EP 3:30 Chemsex Recovery: The Glitching Phase

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

In this solo episode, Dallas Bragg explores what he calls "glitching" — the disorienting middle phase of chemsex recovery when old patterns have been stripped away but a new identity hasn't yet formed. He opens with a raw story from his own early recovery: riding the last light rail across Charlotte at 2am to a run-down motel room, sitting in deafening silence after a life that had been "full-time" chemsex, and feeling the disassociation of having his entire operating system — apps, contacts, predictable rituals — suddenly removed. Dallas frames this as liminal space, a concept borrowed from contemplative and research traditions, and explains why it feels less like relief and more like grief: chemsex wasn't just about drugs or sex, but a structure that told men who to be and what role to play, often as a way to feel safe, wanted, or approved of after complex trauma.

Dallas grounds the episode in research, citing a longitudinal study of men who have sex with men showing that lower identity continuity and higher internalized shame predict riskier cycling patterns, while a more stable sense of self predicts grounded, integrated outcomes — and a mindfulness-based pilot study with young MSM in recovery linking present-moment awareness to greater self-compassion and identity stability. He normalizes the typical three-to-six-month timeline for this transition, encourages meeting old-pattern impulses without judgment, and closes by returning to his motel story — describing how he used visualization to picture his future life with his children rather than relapsing — framing liminal space not as a void to fear but as an open, even joyful, opportunity to consciously imagine and build the life a man wants after chemsex.

