EP 3:43 Three Types of Chemsex User Profiles with Dr. Lockwood

Content Warning

This episode and study guide discuss sexualized drug use (chemsex), methamphetamine and other substances, sexual behavior, shame, trauma, minority stress, HIV, and passing references to suicidal ideation. The material may be activating, especially if you are early in your own change process. Please move through it at your own pace, pause when you need to, and reach out for support if anything here feels like too much. Nothing in this guide is medical advice.

A Personal Note from Dallas

This conversation with Dr. Lockwood gave me language for something I lived through without ever being able to name it.

For a long stretch of my own story, I moved through more than one of the profiles we talk about in this episode. In the beginning, I was reaching for connection — looking for belonging in a community where I finally felt I might fit. Over time, as things in my life came apart, what I was reaching for changed. It stopped being about connecting and became about not being present at all.

I share that not to make this about me, but because I think a lot of you will recognize the shift. You may have started somewhere that felt almost hopeful and ended up somewhere much darker, and wondered how you got there. This episode offers a framework for understanding that drift — not to box you in, but to help you see your own core motivations more clearly. And when we can see the "why" underneath the behavior, we finally have something we can work with.

Be gentle with yourself as you read. Curiosity, not judgment.

Love you, Dallas 💚

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Guest Bio

Dr. Lockwood is a returning guest this season, following an earlier conversation on meth-induced psychosis and paranoia that resonated deeply with listeners — many of whom reached out to say they finally felt seen and understood. He brings extensive experience in the recovery world and specific expertise in working with people navigating chemsex. In this episode, he and Dallas explore a working model — developed informally alongside his colleagues Mel and David — for understanding the different core motivations that drive sexualized drug use. Throughout, Dr. Lockwood is careful to frame these ideas as an evolving conversation rather than settled clinical categories, and to hold each individual as more than any single profile.

Core Themes

1. Motivation Over Behavior — Why the "Why" Matters

The heart of this episode is a simple but powerful reframe: the behavior matters less than the motivation underneath it. Dr. Lockwood describes how two people can engage in nearly identical chemsex behavior for completely different internal reasons — and that those reasons, not the surface actions, are where real change begins.

This is why the model exists in the first place. As Dr. Lockwood puts it, people often feel more seen when their core motivation is named than when their behavior is simply catalogued. If loneliness is driving the behavior, then it's the loneliness that most needs attention. The behavior is real and it has consequences, but it's also a signal pointing toward something underneath.

For chemsex recovery, this shifts the whole task. Instead of asking only "How do I stop?" we begin asking "What am I actually reaching for when I use?" That question is harder, but it's also the one that leads somewhere. When someone feels genuinely understood at the level of their motivation, trust becomes possible — with a coach, a therapist, or most importantly with themselves.

2. The Numbers — Using to Dull What's Intolerable

The first profile Dr. Lockwood describes is the "numbers": people whose drug use and sexual behavior are organized around numbing psychological pain. The key distinction he draws is that numbing is not the same as escaping. When you numb pain, you're still in contact with it — you've just made it duller, more bearable, easier to sit beside.

He connects this to shame, which he returns to again and again as the engine underneath so much chemsex behavior. The pain being numbed might be shame about sexuality, a breakup, career disappointment, family rejection — anything that generates that low, persistent ache. Substances that soften a hard experience while still leaving a person present and functional tend to sit in this category.

Dallas offers a recognizable example: a client whose pattern began not with sexual desire but with emotional dysregulation. A minor setback would trigger an outsized emotional response, cravings would build, and use would follow. Sex happened during use, but it wasn't the reason for it. The reason was the search for relief from feelings that didn't feel safe to hold. For the number, the work often centers on learning — slowly — to tolerate pain rather than immediately dull it.

3. The Connectors — Chasing Shared Euphoria

The second profile is the "connectors": people drawn to chemsex primarily in pursuit of euphoria and belonging. Dr. Lockwood notes that their behavior tends to look very different in public versus private — connectors are typically the ones who engage in these settings collectively rather than alone, drawn to the shared experience of a party, a sauna, a rave.

Underneath the drive to connect, he often finds a familiar theme: a core human need to feel important and seen that isn't being met in ordinary life. Someone might feel invisible or undervalued at work or in their relationships, and chemsex becomes the one arena where they feel maximally wanted — the most sought-after person in the room. That need itself is completely normal. The difficulty is that it's being met sideways, in a context that ultimately deepens the shame.

For the connector, Dr. Lockwood suggests the direction of change involves building genuine connection and importance elsewhere — but through what he calls "little experiments" rather than dramatic overhauls. He shares the example of a talented but self-effacing client who never claimed credit for his own work, and how simply learning to assert authorship of his ideas — proactively rather than reactively — helped him feel more important in his real life. Boundaries, too, live in this territory: choosing who you spend time with and learning to say the honest yes or no.

4. The Dissociators — Trying Not to Be Here at All

The third and often most complex profile is the "dissociators." Where numbing dulls an experience, dissociating aims to escape it entirely. Dr. Lockwood describes this as the pull toward not feeling anything — sometimes toward not being present in one's own life at all. He's careful to distinguish this from active suicidality; it's more the wish to become a ghost, to be relieved of the weight of being a person carrying trauma and shame.

