Many people ask me how the hell I can produce the amount of content I put out on social media. Between 3 videos a day, 2 weekly podcast episodes, and all of the material generated for my program, one would think all I do is sit around and write.
Don't get me wrong, I love to write. In fact, my dream is to write full-time. We are getting there.
No, my content comes from my daily experiential learning as I interact with current and potential clients.
The daily emails and DM's from men around the world, as well as the hours I spend in front of my laptop one-on-one with real men dealing with real issues.
I'm constantly jotting down ideas for content. Not to mention pulling from my lived experience. There is literally an unending flow of material.
Today's newsletter is based on one of those a-ha moments I had working with a client who just could not stop returning to use. He was so focused on horniness and sex as the culprit of his chemsex misuse that he was missing the core cause.
Getting to that core driver to use is the most impactful part of recovery. Once you get to the root, you can sustain a meth-free life instead of white-knuckling. When we get stuck in our heads that the driver is sex, we are missing out on integrative healing.
The a-ha moment came when we dug deeper into his emotional dysregulation. We found that several people in his life were making his life miserable. And neither one of them was aware of this.
He was avoiding the conversations.
By choosing not to self-advocate, the pressure inside him grew and grew until he was about to explode, and then he would get on Sniffies and be using as a way to release the valve
It wasn't about sex. It was about avoiding difficult conversations that lead to difficult emotions. Once we discovered this, we solved his chemsex misuse.
So over time, I've noticed this recurring: men avoiding what they perceive as difficult conversations. Today I'm going to use another client example to illustrate.
The Conversation You're Not Having Is a Trigger
Most men, when I ask them about their chemsex triggers, will immediately rattle off: Grindr, Sniffies, horniness, 2 am, men at the gym, unexpected text from user buddy, to name a few.
I have found that this list and most anything sexually related is not the core trigger. Basically, they are treating the effect and not the cause.
What I have found is that an emotional trigger happens first, which then activates the system, making things like a Grindr conversation move into a meth conversation.
Without the emotional activation, the man could more easily navigate Grindr without falling prey to the smoke emojis on profiles.
Your emotional state is the most important metric to monitor in chemsex recovery. And what causes emotional dysregulation is often totally unrelated to sex or horniness.
For today's discussion, we are looking at conversations left unspoken. Which, in my experience, has never been listed as a chemsex trigger.
But it belongs near the top. It's just nearly invisible, because it doesn't feel like a risk. It feels like being reasonable. Like keeping the peace. In the moment, it feels like the grown-up choice.
Today I'm using Marco (not his real name) as a case study.
What actually took him to the edge
It wasn't the app. It wasn't the party. It was a four-minute phone call.
A supervisor called Marco to let him know that he was no longer included in the department-wide business trip to open a new location. The reasoning was based on the supervisor's surmise of a performance issue with him, based on others' feedback. He said, "Oh, okay."
That was the whole event.
He drove home in a bad mood. Didn't want to do anything. Already emotionally activated, received a "sup" text from a number he forgot to block. Those texts always come at just the right (or arguably wrong) time.
Marco had often received these texts during his recovery, but they never affected him. He would simply block and delete.
But, this time, his brain, helpfully, obligingly, the way it always has, offered him the solution it's offered a thousand times before.
He stared at the text and slipped into a state of euphoric recall. His imagination went wild, and soon he was horny. His body was beginning to be taken over.
Marco didn't use. But he came closer than he had in months. And the pressure that got him there had nothing to do with a dealer or a hookup. It came from the deafening silence of "oh okay" when everything in him disagreed.
Chemsex as pressure release
Here's the mechanism.
For Marco, the drug was about pressure release. Euphoria was almost beside the point. And unspoken conversations are among the most reliable pressure generators a person can carry, because they accumulate silently and remain stuck as unexpressed emotion.
He said it better than I could: the unsaid thing sits there and boils. And then, historically, to lance the boil, he would use.
That's the arc worth understanding. An unspoken conversation builds. It doesn't stay neutral. And for a lot of the men I work with, chemsex in these moments has very little to do with pleasure or connection.
