Content Warning: This episode and study guide discuss methamphetamine use and chemsex, hookup app use, group sex, relapse, shame, and the despair that comes with returning to using after you have decided to stop. I also tell the story of the morning my recovery actually began, and I have not cleaned it up.
This guide asks you to look honestly at where you are in your own process, including the possibility that you are still using while you work to stop. That is not a small thing to sit with. Read this when you are steady, and give yourself somewhere to land afterward.
If you find yourself in crisis while reading, please reach out. In the US you can call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or call the LGBT National Hotline at 888-843-4564. Nothing in this guide is medical, clinical, or legal advice.
What This Episode Is About
In order to comply with recovery culture and make it easy for everyone to understand, I use August 4th, 2018, as the first day of my chemsex recovery.
It is not.
This is a short solo episode about the gap in the recovery model almost everyone hands you, and about what to do if you are living inside that gap right now: taking real action, still using sometimes, and being told by the world that every slip sends you back to zero.
I am giving that gap a name and a number. I am calling it stage 4.5, the becoming. And I want you to understand that if you are there, nothing is wrong with you. You are in a stage. It just never had a name until now.
Key Ideas to Sit With
The morning it actually began
My recovery began the morning the sun's rays blinded me through a hotel curtain. Somebody had overlooked the duct tape. The curtains were not pinned to the wall like they usually were, and there was a gap.
I was lying naked on the bed between two other naked guys, and we were scrolling Grindr. The night before had been full of searching for more guys. There had been some attempts at sex. There had been a huge fight because I felt left out, so I had planted myself in the middle of them.
That morning it was like the sun's hand reached into that Red Roof Inn just to get my attention. I laid my head back on the headboard and dropped the phone to my lap, and I stared out through that opening in the curtain. Outside, all the normies were rising for their work day. Tears welled up. And a voice inside fought its way through all the static and all the spiraling emotion and said: I'm done.
That morning is when my recovery journey began. I was ready to act. My intent became visible, visceral in my body, aligned with my soul, because I knew in my heart that this was not the life for me.
And yes, I used many times after that night. But every single time the experience got worse, less enjoyable, and I became more and more disconnected from chemsex. That is not failure. In the model you are about to read, that has a name.
The five stages of change, briefly
Back in the late 1970s, two researchers, James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente, wanted to know why some people change and some people do not. What they found is that change is not a switch, it is a sequence. Every treatment center I know of hands you this model. Therapists and counselors use it. I think it is genuinely valuable for understanding your own recovery, so here it is in brief.
1. Pre-contemplation. You are not thinking about change yet. You often do not see the behavior as a problem, and if somebody brings it up, you have a reason ready. It's a phase. You can stop whenever you want. You are not one of those people. This is the stage where the people who love you can see the need to change and you cannot.
2. Contemplation. Now you know. You are aware there is a problem and you are thinking about changing, but you are stuck in ambivalence. You want to stop and you do not want to stop, often in the same hour, sometimes in the same sentence. For most people this is the longest stage. Years, for some. The knowing without the moving.
3. Preparation. You are getting ready to act, and the intent becomes visible. You make a plan. You tell somebody. You take small steps. You say no to the dealer's offer once in a while. The therapy appointment gets made. The sponsor's number gets saved. Maybe you go to a meeting, maybe you clean out a drawer. That is where I was that morning in the hotel.
4. Action. The real, visible change. You are doing it. This stage takes the most effort of any of them, and it also carries the highest risk of slipping back. You would think doing would be easier than thinking, but it is not. The doing is the hard part, because now you are facing everything you have been avoiding for years, the stuff that pushed you into chemsex in the first place.
5. Maintenance. You have sustained the change for six months or more. The work is shifting. Your emotions are leveling out, your relationships are enriched, you are finding joy. This is where it stops being effort and becomes natural, and where the new life feels real and attainable.
The hole in the model
Look at that list again. Stage four is action. Stage five is maintenance. Maintenance starts at six months.
So what is the name of the thing between them?
There is not one. The model jumps from doing it to having done it. And the space in between is where most men I have ever coached are living, and probably where you are if you are listening.
Most men have nearly lost their recovery in this space because they are in it and do not know it. You are not in action anymore, not the way you were in week one. But you are not in maintenance either, because you are still relapsing, and six months feels way out of reach. You are in the gap, that liminal space I have called buffering, where you are not who you were, but you are not yet who you are.
So many recovery systems try to force you to jump straight to abstinence, so you feel stuck where you are. And this is exactly where the shame of starting at zero every time you use holds you back.