Dallas connects with this description through his own history, recognizing that same ghost-like, out-of-body quality from an earlier period of his life. Dr. Lockwood explains that dissociators are often people for whom something has stopped holding value — the mind, the body, the life itself — frequently in the wake of significant trauma. He and Dallas discuss how a person might shift into this profile after a drastic loss or a life-altering diagnosis, when the story becomes "I'm damaged, I have no meaning."

Because the roots here tend to run through deep traumatic injury, Dr. Lockwood is direct about the limits of coaching alone. His guidance is to first ensure safety, then to get curious about what specifically has become unbearable — and, crucially, to bring in trauma-informed therapy. This is a profile where the honest, caring move is often to name what you see and help someone take that understanding to a professional equipped to go deeper.

5. Overlap, Drift, and the Bigger Picture

One of the most freeing parts of the conversation is the acknowledgment that these profiles aren't rigid boxes. People overlap, and people move between profiles over time. Someone might begin an evening as a connector and slide into numbing or dissociating as the night goes on and old material surfaces. Someone might live as a connector for a season of life and shift toward dissociation after a trauma too heavy to stay present for.

Dr. Lockwood and Dallas also widen the lens to the community level. They discuss how minority stress and marginalization add pressure that can push GBTQ men further toward escape or connection than others might feel driven to go — while also naming the shared responsibility to build alternative spaces to gather, relate, and have fun without shame. It's both/and: real external forces, and real choices about where we invest our time and energy.

Throughout, both are insistent on the same guardrail — these ideas are meant to help you feel seen, not to typecast you. If one or more of the profiles resonates, treat that as a clue worth being curious about, a starting point rather than a verdict. And as Dr. Lockwood reminds us, knowing your "why" doesn't instantly solve anything — but it can offer direction, and a genuine light at the end of the tunnel.

Closing Reflection

The gift of this episode isn't a label. It's a question: what am I actually reaching for?

Whether you see yourself as a number softening pain you don't yet know how to hold, a connector meeting a real need for importance in a place that keeps costing you, a dissociator trying to be relieved of a weight that's too heavy, or some shifting mix of all three — the invitation is the same. Get curious about the motivation underneath. Then, in small and manageable ways, begin giving yourself what the chemsex experience was standing in for.

You don't have to do that alone, and you don't have to do it perfectly. Start with five minutes. Start with one small experiment. Empowerment builds from there.

If you're ready for support on that path, you'll find coaching resources, community, and more at www.recoveryalchemy.org. Come find us.

Five Reflective Questions

1. When you look honestly at your own patterns, which of the three profiles — number, connector, or dissociator — do you most recognize yourself in, and what specifically in your experience points you there?

2. Dr. Lockwood distinguishes numbing (dulling pain while staying present) from dissociating (escaping it entirely). Which of these feels closer to what you've reached for, and what does that tell you?

3. Where in your ordinary life do you most need to feel important or seen — and where does that need currently go unmet?

4. Have you ever noticed yourself shifting from one profile to another, either over the course of a single night or across a season of your life? What was happening underneath that shift?

5. Shame comes up again and again as the engine beneath the behavior. Where does your shame tend to whisper the quietest and most persistently?

Five Journal Prompts

1. Finish this sentence as many times as you can: "When I use, what I'm really reaching for is ______." Write without editing yourself.

2. Describe a recent time you felt the pull toward using. What emotion came first, before the craving? Trace the sequence honestly.

3. Write about a moment in your life when you felt most invisible or unimportant. What did you do with that feeling?

4. If you've experienced the "ghost" feeling Dallas and Dr. Lockwood describe — the wish to not be present in your own life — write to that part of yourself with compassion. What has it been carrying?

5. Imagine giving yourself, directly, the thing chemsex has been standing in for — connection, relief, importance, escape. What would that actually look like in your real life?

Five Action Exercises

1. The five-minute practice. The next time you feel the pull toward using or toward a numbing behavior (the phone, the screen), set a timer and simply sit with the feeling for five minutes before doing anything. You're not trying to fix it — just proving to yourself that you can stay present with it.

2. Name your profile — lightly. Write down which profile(s) you relate to, and one core need underneath it (e.g., "connector — I need to feel important"). Keep it somewhere you'll see it this week. Notice, don't judge.

3. Run one little experiment. Choose a single, low-stakes way to meet your core need in ordinary life this week — assert credit for something you did, send one connecting text, host a low-key gathering, or set one honest boundary. Small is the point.

4. Map your pain sources. For the numbers especially: list the specific sources of psychological pain or shame you might be reaching to numb. Naming them is the first step toward tolerating them.

5. If it's above your pay grade, reach out. If you recognize yourself in the dissociator profile or notice deep traumatic material surfacing, take one concrete step toward trauma-informed support this week — research a therapist, send an inquiry, or bring it to a trusted professional. You can start at www.recoveryalchemy.org.