Alright, we are moving through this series on the 5 Stages of Grief and how they relate to chemsex recovery. Make sure to go back and read the introduction to this series and then the deep dive into each stage. Doesn't really matter what order you go in, as these stages aren't necessarily consecutive. However, the goal is to get through to the last stage, acceptance.
If you have been with me through this series, you have walked through denial, processed anger, and finally closed the door on the bargains. You have done the hardest thinking work of this grief. You have stripped away the filters, the negotiations, and the loopholes.
And now you are standing in the middle of a different kind of room.
Welcome to depression.
There is no quick fix. There are no five steps to get out of it in a week. There is only the work of letting yourself feel the full weight of what you have lost.
WHAT DEPRESSION ACTUALLY IS
Let me say something carefully here, because the word depression carries clinical weight that I want to handle responsibly.
The depression in grief is not the same as clinical depression, though they can overlap and one can trigger the other. If you are experiencing severe clinical symptoms, suicidal ideation, an inability to function at a basic level, please reach out to a mental health professional.
This stage of grief is not a substitute for clinical care, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
What I am talking about here is the specific weight that settles in when the bargaining stops working.
The weight of finality.
The understanding, deep in the body, that the version of you who lived in the scene is not coming back. That the community you had is gone. That the future you imagined when you were using is not the future you are going to live.
This depression is not pathology. It is the soul registering the magnitude of loss.
It is what real grief feels like when the defenses are down.
If you have ever lost someone you loved deeply, you know this weight. The weight that comes after the funeral, after the casseroles stop arriving, after the calls slow down, when you are alone with the absence and there is nowhere to put it.
That is the weight we are talking about.
You are mourning a death.
The death of the rush.
The death of the man you were in the scene.
The death of the risky, unpredictable life you loved.
The death of the social circle you found most welcoming.
Real deaths. Real grief.
HOW DEPRESSION SHOWED UP FOR ME
I told you in the opening newsletter that I landed in depression while sitting in jail.
That is the truth, but it is not the whole truth. Depression visited me many times before jail and many times after.
In the first 18 months of my recovery journey, I was enrolled in drug treatment court and attending daily IOP.
I was not high.
I could not be high.
I was being drug tested multiple times a week, and the consequences of failing a test were severe enough that even my addicted mind backed off.
For the first time in years, I had no way to numb the enormity of what I had done to my life.
I sat, for the first time, with the magnitude of falling from a corporate executive to an unhoused person.
I sat with the relationships I had damaged.
I sat with the version of myself I had been, the things I had said, the people I had hurt, the years I had lost.
I sat with the recognition that the man my family had been praying for was actually me, and I had been so far away from him for so long that I was not sure I knew how to get back.
I sat with the fear of what was on the other side.
Could I actually do this? Could I actually become someone different? Did I have it in me? Or was I going to spend the rest of my life as a recovering version of someone who could never quite recover all the way?
The weight was crushing.
If I had not been drug tested, I would have used.
I know this with absolute certainty.
The temptation to make the weight stop was the most intense temptation I have ever felt in my life. And meth was the only tool I knew that could make it stop.
I owe my recovery, in part, to a system that forced me to feel my feelings.
Forced is the right word.
I did not choose to sit with the depression. I had no other option. And in not having another option, I learned something that has shaped everything I have done since.
I learned that the depression of grief does not actually destroy you. It feels like it will. But if you stay in it, if you do not numb it, it eventually moves. It transforms into something else.
But you have to stay in it for that to happen. And staying in it is the hardest thing this work will ever ask of you.
WHAT YOU ARE ACTUALLY GRIEVING
Let me name the losses, because the depression of this stage often feels formless and overwhelming, and naming the specific losses gives it shape.
You are grieving the man you were when you were using. Even though that man was destroying you, he was also alive in a particular way. He was unguarded. He was uninhibited. He felt chosen. He had access to a particular kind of euphoria and a particular kind of belonging. That man is gone, and you cannot have him back.
You are grieving the community. The men who knew you in that life. The friendships that were built around shared use. The dealer who, however unhealthy, was a constant. The party crowd. The ritual. The apps. The witnesses. They are not all going to come with you into your new life. Most of them cannot. And the ones who could probably will not.
