Reading a book with one eye on the Grindr grid.
Stopping in the middle of cleaning my house to take the perfectly angled Snapchat.
Broadcasting my hookups via my personal Zoom room.
Before my active meth use, I couldn't stand to be alone for more than an hour. If I couldn't have physical company, I would narrate my every move via social media.
Stillness and quiet were uncomfortable for me; my nervous system would become activated. Anxiety. I would desperately seek out distractions and noise.
Of course, at that stage of my life, I had zero self-awareness. No idea that this was not a balanced or healthy state of being.
I didn't realize that I was running from myself. Avoiding the various parts of me who had been silenced throughout my life in the closet.
They were all screaming for help inside my psyche, and I was doing all I could to ignore them.
Enter meth.
The world of chemsex offered constant distraction and a conveyor belt of company. There was always somewhere to go or someone to entertain.
And all of the voices inside me were magically muzzled.
Once I walked away from meth, all of my rejected and unattended parts were waiting for me. And they needed my attention more than ever.
Without the meth muzzle, I was back to finding ways to distract from them. Being alone, labeled as "lonely," forced me to face them.
This is why so many return to chemsex. We think life is going to be so much better in sobriety, but find that we often return to where we were pre-use.
So, I had to learn how to be lonely. I had to learn how to communicate with all of my rejected selves in order to get us all on the same page. This was the hardest part of my recovery journey.
If you get one thing from this newsletter, it's this: having people around you does not solve your loneliness.
It's much deeper than that. And if you can resolve your loneliness, you can resolve your chemsex misuse.
