Alright, so last week we walked through the denial stage. Denial is part of the five stages of grief that I propose many men go through along their chemsex recovery journey. We talked about the filter that has to come off, the comparison trap that keeps you stuck, and the evidence list that breaks the spell.
Once the filter has been lifted and you comprehend the totality of what you've done and where your life is going, you admit that you have to quit. And that may make you angry.
Welcome to stage two.
This one is hot. It is loud. It is unfair. And if you do not move through it carefully, it will keep the embers of chemsex hot. That fire can be ignited easily, preventing you from moving through the subsequent stages.
WHAT ANGER ACTUALLY IS
Anger gets a bad reputation in recovery spaces. Especially in the gay community, where so many of us were taught early that anger was unsafe, ugly, masculine in the wrong way, a thing to be managed and minimized and prayed away.
Anger is typically judged as a sign of emotional dysregulation. However, I feel the imbalance stems from a misunderstanding of the value of anger in this process.
Anger in grief is different. Anger is typically a secondary emotion to fear. This stage is about fearing the notion that we will never get to go back to chemsex, never get to feel that way again, never enjoy sex again.
When you are angry in the grief of chemsex recovery, you are not being immature. You are not being ungrateful for your sobriety. You are not failing the program. You are responding correctly to the discovery that something real was taken from you.
Anger is the part of grief that says, this matters. This was not nothing. I am not just going to walk away from this and pretend it did not happen.
The problem is not the anger itself. The problem is what most men do with it. We either bottle it and become depressed, weaponize it and burn down our relationships, or numb it and reach for the substance that started the whole problem in the first place.
Anger needs to be moved through the body. It is asking to be witnessed. It is asking to be expressed.
HOW ANGER SHOWED UP FOR ME
In the last newsletter, I told you about my eviction. About standing on the curb in shock.
What I did not tell you is what came after.
After the shock came the rage. And the rage did not point itself at meth. The rage pointed itself at the people who loved me.
My momma. My sister. The two people who had spent years keeping me alive while I made decisions that should have killed me.
Somehow, the eviction became their fault.
The two people who had picked me up at hours I cannot remember, fed me when I had not eaten in days, prayed for me when I was unreachable.
I remember once yelling at my momma on the phone because she wouldn't pay my electricity bill. My "friends" and I had stolen a ton of extension cords, plugged them into the neighbor's outdoor outlet, and lit up my entire condo so we could see well enough to inject.
How ungrateful I was in my chemically induced state!
I was furious with them.
For interfering.
For cutting me off.
For setting boundaries.
For not letting me destroy myself in peace.
I was a grown man throwing a hissy fit because my candy had been taken away.
Why could I not just enjoy myself?
Why could I not just live the life I wanted?
Why was the world so cruel as to make the thing that felt the most alive be the thing that was killing me?
That is what anger in grief looks like when you do not understand what it is. It misfires. It points at the wrong targets. It punishes the people closest to you because they are the safest to punish.
The anger was right that something had been taken. The anger was just wrong about who took it.
THE TARGETS OF ANGER
When you start to move out of denial and into anger, the anger will start looking for places to land. It will not be picky. Almost anyone in your life will do.
You will be angry at your dealer. He sold you poison and called it medicine. He smiled while charging you for your own destruction. He pretended to be your friend while watching you fall apart.
You will be angry at the guys who introduced you to the scene. They handed you a pipe and called it freedom. They knew what was coming and let you walk into it anyway.
You will be angry at the community itself. It welcomed you, embraced you, made you feel chosen, and then watched you drown. The same circle that gave you belonging gave you the means of your own undoing.
You will be angry at yourself. For being so hungry for connection that you walked into it willingly. For wanting to be wanted so badly that you would pay this price for it. For ignoring every red flag because the high overrode every alarm.
You will be angry at your family for not understanding. And angry at your family for understanding too well. And angry at your family for being there. And angry at your family for not having been there sooner.
You will be angry at your coach, your therapist, your sponsor, the people trying to help you, because they are asking you to grieve something they did not lose. They are asking you to do work that feels impossible from where you are standing.
You will be angry at recovery itself. At the slowness of it. At the patience it requires. At the way it asks you to feel things you spent years numbing. At the way it strips you of the only tools you knew how to use.
You will be angry at the gay world. At the way it produced this scene in the first place. At the way it celebrated it. At the way it still celebrates it on the apps, in the parties, in the back rooms, while you are over here trying to rebuild a life.
You will be angry at God, or the universe, or whatever you call the force that arranged your life this way. For making you gay in a world that made you ashamed. For wiring you for hunger that the scene seemed to feed. For asking you now to put it all down without giving you a clear picture of what comes next.
All of this anger is real. All of this anger has a point. And all of this anger is dangerous if it does not get processed.
THE TWO WRONG TURNS
There are two wrong turns men typically take with anger in this stage.
The first wrong turn is suppression.
You tell yourself you should be grateful. You should be focused on the positive. You should not be wasting energy on anger because it will not change anything.
So you push it down.
You smile in your meetings. You say the right words to your coach. You journal about gratitude. And underneath, the anger sits and rots and turns into depression or sudden, explosive relapse.
Suppressed anger does not go away. Suppressed anger becomes the next thing.
It becomes the depression of stage four.
It becomes the resentment that poisons your relationships.
It becomes the bitterness that sits behind your eyes when you smile.
It becomes the relapse you cannot explain because, from the outside, everything was going so well.
The second wrong turn is weaponization.
You let the anger run the show.
You text your dealer at three in the morning telling him exactly what you think of him. You confront the friend who introduced you and burn that bridge in flames.