Nothing is wrong with you. You are in a stage. It just did not have a number. Now it does.
Stage 4.5: the becoming
I call it the becoming, and I call it 4.5. It is a bridge between action and maintenance, and because it never had a name, men in it feel lost, like they do not belong in any stage at all.
Here is what defines this stage: you are taking action, and you are still using. Both things are true at once.
The new patterns are not automatic yet, so you are building them by hand every single day, and some days the old pattern wins. You are relying on willpower, and willpower and self-control wax and wane depending on so many factors. You cannot rely on how you feel in this stage. You cannot rely on how much you want to stop. Some days you will want it and some days you will not, and the days you do not are the days the old pattern comes back.
You are also facing a plateau. A leveling out. You become disenchanted with recovery techniques, with meetings, with journaling, because you are not seeing immediate results from the work. So you succumb to the shame and self-loathing of how the world frames a relapse, and you get stuck.
I named it the becoming because you have not yet become the person who does not use meth. I do not mean that as an insult or a put down. I mean it literally. There is a version of you on the other side of this who is not resisting anything, who is your true self. That version does not use because using is not even an option for him anymore. He is past maintenance. It is not a decision he makes every day. It is not a decision he makes at all.
You are not him yet. You are still in the process of turning into him.
Iteration: what a relapse actually means here
Another name for this stage could be iteration. Iteration means you make modifications and you repeat, and you have to repeat, repeat, repeat for it to work.
That changes what a relapse means.
You are oscillating between the old pattern and the new one. Your brain is just beginning to change. New pathways are being worn in, but they are not there yet. So when a slip happens, it is literally information in the form of contrast. You get to see what you do not want when you use, and that encourages you, stimulates you, and activates you to go get what you do want. I have said it many times: sometimes you have to use to learn how not to use.
But you have to separate your emotions in this stage and grab hold of the faith that every day you are closer to the man you are becoming, regardless of the evidence to the contrary. And a relapse is not evidence to the contrary, even though it will be very hard for you not to think so. You have to know: I am becoming the man who does not use, even if I just relapsed.
In this stage you ignore anything other than evidence that you are becoming the man you want to be. Only the wins. And the mantra of this stage is this:
This is something I do until it's something I am.
What carries you from 4.5 to 5
Two things, and neither of them is willpower.
A visceral vision. I am not talking about setting goals. A vision is a blueprint for your life, a picture of who you are becoming that is specific enough to feel in your body. What is the person who does not use chemsex like? Who is he? What is his state of consciousness? How does he wake up? Who is in his life?
For me, he was sitting at a table with my kids without the next hookup running in the back of my mind. Fully present. I could hear our conversation, taste our dinner, and feel the gratitude as I looked at their faces. That picture carried me through some very bad nights, asking myself: are you your past self or your future self? Sometimes I chose my past self. But the picture was there.
Write your vision down in full detail. Use all five senses. Come into contact with that future self. In my program we call this the prophetic vision.
Your why. Why do you want to stop? And is the reason held up in your head? Because chemsex is bad. Because you might lose the job, the partner, the friends. Health, money, legal trouble. Those reasons will not carry you through long-term, sustainable recovery.
When your why drops from the head into the heart, you connect with something strong enough to carry you through the 2 a.m. pull to go use. A heart-led why is about identity. It sounds like: I am a person who lives meth-free in a state of self-love, aligned with my values. That is why I am stopping. Or: I am becoming the best and highest version of myself. Those reasons are about you, who you fundamentally are at the level of your soul, and they alter how you think, how you speak, and how you act.
The question is not why do you want to stop using. The question is why are you the person who stops using.
What this stage looks like in practice
You stay honest about the oscillation. Instead of pretending you are all good and have made it to maintenance, you fully admit when you do not feel ready to stop. That admission is part of this stage. Radical honesty and transparency are what set you free here.
You use slips as data, not proof. Nothing is a failure in this stage. Every single thing that occurs is happening for you, so that you come out on the other side as the man who does not partake in chemsex. No question.
You decide on a daily anchor. One consistent daily action that pulls you out of autopilot and reminds you of your journey. It might be reading your vision and taking time to imagine it coming true. It can be anything that creates an activation in your emotions, because you want to deeply feel what it is like to be that man. And you do it every day, regardless of how you feel and what is happening around you. You do until you are. Over and over.
You stop waiting to feel ready. Readiness is not a feeling you wait for. It is an action. It is something you build one anchor day at a time.
