The AfterMeth: Gay Men Recovering from Crystal Methamphetamine and Chemsex Addiction

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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/ACE
In this episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas sits down with Kit Morgan, LCSW — a licensed clinical social worker and creator of The Liberated Porch — for an unflinching conversation about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and their direct line to chemsex and methamphetamine dependency. 

Kit, who specializes in religious trauma-informed therapy for queer people, opens by sharing his lived experience as a queer trans man who grew up in fundamentalist Baptist environments, offering language like "stealth" and reflections on embodiment that broaden the podcast's ongoing commitment to diverse voices. 

From there, the conversation moves into the heart of ACE work: how early emotional neglect, unmet attachment needs, and pre-verbal experiences of abandonment lay the neurological groundwork for the "skin hunger," pleasure deprivation, and intimacy starvation that meth so effectively — and tragically — counterfeits. Dallas and Kit dismantle the moral-failing model of addiction, reframing relapse as a signal pointing toward unhealed wounds rather than evidence of personal weakness, and emphasize that shame is what got us into addiction, not what gets us out.
Listeners will walk away with concrete tools, including Kit's "60 days of gentleness" protocol — a deliberate detox from high-impact activities like intense BDSM dynamics, punishing workouts, or chronic overwork, replaced by pleasure-receiving experiences, nourishing food, rest, and safe non-sexual touch. The conversation also explores meaning-making as a core component of sustained recovery, the difference between releasing resentment and forcing forgiveness, and alternatives to journaling like the empty-chair exercise for processing childhood neglect. 

Dallas shares a deeply vulnerable personal moment about a non-sexual cuddle experience that broke open decades of touch deprivation, modeling the kind of healing intimacy that becomes possible when we slow down and let safe people in. Whether you're newly sober, deep into shadow work, or supporting someone you love, this episode is a reminder that recovery isn't just about putting down the substance — it's about finally tending to the child inside who never got held.
Find Kit here:
TikTok, Substack, and YouTube: @theliberatedporch
Website: http://www.theliberatedporch.com
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Dallas Bragg
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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/sobers**x

In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg confronts one of the most common struggles men face in chemsex recovery: the belief that sober sex is somehow broken, vanilla, or impossible to enjoy. Rather than validating that fear, Dallas reframes it entirely — the issue isn't that sobriety took something away, it's that the ruler being used to measure sex was rigged from the start. He traces how pornography carved neural pathways oriented toward performance, how hookup apps turned intimacy into a transactional marketplace, and how the queer community's hard-won fight for sexual freedom has, over time, calcified into a new kind of obligation. What gets called liberation, he argues, often functions as conformity to a script written by industries that profit from disconnection.

From there, Dallas invites listeners into a different question altogether: what if good sex has nothing to do with duration, positions, or intensity, and everything to do with presence, safety, vulnerability, and being fully oneself? He names the uncomfortable truth that much of the sex people mourn losing in recovery wasn't intimacy at all — it was dissociation wrapped in intensity, ego wrapped in orgasm, conquest masquerading as connection. The episode closes with a reflective prompt for the week: what would sex and intimacy look like if you stopped trying to meet anyone's expectations, including your own? It's a grounded, shame-free challenge to stop following someone else's map and begin drawing one's own — where real desire, real presence, and real connection actually live.
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Dallas Bragg
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Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/psychosis
In this episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas opens with a raw recounting of his own experience with meth-induced psychosis — nine days without sleep, curled in a corner convinced his house was surrounded — before welcoming Dr. Patrick Lockwood, a licensed clinical psychologist based in Los Angeles who has spent his career working across every level of substance use treatment. Together they unpack one of the most stigmatized and least-discussed dimensions of chemsex: paranoia, hallucinations, and meth-induced psychosis.

Dr. Lockwood breaks down the spectrum of psychotic symptoms, distinguishes paranoia as one type of fixed false belief, and offers the grounding metaphor that intrusive thoughts and delusions function like reflexes — closer to a sneeze than a character flaw — which reframes the work from "fixing" the experience to skillfully managing it through distraction, reality testing, and reducing catastrophic thinking.

The conversation moves into deeply practical territory for men in recovery: how to set realistic expectations for brain healing, why patience and self-compassion matter more than timelines, when antipsychotics or beta blockers may help (and when they won't), and how to find support through professional care, telemedicine, or peer communities like Crystal Meth Anonymous.

Dallas and Dr. Lockwood also speak tenderly to the lingering trauma carried by men who experienced violence, abandonment, or terror while in psychotic states during use, and to those still trapped inside delusions without knowing it. The episode lands as both a clinical primer and a permission slip — a reminder for listeners around the world that they are not broken, not crazy, and not alone, and that healing the chemsex-affected brain is possible with time, support, and grace.

Find Patrick here:
Website: https://www.lockwoodconsultingsolutions.com/
My Twitter: @alobhapatrick
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Dallas Bragg
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YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast
X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg
Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout
Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

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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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Dallas Bragg
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X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg
Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout
Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout

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Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/feelingishealing
In this powerful episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas welcomes Amanita Calderón-Cifuentes — a Colombian trans woman, PhD in molecular biomedicine, and HIV research and advocacy officer with Trans Europe Central Asia — as the podcast's first transgender guest. The two met at the International Chemsex Conference in Antwerp, and their conversation picks up with the same warmth and intellectual depth that marked their connection there. 

Amanita brings a perspective that challenges the conventional recovery narrative: as someone who has navigated 11 years of drug use, including periods of psychosis and problematic methamphetamine use, she speaks from lived experience rather than abstinence-based ideology. Drawing on the foundational framework of drug, set, and setting, she offers a nuanced account of why people use, how biological versus psychological addiction operate differently, and why a one-size-fits-all approach to recovery often sets people up to fail.
 What makes this conversation particularly resonant for Dallas's audience is Amanita's unflinching exploration of the deeper drivers of drug dependency — internalized shame, minority stress, and disconnection from self and community. She reframes recovery not as the act of stopping, but as the ongoing practice of compassion, curiosity, and radical self-love. 

For trans people, sex workers, and all those carrying compounded layers of stigma, she argues that the first act of healing is simply accepting that you are in pain — and letting yourself feel it. Dallas reflects on how this mirrors his own work with gay men trapped in cycles of self-hatred and relapse, affirming that true integration requires welcoming the wounded self rather than warring against it. Together, they land on a shared truth: what most people are searching for beneath their drug use is connection — to others, and to themselves.
Find Amanita on Instagram: @pbyamanita
The AfterMeth:
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Dallas Bragg
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YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast
X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg
Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout
Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout