EP 3:32 3 Ways to Actually Love Yourself in Chemsex Recovery

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

In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg opens with two mirrors from his own early recovery: the morning-after wreckage of a bender, where he catalogued everything wrong with him, and the day-90 reflection glowing with gratitude and quiet superiority over men still using. His revelation is that both images were lying, because both showed only half of him—and, as he puts it, you cannot love half a man. Dallas maps the pendulum so many in chemsex recovery live on, swinging between self-flagellation and self-indulgence, inflating on the pedestal and collapsing into the pit, pushed by constant comparison to other men. Neither extreme, he argues, is the authentic self, and without that authentic self there is no way to be truly loved by a partner, by brothers in recovery, or by oneself.

From there Dallas reframes love itself, rejecting the idea that love is a feeling—because if love were the rush, then meth was love too—and offering instead a definition rooted in equanimity: the willingness to observe all aspects of a person, light and shadow, and accept what you see. He grounds this in research linking equanimity to fewer problematic addictive behaviors and reduced cravings, connecting it to the compassionate observer that recurs throughout his work, the consciousness that finally sets down the judge's gavel. Applied to relapse, this lens turns a using episode from a verdict into information, transforming the user from a failure back into a student. He closes with three practices—balancing the ledger on other men through shadow work, catching the swing between pride and shame in real time, and retiring the judge to hire the curious researcher—and a weekly Level Ledger exercise that ends with ten seconds of eye contact in the mirror, seeing the whole man at once. A supplemental study guide is linked in the show notes.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 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. Alright, welcome back to the Aftermath Podcast and the solo episode. Don't forget there is a supplemental study guide that goes along with this 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. All right, so there are two reflections that I can remember from early recovery. The first one is the morning after one of my benders. Sometimes I'd be out there for a week, standing there with the fluorescent light causing my skin to look even more grey, my eyes sunken in, my arms bruised from botched slams, and my jaw sore from clinching. I would stand there and take inventory of everything wrong with me. Liar, weak, disgusting, back to zero, horrible father. Then the crying would ensue. And in that mirror I saw a reflection of all my negatives, leading to self flagellation. The second mirror showed up around day ninety, fresh haircut, color back in my face, little gem pump under my t-shirt or my tank top. I might have tears in my eyes, but they were from an overflow of gratitude. Look at you. You beat it. You are better than those guys still out there circling grinder at 3 AM. In that mirror was a reflection of all my positives, leading to self-indulgence. So here's what took me many years to understand. Both of those mirror images were lying. And both of those mirror images were simply me. There were no good, there were no bad, there were no positive, there were no negative. Both of them showed me half of who I am. And you cannot love half a man. So look, most of us in the Chemsex Recovery live on a pendulum. We swing from flagellation to indulgence, and then many variations in between. On one end, we puff ourselves up, the pink cloud, the savior energy, the quiet superiority we feel scrolling past those profiles of men still using. We become conscious of our upsides and blind to our downsides. This is where a lot of overconfidence comes from. On the other end, we collapse. One using episode, and suddenly we are the hopeless case, the chronic relapser, the man who'll never get it. We become conscious of our downsides and blind to our upsides, which is where the shame cycle comes in. So notice something about both ends of that swing, right? Neither one is you, and both are you. They are personas, right? They are masks, they are exaggerations in opposite directions because we swing them with emotion. And you know we love extremes, right? And as long as you are living in one of these extremes, you are not being your authentic true self. And if you cannot be your authentic true self, then how can you be loved for who you are? Not by a partner, not by your brothers in recovery, and definitely not by yourself. This pendulum gets pushed by comparison. You meet a guy with five years substance free and you shrink down. Or you hear about a guy who used last weekend and you quietly grow taller. Every time you put another man on a pedestal or you dig yourself in a pit, every time you put him in the pit, you climb in the pedestal. So when you're in a pedestal, right? When you put them on a pedestal, you dig yourself in a pit. Every time you put him in a pit, you climb into onto your own pedestal. I hope that's clear. Up and down, right, all day long. And you wonder why you're exhausted. We have to think about this. Love is not an emotion. We're getting somewhere here. We have been sold the idea that love is a feeling. The rush, the infatuation, the warm flood in the chest. But think about where that logic is going to leave you. If love is the rush, then meth was love. The slam, the hit, the man on the other side of the door at 2 a.m., all of it was flooding in your chest too. We chased a feeling, we called it connection. And we know exactly where that road ends, right? I want to offer you a different definition. Love is the willingness to observe all aspects of a person, the light and the shadow at the same time and accept what you see. Love of another man is the willingness to see both sides of him. Love of yourself is the willingness to see both sides of you simultaneously or unconditionally. And there's a word for that. It's called equanimity or equanimity. It is the level place between the pedestal and the pit. And studies show that equanimity or capacity to stay even in the presence of pleasant and unpleasant experience is associated with fewer problematic addictive behaviors and the training the mind to observe cravings and emotions without judgment, unconditionally. And equanimity I'm having trouble with the word equanimity. Equanimity measurably reduces the cravings itself. The research is catching up to what all the mystics have been saying for thousands of years. The balanced observer heals. The balanced observer is who you are. And if you have followed my work, you already know and you've heard this phrase observer. He is the compassionate observer that I talk about constantly. The conscience the consciousness behind the voices, the one watching the craving instead of being the craving. Equanimity is what the compassionate observer feels like when he finally puts down the gavel of the judge, finally stops keeping score of rights and wrongs with himself and everybody else around him. So let's look at relapse. Bring this to the moment that breaks most of men in chemisex recovery, the return to using. When you judge a using episode as pure catastrophe, you are back at the first mirror. All downside, and the shame floods the system. And shame, as every one of us knows in our bones, is the jet fuel for the next episode. You use because you feel worthless, then you feel worthless because you used, the pendulum becomes a wrecking ball. The level lens, equanimity, asks a different set of questions. What was that episode doing for me? What need was it meeting? What pain was it numbing? What information is it carrying? And on the other side, what did it cost me? Honestly, without any kind of drama, what did it cost me? When you can hold the benefit and the drawback of the same event in the same moment, that charge of it disappears. The episode stops being a verdict and just becomes an event, just another chapter. It loses its weight, its meaning. You stop being a failure and go back to being a student. This is where recovery deepens. Abstinence keeps the drug out of your body, but equanimity keeps the war out of your mind.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