You are grieving the sex. Not just any sex. That specific kind of sex. The hours of it. The intensity. The way your body felt. The way you felt seen and wanted in that particular form. The fantasies that came with it. The version of yourself you got to be in those rooms. That is not coming back in the same form, even if you eventually develop a beautiful sober sex life, which you will. The version you had in the scene is gone.
You are grieving the future you imagined. The fantasies that the drug was selling you. The body you were going to have. The freedom you were going to embody. The creative breakthroughs. The transcendent experiences. The dreams that lived inside the high. Those die too. And grieving dreams that were never real is its own particular kind of painful, because you cannot point to anything you actually lost. You can only point to what you imagined you were going to have, which feels embarrassing to grieve, but the grief is no less real.
You are grieving the version of pleasure itself. Food does not taste the same. Music does not move you the same way. Touch does not electrify. Your nervous system has been retrained, and the recalibration takes a long time. You are not just chemsex-free. You are numb. And the numbness is its own loss.
You are grieving the time. The years you cannot get back. The opportunities you missed. The relationships that have moved on without you. The version of your career, your finances, your health, that would have existed if you had taken a different path.
You are grieving the simplicity of having one answer for everything. When you were using, every emotion had the same solution. Lonely, use. Bored, use. Anxious, use. Happy, use. Now you have to figure out what each emotion is actually asking for, and that is a much harder life. It is a richer life, but it is harder.
All of this is real. All of this is worth grieving. And the depression of this stage is the body and soul registering the cumulative weight of it.
THE TEMPTATION TO USE
I am going to be direct with you. This is the stage where the temptation to use is the strongest.
By this point, you have processed enough to know that the fun was a setup. The temptation in this stage is different. The temptation is to make the depression stop by numbing it with the best coping mechanism you have found, chemsex.
You will tell yourself that you cannot survive this weight.
You will tell yourself that the work is not worth it if this is what it costs.
You will tell yourself that you are not built for this.
You will tell yourself that one more session would just be a reset, a chance to catch your breath, a temporary mercy.
Hear me clearly.
Using to escape the depression of this stage is the deepest betrayal of your own work.
The depression you are feeling is the price of admission to acceptance.
If you numb it, you do not skip it. You delay it. And the next time it comes, it comes worse, because now you have added new grief to grieve on top of the old grief.
The way through depression is through it. Not around it. Not under it. Through it.
THE PRACTICE OF STAYING
So how do you stay? How do you actually live through this stage without using and without breaking?
You let yourself feel it.
Not all at once. In waves.
You let the weight settle in for an hour, and then you take a walk.
You let the tears come for twenty minutes, and then you make yourself a meal.
You let the grief have your evening, and then you go to bed at a reasonable hour.
You do not try to power through. You do not try to fix. You do not try to talk yourself out of it. You let the feeling be there, and you keep yourself alive around it.
You stop trying to make yourself feel better. This is the line I gave you in the opening newsletter. Do not try to feel better. Try to feel it better.
Feel the depression more skillfully.
Feel it with more presence.
Feel it with more breath.
Feel it with more witness.
The way out is not relief. The way out is intimacy with the feeling itself.
You do small things that keep you connected to the body. Walk. Eat. Shower. Sleep.
The body is the container for the grief, and the body needs basic care while it is doing the work.
Do not let the depression talk you out of brushing your teeth.
Do not let it talk you out of changing your sheets.
The small acts of care are not trivial. They are how you tell yourself you are worth surviving this.
You stay away from the triggers. The apps. The texts. The places. The depression is going to lower your defenses, and your bargaining mind is going to come back online with new offers.
Move your phone to a different room.
Block what needs to be blocked.
Make the relapse harder to execute when you are at your most vulnerable.
You write. You journal. You let the grief move through your hand onto the page. You do not have to make it beautiful. You do not have to make it coherent. You just have to give it somewhere to go that is not your veins and not your reflection in the mirror.
You wait. And waiting is the practice.
The depression will not last forever.
It will not even last as long as your fear is telling you it will last. But it will last longer than you want it to. The work is to stay in it without making it stop prematurely.
