EP 3:10 The Difference Between Knowing and Doing

Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/knowingvsdoing

In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas explores one of the most common — and most overlooked — drivers of relapse: the gap between knowing and doing. Drawing from his work with clients in chemsex recovery, he describes the men who arrive at sessions fully educated on dopamine regulation, euphoric recall, and the neuroscience of addiction, yet remain frozen on the knowing side of the chasm. 

Using the metaphor of a beautifully stocked toolbox that never gets opened, Dallas names the three forces that keep men stuck: unworthiness disguised as protection (a tender, childhood-formed part that orchestrates failure to avoid being blindsided by it), overwhelm at the sheer scale of the outcome, and the relentless pull of daily distraction. Each one, he explains, looks like progress while quietly preventing the internal architecture of recovery from being laid down.

The antidote Dallas offers is deceptively simple: one small, consistent daily action — small enough that you cannot fail at it — practiced morning and night, anchored by two questions: What would my highest expression be doing right now? and Did I show up as him today? He reframes recovery not as a dramatic transformation reached through breakthrough moments, but as infrastructure built quietly in unremarkable, repeated practice — the muscle of showing up that carries you through cravings, euphoric recall, and emotional storms when they arrive. Inviting listeners into a seven-day experiment, Dallas closes with a tender reminder that time alone does not heal; time plus daily action does. The hammer, finally, meets the nail.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Chemsex. Sexualized drug use among men who have sex with men, typically involving methamphetamine, methadrone, and GHB, among others. Chemsex misuse is a worldwide epidemic that needs attention, dialogue, and hope for those lost in it, which is the purpose of the Aftermath Podcast. Please note the views expressed by the host and guest on this podcast are not to be taken as medical advice, and the content around sex and drug use can be triggering. Okay, welcome back to the Aftermath Podcast and this solo episode. Don't forget there is a supplemental study guide that goes along with this episode and every episode. The link is in the show notes. Please remember to like, subscribe, and rate the podcast so we can get the algorithm to place it in the ears and eyes of those who need it. All right, so what happens inside a man's head when he decides to go back to myth, especially after a substantial amount of time steering clear of relapse? Why is it that he turns back to substances after feeling so good for so long? I have many theories around this subject, and there's only not one theory that's going to fit every man, but from a broader perspective, I hold true to my belief that all experiences in life happen for us, even and especially relapse. Often we learn how not to use through the act of using. That is, if we absorb the knowledge and resolve to show up differently in our lives. If we integrate the rich learning provided to us before, during, and after a relapse. You guys have heard me say this many, many times. Otherwise, if you don't learn, guess what? You're gonna keep going back until you do. But what I've noticed among my clients is that the answer to why they return back varies. So it's going to vary from person to person. Recovery from chemsex is contextual and highly individual. But today I want to talk about a common factor of relapse that I see, one that I can see coming from a mile away. Often the client cannot, not until they are on the other side of a come down, being forced into a state of mind that lends itself to curiosity. If you don't get curious, universe is going to make you curious. I wish so much that more of you would remain in this state of curiosity instead of condemnation. How can I express more the importance of this? Curiosity over condemnation. So one of the top reasons men end up in relapse is being caught in the knowing what to do, but not taking the action to do what to do. So a client comes to a session and he's all lit up. He's listened to three podcast episodes on dopamine regulation, he's watched a YouTube lecture on how meth hijacks the reward system, he's read chapters from the study guide, he's filled out worksheets on euphoric recall, he's shown up to the groups, he's shown up to his meetings, he's done the work, or so it appears. And then I ask a simple question: How are you showing up differently today? The room goes quiet. What I'm witnessing in that silence is the gap between knowing and doing. And for many men in early recovery, that's a chasm that looks small from the knowing side, feels impossible to cross from the doing side. So let me offer you a metaphor here. Imagine you have a toolbox, beautiful shiny toolbox, and you've spent weeks, maybe months collecting tools for it. Every tool is shiny, brand new, still has a tag on it. You researched each one very carefully. You know what each one is designed to do. You can explain the engineering of a hammer, the physics of a wrench, mechanics of a saw blade. You can talk about tools with tremendous intelligence and insight. But the toolbox stays shut. The hammer never meets the nail, the wrench never turns the bolt. The tools, for all their beauty, never build a damn thing. This is where so many men get stuck in recovery. They gather knowledge, they gather frameworks, they gather tools, and they mistake the gathering for the building. So here's what's sneaky about this stage. It feels like progress. Because it is kind of progress. Learning is a real dopamine hit. Every new insight lights up your reward system. Every epiphany is going to feel like forward motion. Every milestone, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, gets celebrated with that same rush. And so for a while, you stay substance free on the fuel of learning alone. But there's no infrastructure being built underneath. The time is accumulating, sure. The externals look good, but the internal architecture, the daily grooves, the practiced responses, the muscle memory of recovery, none of it is being laid down. So when the inevitable moment arrives, when euphoric recall surges, when your libido sneaks up on you from a glimpse of a guy on TikTok, when the body takes over with Kim Seck's cravings, you reach for the toolbox, you realize you've never actually used any of these damn tools. You've admired them, you've cataloged them, you've explained them to everybody else, but you've never swung the hammer. And you can't build a muscle in the moment you need it. You build it in the days, weeks, and months before. So here are three