So this is all coming into self-love. So here are three ways to reach self-love.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Number one, balance the ledger on other men first. So self-love really begins with shadow work. The practice of understanding that everyone is a mirror for your own growth and what you're not seeing. Because in that process, you see that everyone has upsides and downsides, including you. Equanimity emerges, and from that place is where you're going to have love, acceptance of both sides. So think of a man you resent, maybe your ex, a sponsor who shamed you, the guy who introduced you to Tina. Name the specific trait you cannot stand in him. Now find the moment you displayed the same trait. Somewhere to someone, I bet you can. Now flip that. Think of a man you atolyze, the one with the long recovery and the calm voice. Name what you admire. Now find where that trait already lives in you. Every pedestal and every pit is a mirror you have not claimed yet, you have not seen yet in yourself. Claim enough of them, and the playing field levels. We're all here. And standing on level ground with every other man is what self-respect and self-love actually feels like. Number two, catch the swing in real time. Pride and shame are two alarm bells. The moment you feel superior, I want you to pause and ask, what downsides of mine am I not looking at right now? Bring yourself back. The moment you feel worthless, pause and ask, what upsides of mine am I refusing to see? Bring yourself back. You are not trying to talk yourself out of the feeling, you are supplying the missing half of the picture to balance it out. One honest counterweight, you can speak it or you can write it in your journal, is usually enough to slow down that pendulum. Stop swinging. Do this daily, and the swings get shorter. And you remain in that middle place, that balanced place. In that middle baseline is where you can make level decisions, see the world through healthy perspectives, and you're gonna live in reality. Think about that. Number three, retire the judge and hire the researcher. The judge asks, What is wrong with me? The researcher asks, what is running me? Same event, two completely different men looking at it. When the craving hits, when the old profile gets reactivated, when the shame wave rolls in, take notes like a scientist studying the most fascinating subject on earth. Because that's what you are. Where is it in your body? What happened an hour before that craving? What is this promising me? Let's get curious. Curiosity and condemnation cannot occupy the same mind at the same moment. Equanimity. Choose curiosity often enough and it becomes your default setting. And curiosity, sustained over time, is going to turn into tenderness. And that tenderness toward yourself begins to turn outward. And you begin to be tender toward everyone else in the world, and I promise you, I promise you, your world and everyone in it will fundamentally transform through love. So you do not need to amputate half of yourself to be lovable. The man who used and the man who healed are the same man. The man who lied in active addiction and the one who tells the truth in group on Tuesday nights, same man. Every trait you have served, every trait you have served a purpose, or you would not have survived long enough to read this or watch this. The goal was never to become a one sided saint. The goal is to stand in front of the mirror, see the whole man, both images at once, the saint and the sinner, and remain as the compassionate observer appreciating and accepting both. That steady, unflinching seeing is love. Who doesn't want to be seen for who they really are? Both sides. So this week I want you to do this exercise. It's the level ledger. Take one event that still carries a charge for you, an emotional charge. Maybe it is your last using episode, or some moment in your addiction you're ashamed of. Draw a line down the center of a page. On the left, write every drawback of that event. Be very thorough and be very honest. And on the right, write every benefit. And yes, there will be benefits. The lesson it forced, the bottom it revealed, the compassion it later gave you for other people in that same position. The reason you're doing all of this, keep writing on the right side until the two columns are roughly equal in weight. You don't really have to do it, don't count the number of things, but what feels like when it's really true on both sides that you have the equal amount. All right. Then read both columns out loud together, one left entry followed by one right entry, back and forth until the page is done. You're keeping that pendulum still. You are teaching your nervous system to hold both sides of one event in one breath. And when you reach the bottom, look up, find a mirror, and hold your eye, hold your eye contact. This is tough for some people. Look in the mirror, hold eye contact with yourself for 10 full seconds. That's the practice.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

The upsides and the downsides witnessed by you. A whole person. You are who you are. And the better and the more you can accept that, the more you're going to love yourself.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

Alright. Hope this helps today. Hope you're enjoying these solo podcasts. Please join in the conversation. You can con contact me on social media. You can comment on Spotify. You can comment on YouTube if you'd like to join in the conversation. Really appreciate hearing from all of you. All right. Have a great week.