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Transcript

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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. All right, welcome back to the Aftermath Podcast and this solo episode. Don't forget there's a supplemental study guide that goes along with this episode and every episode. The link will be 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. So today we're talking about a phase of recovery that I call glitching. Keep listening, and let's start with a story. So the last light rail, if you're from Charlotte, you'll know what the light rail is. It's just a train pickup was at 2 a.m. So I had to be checked out by the manager, the taco place, collect my tips by 1.45 so I could run the four blocks to the stop. I learned my lesson after having slept on the bench outside after missing one of these stops. So the train would take me all the way across Charlotte, all the way across town to my new home, the Golden Leaf Motel. So the door was warped and it left a crack wide enough for passersby to see me, didn't care. There was a red stain on the ceiling that I saw and I lay back. I chose to believe that was ketchup. And the bedding smelled like my chain-smoking great-grandma. But it was a step up from being on the streets. These were some of the first days of my recovery journey. And I remember walking into my room to deafening silence. Only a few weeks before hotel rooms that I were in were buzzing with pornography in the background, idle chatter, men coming in and out, sometimes fucking. My life had taken a complete 180. So I clicked on the TV, the local news was on. I hadn't watched the news or any other TV in months. Stared down at my phone, no grinder, no fuck buddies, nothing but a foreign phone number on an Android phone. And I sat on the bed feeling very disassociated. It felt surreal to have been plucked out of my chemsex way of life, which is my full-time life, and placed into this very unfamiliar and boring world. That space between my old and new identity felt very scary and it felt discombobulating. And now I know, looking back, that that space was necessary. So for you, maybe you've cleaned out the drawer, you've deleted your apps, you've muted the guys, you changed your number, maybe you did all that. And now you're standing in the middle of your own life, staring at the space where all of that used to live. And you're feeling something closer to grief than a relief. You've walked into what researchers and contemplatives call liminal space. And that is supposed to feel exactly like this uncomfortable. It's a threshold to not a failure. So this word liminal comes from the Latin limon, which means threshold. It's a doorway moment. It's that place between the room you left and the one you haven't entered yet. This space between the old world behind you and the new one not entered is actually the most teachable space we will ever inhabit. I'll add something from within the work that I see in the men I work with, which is liminal space, is also the most honest space we ever inhabit. Because there's nothing left to perform. Everything's out in the open. Chemsex, for a lot of us, was never just about the drugs or the sex. It was a structure, a predictable sequence that told you who to be, what role to play, what the next three hours held, right? You take all that away, and you're not just managing cravings anymore. You're standing in the wreckage of an entire operating system, and you're waiting on a new one to compile. There's a reason this disorientation hits so hard for people coming out of complex trauma and addiction. When your nervous system spent years organizing itself around chaos, around having to perform a version of yourself just to be safe, just to be wanted, just to be approved of, predictability that becomes the load-bearing place to be. Pull it out, and the whole structure falls apart, right? This tracks with what the research is starting to show about identity in chemsex recovery. There's a recent longitudinal study of MSM, Men Who Have Sex with Men, with chemsex experience. It found that men with lower identity continuity and higher internalized shame were more likely to cycle into riskier patterns over time. While the men with a more resilient, stable sense of self tended to shift toward grounded, integrated outcomes instead. There's a difference in how different men interact with chemsex. And it comes down to identity. Identity isn't a side effect of recovery, it's the mechanism. So there's encouraging news buried in some of this body of research, too. There's a pilot study using mindfulness-based interventions with young men who have sex with men in chemsex recovery. And they found that men built present moment awareness. When they did that, they didn't just use less. Underneath that, something quieter showed up: a stronger sense of self-compassion and self-identity when they were mindful in the moment. The very thing liminal space tends to strip bare before it builds everything. You strip your identity so you can build a new one. So when you're standing in that threshold, feeling like the floor gave out, what's happening is more precise than just struggling. Your old identity, the one chemsex helped you perform, is dissolving. But the new one isn't formed yet. That gap is where the actual change happens if you want it to. Not before it, not after it, while you're in it. Sometimes I call this state glitching, which helps some men connect more with the feeling. So I'm sure you might ask, how long will this last? Oh, the impatience and the instant gratification of chemsex users. This is not going to happen over a weekend. The shift from an old, familiar but harmful normal to a new healthy normal usually takes three to six months. This is that's just an average, of feeling to some degree like you don't know who you are. It's disorientation, it's ambiguity, it's a loneliness that you feel. It has nothing to do with being physically alone. You don't know who you are. Some days a flicker of possibility you don't trust yet either, right? All of that belongs here. And none of that means go back. Going back is the easy move. Because that old normal, whatever it costs you, however you remember how horrible it was, was at least known. It's predictable. You feel safe. Your nervous system will reach for known over healthy almost every time. Because it's protecting you with the only data it has available. This is the moment to meet that reflex with something other than judgment, judging yourself. Because you feel like you are constantly oscillating. That's that glitching. And you will for a while. The important part here is not to meet any hint of your old patterns with judgment. Anything you do that looks like your old self, don't judge it. Just understand that this is a process. It's an invitation, right? So if you're in this space right now, somewhere in the gap between who you were and who you're becoming, I'm not going to tell you to hurry up or get comfortable. I'm going to tell you to create a vision of who you're becoming and allow that to pull you through. You have heard me talk about this on the podcast before, but let me finish my opening story. So I clicked that TV off that night, and I was noticeably shaking, and I was observing the swirling thoughts about how I could possibly find some Tina or go get access to Grinder, but instead I lay back on the bed and I closed my eyes. And suddenly I found myself in my own bedroom, in my own home. I could see pictures of me and the kids on the nightstand. I could hear my son in his bedroom yelling at his online games, and I heard the sound of my daughter in her bedroom giggling with friends. I was overcome with gratitude. So I imagined graduating from drug treatment court and driving the three of us home with a valid driver's license, stopping by Dairy Queen for our favorite blizzards. Could taste it, I could smell it, I could hear us talking. I took myself out of that dingy motel and into the man I was becoming and the life that I was claiming. Then I drifted off to sleep peacefully and full of hope. The liminal space is where you have a magic wand at your disposal. You are in the void where you can create whatever life you want. You have the freedom and the time to dream. To use the power of your imagination to visualize and manifest life after myth. But don't fill this space with fear and regret and shame and guilt and anger and euphoric recall. This may be the only opportunity in your entire life where you get to be separated and plucked out of a life and begin with a clean slate and choose the way your life unfolds instead of being at the mercy of the world around you. And now all I can say is have fun. Because it is fun. Alright, I hope this helped. If you want to join in the conversation, you can comment on Spotify, you can comment on YouTube, you can DM me on any social media platform. I'm anywhere at all times. All right. Thank you and have a great week.