Because if you make it stop prematurely, it returns. And if you let it move through you fully, it transforms.
CLOSING
Depression in grief is the stage where you find out what you are made of.
The men who make it through this stage are the men who become coaches, healers, leaders, writers, lovers, fathers, witnesses for other men coming behind them.
Because they did not flinch when the weight came down. They stayed. They felt it. And they came out the other side with something rare.
That something rare is what makes the rest of your life possible.
In the next and final newsletter, we are going into acceptance. Acceptance is not happiness. Acceptance is not closure. Acceptance is the moment you stop fighting the new shape of your life and start inhabiting it.
For now, stay in the weight. Feel it better. Let it move. Let someone see you in it.
You are doing the most sacred work a man can do. You are letting an old self die so that a true self can be born.
That is not a small thing.
Love you, Dallas
JOURNAL PROMPTS
What am I actually losing in this transition, named one by one? Not in general terms. Specifically. The relationships, the experiences, the rituals, the version of pleasure, the future I imagined, the parts of myself that are dying. List them. Sit with each one before moving to the next.
What did the scene give me that I have not yet figured out how to give myself in this new life? Connection, escape, aliveness, belonging, a way to feel chosen, a way to feel free. Name the actual function being served, not the surface of what I was doing. What hunger was I feeding, and how am I feeding it now?
Where in my body do I feel this grief? Not metaphorically. Physically. My chest, my throat, my stomach, my shoulders, behind my eyes. What does the weight actually feel like when I stop trying to make it stop? What sensations are present when I let the feeling have me fully?
What am I most afraid will happen if I let this depression have me completely, without numbing it, without rushing through it, without trying to fix it? What do I think will break? What do I think will be revealed about me? What do I think I will not be able to come back from?
Who in my life right now does not know I am grieving this deeply? Who am I performing recovery for instead of letting them witness me in the weight of it? If I could let one person see me fully in this stage, who would it be, and what would I want them to understand?
EXERCISE: THE WITNESSED HOUR
This is the exercise I give clients who are stuck in depression and reaching for distraction, sleep, food, screens, or in the worst cases, the substance, to make the weight stop.
The point is not to make the weight stop. The point is to be in it with a witness so it can move.
Pick one person you trust. A coach, a therapist, a sponsor, a brother in recovery, a chosen-family member who has seen you in hard moments before. It needs to be someone who can hold space without trying to fix you. Not someone who will offer advice. Not someone who will brighten the room. Someone who can be present and quiet.
Schedule one hour with them. In person if possible. On the phone if not. Tell them in advance what you are asking for. Say it in these words: I am in the depression stage of grieving the man I was in the scene. I do not need you to fix me. I do not need you to cheer me up. I need you to witness me for one hour while I feel what I am feeling.
When the hour begins, do not perform. Do not narrate. Do not summarize where you are in your recovery. Do not give them an update. Just speak from inside the feeling.
You might say what you are losing. You might say what you are afraid of. You might say what you miss. You might say what you cannot stop seeing when you close your eyes. You might cry. You might be silent for long stretches. You might say one sentence and then nothing else for ten minutes. All of that is the work.
The witness has one job. Stay present. They can nod. They can say I hear you. They can put a hand on your back if you are in person. They cannot fix. They cannot redirect. They cannot tell you it will get better. Their presence is what allows the weight to move through you instead of getting stuck.
When the hour ends, thank them. Do not analyze what you said. Do not apologize for what came out. Do not make a plan based on it. Just go home (or hang up), drink water, eat something simple, and let the day be quiet.
Notice over the next twenty-four hours what shifts in your body. Most men report that something they had been carrying for weeks or months releases, not completely, but enough that they can breathe again. The depression did not go away. The depression moved. It moved because it was finally witnessed.
If you do not have someone in your life who can hold this hour for you, that is information. It means part of the work of this stage is building the relationships that can. Reach out to a coach, find a men's recovery group, look into a therapist who works with chemsex specifically. The depression of this stage is not meant to be carried alone, and isolation is the most common reason men relapse in stage four.
You do not have to do this work in private. You should not do this work in private. Let someone in.
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