very basic, I do a guided meditation with each session. Sometimes I do a guided meditation between sessions. So as a coach, I'm available 24 -7 in between sessions because if you're in the middle of a trigger or you're in the middle of some of, you know,
something happening that you know is going to lead to a crystal meth relapse, then I'm available to kind of be there and talk you through it. And I like to be there during that so that I can know exactly, they can tell me what are you thinking right now and what are you feeling right now? What's, you know, what are your thoughts going through your mind so that we can, we can plot those out. So I plot everything out on this graph and then we find the patterns. We find that, look, last time you relapsed, you kept saying this word and now you're saying it again.
Do you see the similarities? The guided meditations, we do a lot of visualization. So for instance, if I have a client who there's a weekend coming up where his roommate's gonna be out of town, it's a huge trigger, right? Or there's a weekend coming up where he's gonna be in a hotel room for work. So we visualize our way, we visualize enjoying the weekend without crystal meth. What are you doing? How are you acting? How does it feel?
you know, kind of tapping into that emotion, seeing yourself leaving the hotel room with this accomplishment, you know, how does it feel? Latch onto that emotion, keep it, embody that, feel it viscerally. We do a lot of that because you can't move forward sometimes if you don't know where you're going. And so if you've never felt that accomplishment, if you're not familiar with leaving that hotel room without relapsing,
then you don't really know what it feels like. So if we can feel it first, it's like remembering it forward. That seems to be pretty effective. Wow. That is interesting. I mean, you're almost giving them that victory in advance. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we do, you know, we do a lot of, I can go as woo woo as they want.
Eli Thomas (24:57.454)
It depends on what they feel comfortable with. This idea of a higher power sometimes can be a trigger for some, but I just, I guide them to think of them, connection with themselves right now is the higher power. It's just connect with who you are and let's do that first. And that is what we do first is we decide who it is.
you're going to be in six months, you know, because they sign up for six months. That's your future self. And so we refer to that person, we even name him sometimes, right? If his name is Bill or something. We'll, throughout the coaching, we'll say, was that a Bill decision? You know, when you're making the decision, is that a Bill behavior or is that a Trevor behavior? You know, so is that future self or past self? Future self or past self? And so we say, I say that a lot in terms of it makes decisions a little easier, you know, because...
I don't know, even because they're still negotiating with their addiction, right? I don't know, I could, if I go there, this, you know, I don't know if I should go there or whatever. Is that a future self or past self? And if it's a past self, the answer is no. Which probably is coaching in any, with anybody, but that's something that we do too.
Dr. Bragg, I'm curious. So what would you say to somebody who's struggling and, you know, maybe they're maybe they're out of the closet. Maybe they're not. They're they're struggling with all these things. They're they're a word of word of advice that you would give this person. Yeah. So when when guys reach out to me in that state, then one of the first things that.
I tried to get them to realize is that they are not the addiction, right? That the sex you just had for three days is not you, it's your addiction. So we want to try to not identify with it. And so in detaching it, and so I can do a short really meditation where they detach from the addiction, then they can start observing it. So,
Eli Thomas (27:12.75)
That's the first thing I do is get them to realize it's not you. That drops a lot of shame out of it. It detaches from that. And then I would say to do just one thing differently today. And that could be, even if it's turn your phone off for 15 minutes, that's something different that you didn't do last time. And any little, it's like a butterfly effect or whatever, any little change you make.
and you reached out to me, that's different than last time. That sends a ripple effect. You may still relapse, but I promise it's going to be a different experience because you've set an intention. You put that intention out there and it's when you relapse, it's going to be softer. You're going to recover from it faster and then you're going to look at it differently. Well said. Very well put. Thank you. Dr. Bragg, tell us how to get ahold of you. If somebody's in need, what's the best way to get up with you? Sure.
On Instagram, it's at Dr. Dallas Bragg, DR Dallas Bragg. Same was on Facebook. Those are the two and YouTube. Oh, and Twitter. Yeah, yeah, I'm on TikTok too, but I don't know what the I don't remember what the handle is. And I don't know that if you contact me on TikTok, I probably won't know how to answer it.
I'll be sure to put your handle out there in the show notes there if anybody wants to get a hold of you. You also have a website. Yes, I have a website www .DrDallasBrag .com. My website is a list of my weekly newsletters, so you can always add, you can subscribe and get my weekly newsletters too. In the newsletters, I go a little deeper and we look at subconscious what causes of addiction.
and looking at beliefs. So I can walk somebody through. So one of the first things we do is I ask them what their triggers are throughout the day. And it could be a boss being condescending or a mom or a friend not texting them back. We take that trigger and we peel it back all the way down to find out what their true belief is. And usually that belief is actually a big cause of their addiction. And so tying that together is a big aha moment. So anyway,
Eli Thomas (29:32.846)
And on my website, there's a page for signing up for a free session. There's other resources that you can download for free too. Oh, nice. I will be sure to add those notes in as well. If you missed any of any of Dr. Bragg's info, just check the show notes. They will be there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming on, Doc. We really appreciate it. Definitely a different perspective. Anything else that you'd like to add before we get out of here?
Um, no, I don't, I don't think so. Um, I don't think so. I, I, one thing that I like to always make sure people know is that there is an epidemic in the gay community with this drug and it is everywhere. And there's a, there's a zoom chant. There's several zoom channels that are dedicated for gay men to get on and use with each other all over the world at any time. 24 seven. Um, there's an app grinder that you can find drugs.
You can find crystal meth within an hour 24 -7. I mean, there's this whole world going on hiding in plain sight that we don't know about. And men are dying. The thing about meth is it doesn't kill you per se, but it takes the life away from you. And the light goes out and you forget who you are and you're in another dimension, another world, and you wish you could die. You know, I don't know which is worse.
got me they're both tough right I some of them kill you some of them just make you wish you were dead yeah yeah it's uh one of those chicken or the egg kind of questions who knows yeah yeah thank you so much for this oh thank you really appreciate it