The Space Between

The last light rail pickup was at 2am so I had to be checked out by the Taco Restaurant manager and collect my tips by 1:45 so I could run the four blocks to the stop. I learned my lesson after having slept on the bench outside after missing it once.

The train would take me all the way across town to my new home: the Golden Leaf Motel. The door was warped, leaving a crack wide enough for passersby to see me; there was a red stain on the ceiling that I chose to believe was ketchup, and the bedding smelled like my chain-smoking great-grandma. But it was a step up from being on the streets.

These were some of the first days of my recovery journey. 

I remember walking into my room to deafening silence. Only a few weeks before, hotel rooms were buzzing with pornography in the background, idle chatter, fucking. My life had taken a complete 180. 

I clicked on the TV. The local news was on. I hadn't watched the news or any other TV in months. I stared at my phone. No Grindr. No fuck buddies. Nothing but a foreign number and an Android phone. 

I sat on the bed feeling dissociated. It felt surreal to have been plucked out of my chemsex way of life and placed into this unfamiliar and boring world. 

That space between my old and new identity was scary and discombobulating. And now I know that it was necessary. 

You cleaned out the drawer. Deleted the apps, or muted the guys, or changed your number, maybe did all three.

And now you're standing in the middle of your own life staring at the space where all of that used to live, feeling something closer to grief than relief.

You've walked into what researchers and contemplatives both call liminal space, and it is supposed to feel exactly like this.

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Threshold, Not Failure

The word comes from the Latin limen, threshold.

The doorway moment, the place between the room you left and the one you haven't entered yet. This space between the old world behind you and the new one not entered is actually the most teachable space we ever inhabit.

I'd add something from within this work.

Liminal space is also the most honest space we ever inhabit, because there's nothing left to perform.

Chemsex, for a lot of us, was never just about the drugs or the sex. It was a structure. A predictable sequence that told you who to be, what role to play, what the next three hours held.

Take that away, and you're not just managing cravings anymore. You're standing in the wreckage of an entire operating system, waiting on a new one to compile.

Why This Isn't a Malfunction

There's a reason this disorientation hits so hard for people coming out of complex trauma and addiction specifically. 

When your nervous system spent years organizing itself around chaos, around having to perform a version of yourself just to be safe or wanted, predictability becomes load-bearing. Pull it out and the whole structure groans.

This tracks with what the research is starting to show about identity in chemsex recovery.

A recent longitudinal study of MSM with chemsex experience found that men with lower identity continuity and higher internalized shame were more likely to cycle into riskier patterns over time, while men with a more resilient, stable sense of self tended to shift toward grounded, integrated outcomes instead.

Identity isn't a side effect of recovery. It's the mechanism.

There's encouraging news buried in the same body of research too.

A pilot study using mindfulness-based intervention with young MSM in chemsex recovery found that as men built present-moment awareness, they didn't just use less. Underneath that, something quieter showed up: a stronger sense of self-compassion and identity, the very thing liminal space tends to strip bare before it rebuilds anything.

So when you're standing in that threshold feeling like the floor gave out, what's happening is more precise than just "struggling."

Your old identity, the one chemsex helped you perform, is dissolving. The new one isn't formed yet. That gap is where the actual change happens. Not before it. Not after it. In it.

Sometimes I call this state "glitching," which helps some men connect more with the feeling. 

What the Threshold Asks of You

So, I'm sure you might ask, "How long will this last?" Oh, the impatience and instant gratification of a chemsex user!

This isn't a weekend.

The shift from an old, familiar-but-harmful normal to a new, healthy normal usually takes three to six months of feeling, to some degree, like you don't know who you are.

Disorientation. Ambiguity. A loneliness that has nothing to do with being physically alone. Some days, a flicker of possibility you don't trust yet either.

All of that belongs. None of it means go back.

Going back is the easy move, because the old normal, whatever it cost you, was at least known.

Your nervous system will reach for known over healthy almost every time. Because it's protecting you with the only data it has. This is the moment to meet that reflex with something other than judgment.

You feel like you are constantly oscillating. And you will for a while. The important part here is not to meet any hint of your old patterns with judgment. Understand that this is a process. 

An Invitation, Not an Instruction

If you're in this space right now, somewhere in the gap between who you were and who you're becoming, I'm not going to tell you to hurry up or get comfortable.

I'm going to tell you to create a vision of who you're becoming and allow that to pull you through.

You may have heard me talk about this on the podcast before, but let me finish my opening story.

I clicked the TV off, noticing shaking and observing swirling thoughts about how I could possibly find some Tina or get access to Grindr. Instead, I laid back on the bed and closed my eyes.

Suddenly I found myself in my own bedroom in my own home. I could see pictures of me and the kids on the nightstand and hear my son in the next room yelling at his online games and the sound my daughter on the phone giggling with friends. 

I was overcome with gratitude as I imagined graduating from drug treatment court and driving the three of us home with a valid drivers license and stopping my Dairy Queen for our favorite blizzards.

I took myself out of that dingy motel and into the man I was becoming and the life I claimed. Then, I drifted off to sleep peacefully and full of hope. 

The liminal space is where you have a magic wand at your disposal. You are in the void where you can create whatever life you want. You have the freedom and the time to dream. To use the power of your imagination to visualize and manifest life after meth. 

Don't fill this space with fear, regret, shame, guilt, anger, or euphoric recall. This may be the only opportunity in your life to ever begin with a clean slate and choose the way your life unfolds instead of being at the mercy of the world around you. 

Have fun.

Love, Dallas 

The Space Between: Journal Prompts

Pull these out this week, not all at once. One a day, maybe, or just whichever one stops you in your tracks.

• What is the "old normal" I'm grieving right now, even though I know it was hurting me?
• Where in my body do I feel the disorientation? Chest, stomach, jaw, hands?
• What did the structure of chemsex give me that I haven't replaced yet — predictability, belonging, a role to play, permission?
• If I let this unresolved feeling stay unresolved for one more week, what's the worst thing I imagine happening?
• Who or what have I been reaching for to make the discomfort stop faster than it's ready to?

The Space Between: An Exercise

Naming the Threshold

This one takes about ten minutes and works best done by hand, not typed.

Draw a line down the middle of a page. On the left side, write "Old Normal" and list everything that structure gave you, the real things, not just the harmful ones. Identity, schedule, a way to feel wanted, an escape hatch from boredom or grief. Be honest. It gave you something or you wouldn't have organized your life around it.

On the right side, write "Not Yet Formed." Underneath it, just leave space. Don't fill it in. Don't try to write what the new normal looks like yet, because you likely don't know, and pretending to know is its own kind of avoidance.

Now look at the gap between the two columns. That gap is where you're living right now. Read it back to yourself once, out loud if you can. Then fold the page and put it somewhere you'll see it in a month, when the right side might have a few words on it.