reasons that we stay on that knowing side. The first, unworthiness. Unworthiness that's disguised as protection. So there's a part of you, and I want to say this with all the tenderness that I can, that believes very deep down you're not meant to succeed at this. It's not conscious, it's not something you'd say out loud. It might even be something, it's not even something you'd admit to yourself if I asked you right now directly. But it's there, underneath the surface, a shadow that's whispering. You're gonna fail. And when you do, you're gonna look foolish. You'll be humiliated, just like you were at whatever age you were first humiliated. Everyone will see that you were never going to make it anyway. And here's the part that's so important to understand. That voice is not your enemy. It is not your demon. It is not after you. It's a part of you that formed a very long time ago, probably in childhood, probably in response to real wounds. It learned that disappointment was unbearable. It stood between you and the love of others. That failure was dangerous, that anything less than perfection will drive away the ones who love you. And so it developed into a strategy. A very brilliant, painful strategy to keep you safe. Its strategy is this. Let me protect you from harm by giving you control of this situation. Let's orchestrate the failure now on your own terms before it can ambush you. At least we know the outcome, and we've been here before. It's comfortable. That part gets ahead of the failure. It quote unquote sabotages, which I don't like that word. It pulls you back just as you're about to cross a threshold. It convinces you to stay in the safety of knowledge, the gathering, where no one can judge your results because you haven't produced any, where you can always say, I'm still learning, I'm still preparing, I'm not ready. Think about it this way: you've met the perfect partner. He's kind, he sees you, he treats you with tenderness that you didn't know you deserved. And instead of letting yourself receive that love, something in you starts to unravel. You pick fights, you find flaws, you become distant, or you become too much. You betray the relationship, maybe literally, maybe emotionally, before it can betray you, because the unworthiness part would rather orchestrate the heartbreak than risk being blindsided by it. Recovery works in the same way. If you never really try, you can never really fail. If you stay in the knowing, you never have to find out whether you were actually capable of the doing. The tragedy, of course, is that the unworthiness becomes self-fulfilling. You don't try, nothing changes, you confirm to yourself that you were never going to make it. Then that cycle closes. The way out isn't to silence this part. It is not to fight this voice. The way out is to recognize it, to say to it gently, I see you, I know you're trying to protect me, but we're going to try this anyway. One small action today. That's all I ask of me, and that's all I ask of you, part. Us. One small action. Do that. Prove to yourself you can, make sure it's attainable, and you begin to build that self-trust, and you begin to believe that you can do this. All right. The second is the overwhelm of the outcome. So, what do I mean by that? The outcome. A life completely free of substances, a fully rebuilt sense of self, a transformed relationship to sexuality, to intimacy, to your own body, that's enormous to think about. It's mountainous. It's a complete reconstruction of who you are and how you move through the world. When you look at that from where you're standing right now with all the wreckage around you and the grooves of old behavior still worn deep into your nervous system, it feels impossible, hopeless. How could today's small action possibly touch something that vast? How could five minutes of journaling matter? When what needs to change is everything? So guess what? You take no action at all. The gap between where you are and where you want to be is so vast that any single step feels laughably inadequate. You freeze, you scroll, you watch another podcast, you masturbate, you tell yourself start tomorrow, next week, after the holidays, after this job ends, after this relationship ends, after I feel more ready. But the truth is that the mountain is never moved in one motion. It's not this big step you take. It's moved in 10,000 small motions over a long, consistent period of time. The men I've seen transform most profoundly in this work are not the ones who had dramatic breakthroughs. They're the ones who showed up quietly, day after day, to do the small things, the five-minute things, the 1% things. And they did it on the days they felt inspired and the days they didn't, on the days it felt meaningful and the days it felt pointless. The outcome you want isn't reached by doing something as big as the outcome. It's reached by doing something radically smaller than the outcome every single day for a long enough time that it begins to rewire your brain. Okay, number three, distraction. Life is loud, work is pulling at you, relationships pull at you, finances pull at you, the phone pulls at you relentlessly, buzz, buzz, notification, every swipe designed specifically to fragment your attention and keep you consuming. Family drama, political noise, community obligations, the endless scrolling, without a daily anchor, something that pulls you back to your recovery every single day, no matter what else is happening, you are going to drift. It's like a car being out of alignment. You will slowly go off the road. It pulls you. If you do not pay attention, your subconscious patterns are always pulling you back. They never stop. The knowing what to do then begin to fade. It begins to fade into the background, right? The tools gather their dust in the toolbox. The insights you had two weeks ago become very hazy, theoretical, disconnected from your daily life. What did I really believe that? And this is how weeks go by, then months. You're technically still in recovery. You're technically still doing the program, but internally, nothing is actually shifting. The infrastructure isn't being built. You're just floating through your days, managing crises as they arise, crises, and hoping, just hoping that the cumulative effect of time, substance free, will somehow be enough. It is not. It won't be. Time alone does not heal. Time plus consistent daily action heals. Time without daily action just means you've been avoiding the substance for longer, which is not the same as transformation. This is why the anchor matters so much. The daily action is what keeps you oriented. It's the North Star you return to every morning and every night. Without it, you're at the mercy of whatever wave of distraction shows up that day.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