You scream at your family.
You quit your job.
You blow up your relationship.
You take the heat of your anger and you spray it everywhere because you cannot stand to feel it just sitting in your chest.
Weaponized anger gives you the temporary illusion of relief. It feels like you are doing something. It feels like you are taking your power back. But it leaves a trail of damage behind it, and the damage becomes its own new grief.
There is a third way. There is a way to move anger without suppressing it and without weaponizing it. That way is what this stage is asking you to learn.
THE RIGHTEOUS ANGER UNDERNEATH
Underneath all the misfired anger, there is a deeper anger that is completely righteous.
You are right to be angry that you grew up in a culture that made your sexuality a source of shame.
You are right to be angry that you were given so few models of healthy gay manhood.
You are right to be angry that the first place that welcomed you fully was a place that also poisoned you.
You are right to be angry that this scene continues to operate openly while men die in apartments, in saunas, in hotel rooms, alone, holding pipes.
You are right to be angry that you had to figure this out yourself.
You are right to be angry that the recovery world is still catching up to chemsex as a distinct issue.
You are right to be angry that so few people understand what you actually went through, what you actually lost, what you actually have to grieve.
This anger is not a problem. This anger is fuel. This anger, channeled correctly, is exactly what will keep you out of the scene when the pull returns.
This anger, channeled correctly, is what builds the new identity. This anger says, I am not going back, because I see clearly now what was done to me and what I was doing to myself.
The work is not to get rid of the anger. The work is to name it and use the energy it gives you to build something instead of burn something.
WHAT TO DO WITH IT
Anger needs to move through the body. It cannot be talked out of. It cannot be reasoned away. It cannot be journaled into submission, although journaling helps.
Move it physically. Run. Box. Lift heavy. Swim. Get on a bike. Take a long walk in the cold. Do something that demands your body's full attention and lets the chemical residue of rage burn off through your muscles.
Yell where no one can hear you. The car with the windows up, parked in an empty lot. The shower with the water running. The pillow you scream into. Let the sound out. Let the throat unclench. The voice is part of the body, and the voice needs to release the pressure too.
Write the unsent letters. One to your dealer. One to the man who introduced you. One to the version of yourself who walked in willingly. One to the version of yourself who keeps wanting to walk back in. Do not hold back. Say everything. The point is not the letter. The point is the release.
Talk to a witness. Not someone who will fix you, but someone who can hear the rage and not be afraid of it. A coach. A therapist. A trusted friend in recovery. The anger needs to be witnessed. Anger spoken aloud to a calm witness loses some of its dangerous voltage. It becomes manageable. It becomes information.
Stay away from the targets while you are processing.
Do not text your dealer.
Do not confront the friend who introduced you.
Do not blow up your family.
Move the anger out of your system first. Then, if there is still something to say once the heat has dropped, you can say it from a place of clarity instead of fire.
CLOSING
Anger is not the end of the road. Anger is the second of five stages. It is supposed to be moved through, not lived in.
If you have been camped out in anger for a long time, ask yourself what you are protecting. Anger sometimes becomes a place to hide because it feels safer than what comes next. Anger feels powerful. Depression feels like weakness. So we stay in the rage to avoid the sorrow.
But the sorrow is where the actual healing lives.
Anger is the second wave. Sorrow is the deeper one. You have to let yourself be moved by both.
In the next newsletter, we are going into bargaining. The negotiation. The loopholes. The ghost of denial wearing a new mask. The voice that whispers, maybe there is a way to have it all.
Spoiler. There is not. But the bargaining stage is where most relapses happen, so we have to understand it clearly.
For now, let your anger speak. Let it move. Let it tell you what was taken. And do not aim it at the people who love you most. They are not the enemy. There is no enemy.
Love you, Dallas
JOURNAL PROMPTS
Who am I most angry at right now, and what specifically did they take from me, do to me, or fail to do for me? Be precise.
Where is my anger pointing me toward something I actually need to grieve or protect? What is the loss underneath the rage?
Where am I misfiring? Who am I being angry at who does not actually deserve the full weight of what I am putting on them?
What would it look like to honor my anger as information without letting it run my life?
If my anger had a message for me about what I want my recovery and my new life to look like, what would it be saying?
EXERCISE: THE UNSENT LETTER
This is one of the most powerful tools I know for working with anger. It is simple. It is brutal. It works.
Pick one person you are angry at. Just one. The one whose face comes up first when you let yourself feel the rage.
It can be your dealer. The guy who introduced you. An ex-partner. A family member. Yourself. The version of yourself who first picked up the pipe. God. Whoever the heat is pointing at most directly today.
Sit down with a pen and paper, not a screen. There is something about the physical act of writing that engages the body in a way typing does not.
Write the letter. Start with their name. Then write everything you have not said. Everything you wish you could say. Everything that has been sitting in your chest. Do not edit. Do not soften. Do not be fair. The point is not fairness. The point is release.
Tell them what they took from you. Tell them what they cost you. Tell them what you wish had been different. Tell them what you wish they had done. Tell them what you wish they had not done. Tell them everything.
Write until the heat starts to drop. You will feel it. Your hand will slow down. Your breath will deepen. The fire will move from your chest into the paper.
Then, when you are done, do not send it. Read it out loud to yourself. Sit with it. Notice what comes up. Then burn it, shred it, or bury it. Do not keep it.
The point is not the letter. The point is the movement. You moved something out of your body and onto the page. You named what was unnamed. You witnessed yourself. That is the work.
You can do this exercise as many times as you need to, with as many different targets as the anger surfaces.
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