You let go of the timeline. The timeline for this stage is never prescribed, not by you and not by anybody else. You give yourself grace, patience, and mercy, and you cling to every win, no matter how tiny, every day.
You are the executive of your recovery
So where are you? Did you see yourself in this? Are you in stage 4.5? Are you becoming?
Keep pushing. Create your vision. Adopt a consistent daily action. Repeat, repeat, repeat, regardless of relapse, regardless of how you feel. Just take the next action. Separate yourself from your emotions here, zoom out, see the long game, see the stages, and be okay with where you are.
I believe in you. Now it is time for you to believe in you.
And if somebody tells you what your day one should be, fuck them. If somebody tells you that you need to move on from 4.5 to 5, fuck them. You are the executive of your recovery. You are in the right place at the right time. There is no better place to be than where you are right now, and no better person to be than who you are right now.
Settle into that. Only see the wins, ignore the haters, and know you are on your way.
5 Reflective Questions
Take these slowly. There are no right answers, only honest ones.
- Recovery culture gave me a day one. My body gave me a different one, a morning in a hotel when a voice said I'm done. What is your real day one? Not the date on a chip or an app, but the moment your intent became visceral.
- Where are you in the stages right now, honestly? If you are taking action and still using, can you sit with the idea that both things are true at once, without turning either one into a verdict about who you are?
- Think about your most recent slip. What did it show you, in contrast, that you do not want? What did it activate in you toward what you do want?
- Is your why living in your head or in your heart? If your reasons for stopping are about consequences (job, partner, health, legal), what would it take for a reason to drop into identity: this is who I am?
- Which are you more often at 2 a.m., your past self or your future self? What does the future self need from you during the day so that he is the one who shows up at night?
5 Journal Prompts
Give yourself real time and privacy. Write longer than is comfortable. Nobody has to read it.
- Write your own hotel morning. The moment, whenever it was, when the static cleared long enough for a true voice to get through. Put in the details you leave out when you tell that story to other people.
- Write your prophetic vision. The man who does not use chemsex: how he wakes up, what his mind is like, who is in the room, what he tastes and hears and feels on an ordinary evening. Use all five senses. Make it specific enough that your body responds while you write it.
- Write two whys. First the head version, every consequence you are trying to avoid. Then the heart version, starting with the words I am a person who. Read them both out loud and notice which one has weight.
- Write about a relapse as if it were data instead of failure. What happened before it, what it cost you, what it showed you in contrast, and what modification you will make for the next iteration. No self-attack allowed on this page.
- Write to yourself in the buffering space. The version of you who is not who he was and not yet who he is. Tell him he is in a stage, tell him what the stage is called, and tell him what you will do tomorrow regardless of how he feels.
5 Action Exercises
Pick one to start rather than all five.
- Redefine your day one. Decide, on your own authority, when your recovery actually began, and write that date somewhere you will see it. Nobody else gets to set it for you.
- Choose your daily anchor and start tomorrow. One consistent action, done at the same time every day, whether or not you are in the mood: read your vision, sit with your why, a walk, a breath practice. Put an alarm on it. The anchor works because it is repeated, not because it is impressive.
- Post the mantra. Put This is something I do until it's something I am on your lock screen, your mirror, or a sticky note on the fridge. Say it out loud after your anchor each day.
- Run a no-shame iteration debrief. After any slip, within 24 hours, answer three questions in writing: what did this show me I do not want, what did it show me I do want, and what one modification am I making. Then close the notebook and take the next action.
- Download the stages document and mark your spot. Print it, circle where you are, and date it. Come back in thirty days and mark it again. You are looking for movement, not perfection. Download link
Going Deeper
The five stages of change model comes from James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente, and it is worth reading about in its original form, even though I have added a stage the researchers never named. Most treatment centers, therapists, and counselors use it, so knowing the language will help you talk about where you are.
I have created a one-page document laying out all five stages with the becoming inserted between action and maintenance. It includes the mantra, the vision, and the why. Save it, print it, believe it.
You are not at four and you are not at five. You are in the process of turning into the man who does not use, and every day, including the days you slip, you are closer to him than you were. Pick your anchor, write your vision, drop your why into your heart, and do the thing until you are the thing. You decide your day one. For coaching and more resources, visit www.recoveryalchemy.org.
If you are struggling with thoughts of ending your life, please reach out right now. In the US, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or call the LGBT National Hotline at 888-843-4564. You are worth the phone call.
Love you!! Dallas 💚
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