With it, you still have a point.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

An anchor, a place that is always yours, a ritual that says, no matter what else is happening today, no matter how I feel, I am still in recovery. I am still becoming the best and highest version of me. I am building here. So listen, doing all this is the process. It's not the outcome. Here's what I want you, I want to invite you into a different way of seeing this. Most of my clients, when they first come to me, they see the doing as the final result. The doing equals being completely myth-free forever. That's my result. That's my pass or fail. The doing equals a fully transformed life. The doing is what happens at the end. But what that's not, but that's not, sorry, what doing is. That is not the doing. The myth-free life is not the doing. The end result is not the doing. Doing is the daily, unremarkable, often invisible action you take every day that no one else sees. It's the five minutes of journaling before your day begins. It's the check-in with your highest self at night. It's the 1% you moved in the direction of your vision between yesterday and today. It's the still quiet voice. When you focus on the outcome only, I have to be meth-free. I have to do this, I have to change my relationship with sexuality. Nothing is ever enough. You're always measuring yourself against a mountain. But when you focus on the process instead of the outcome, today is enough. Today's one small action is the whole point. This is what I mean when I say recovery is infrastructure. It isn't built in the dramatic big breakthrough moments. It's built in the quiet, repeated, almost boring ones. And that infrastructure, those grooves worn into your nervous system by daily consistent practice is what holds you steady and moves you down the track when the cravings hit. Euphoric recall, emotional irregulation, whatever else drama comes in your life. You can't wait until euphoric recall shows up to get out that hammer. By then it's too late. The muscle isn't been built. The groove isn't there. You have to practice the tools when you don't need them. So they're available to you when you do. Alright, one consistent daily action. That is the bridge between knowing and doing. That's it. That's the whole thing. Not ten actions, not a complete morning routine, not um meditation and cold plunge and sauna and this and that, a two-hour spiritual practice, one action. Done every day. Bookending your morning and your evening. You set the tone and then you reflect and make modifications. For some men, that is journaling. Five minutes, pen to paper, no agenda. For others, it's just a mindful practice. Sitting with the breath, working with your plants like me, noticing what's moving in your body, something. For others, it's a gratitude list. When that's done intentionally, not performatively, not checking a box. And the three things you're grateful for and why. Make sure that's felt in your body, not just a list. The content of the action here, whatever it is, that does not matter. That is so it matters so much less than the energy of consistently doing it. What you're building isn't the action itself. What you're building is the muscle of showing up. The muscle that says, I am somebody who does this every day, no matter what. And inside that daily action, I will invite my clients to hold two questions. What would my highest expression be doing right now? You ask that all day long. How would he be thinking, speaking, spending his time, seeing himself, seeing the world? How would he respond? Ask yourself that all day. That could be your anchor. Just those two questions. They pull you out of the fog of old patterns and wake you up and remind you who I'm becoming. They reorient you toward the man you're moving toward. Not as a distant fantasy, but as somebody who is making choices right now, today. What would my highest expression be doing right now? How would he be thinking? How would he be feeling? How would he be responding? Who would he be with? What would he be reading? So here's what I want to invite you to try, if you're willing. Choose one daily action. One. Make it small enough that you cannot fail at it. Five minutes of journaling. Three slow breaths before your feet hit the floor. One gratitude written down before bed. Commit to doing it twice a day for seven days. Once in the morning, set the frame, once in the evening to close it. Each time you do it, ask yourself, What would my highest expression be doing right now? Did I show up as my highest expression today? Write the answer. Whisper the answer. Think about the answer. Let it land in your body. And then at the end of the seven days, notice what happened. Not what changed externally, probably not much. What has shifted internally? What did it feel like to be somebody who kept a promise, who m set a goal and attained it, achieved it? What does it feel like to know that I'm somebody who follows through? I kept a promise to myself seven days in a row. That feeling, that's the foundation. That is what infrastructure feels like being built. It might be a glimpse, it might be a fleeting thought right now, but you keep going and you build on it. Small wins celebrate it. That's the beginning of trusting yourself again.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

The hammer. Finally. Meeting the nail. I love you all.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

I hope this helps. Let me know what you think. What did I miss? What do you agree with? What do you disagree with? You can comment on YouTube. You can comment on Spotify. Give me a DM or a message. I'm everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

I'm everywhere on every social media. Let me know. Have a great day.