It's about releasing the pressure that has nowhere else to go. The conversation you avoid at 2 pm becomes the pressure you're trying to discharge at 9 pm.
What sits underneath
Marco is excellent at advocating for other people. He's built a career on it. When it comes to advocating for himself, he goes quiet. Having the conversation is about self-advocacy.
Then we went one layer deeper, and found the core belief that was actually running in the background. The belief that had shaped his identity. Some call this a limiting belief.
So, I asked him: what would have to be true about you that would make you cower and not advocate for yourself?
Hmmm, he was thinking.
So I followed up with, when is the first time you remember knowing what needed to be said but not saying it.
After a few minutes, a memory came to mind. He was sitting at the dinner table listening to a parent tell him he didn't deserve to go on a school trip because of something he had done. The reality was that he didn't do what the parent charged him with. When he tried to speak up, the parent told him that his opinion didn't matter.
Boom.
There it is. "My opinion doesn't matter."
He didn't decide that during the call with his supervisor. He learned it decades ago, at a dinner table, in a house where his opinion wasn't welcome.
His nervous system wasn't running a cost-benefit analysis on this year's job. It was running a much older program. The body doesn't update automatically. It doesn't read the calendar. The body organizes by emotion. There is no linear timeline.
During the work call, Marco became 8 years old again.
The anger he carried around all evening had nothing to do with his supervisor. It was aimed at himself. Not for what she did. For what he didn't do.
So how does the belief that "my opinion doesn't matter" contribute to chemsex misuse?
What happens is that these beliefs are not recognized by us, aka shadow work. So, we interact with others in life responding through that perspective.
In Marco's case, believing that his opinion doesn't matter is his own flavor of 'I am not enough,' which is the thread that connects all of us who use chemsex as maladaptive coping.
The tension and pressure of feeling like not enough is relieved by getting high.
The brain knows how to relieve it, so it produces euphoric recall. That will lead to the physical relapse. Once you are using the substance, you are having sex. But in this case, sex is not the trigger.
Coaching questions: what lies beneath the avoidance
If you recognize yourself in this, here are some powerful questions to ask and journal with.
What am I afraid of happening if I speak my truth? Name it concretely. A job? A friendship? Marco's answer was "rejection." Which is true, but not deep enough.
Where in my body does the unsaid thing live? Chest, jaw, gut, shoulders. Find where it lives in your body and breathe into it. Sometimes the sensation simply needs your attention.
Whose voice is telling me to stay quiet? It's an older voice than the one you're using today. When did you first learn that speaking up was dangerous? Whose table were you sitting at? Who said this to you?
When was the first time I remember feeling this way? Sit quietly and allow a memory or memories to come to mind. Marco was transported back to the dinner table.
What would I wish someone had said to me in that moment? Talk to that past version of yourself and tell them what you wish you could have heard.
Who is my anger actually aimed at tonight? When the resentment shows up after an avoided conversation, trace it back. It looks like it's about the other person. Check whether it's really about what you didn't do.
Does this magically cause you to stop using meth?
Obviously not.
But it DOES offer you an impactful piece of the puzzle and a sharp direction for your recovery. You no longer live under "I must stop using meth" and enter into "how can I live in peace."
How can I live in peace is the question that excavates the deeper reasons why you can't stop using.
This is deep recovery.
This week
Make a list. Not of your triggers. Of every conversation you're currently not having.
The one with your boss. Your brother. Your partner, about the thing from March. The friend who keeps doing the thing.
Look at the list and ask what it costs you to carry it. Where it sits in your body. What it makes you reach for at nine o'clock at night.
Then pick one. Write out what you want to say. Read it out loud to nobody.
You are not at that dinner table anymore. But the part of you that learned to stay quiet there doesn't know that yet.
It is time for wholeness. For healing. For meth-free living.
Hope this helps. Love, Dallas
Journal Prompts
- What is the conversation I've been avoiding the longest? Write out what I'd say if I knew for certain the other person would hear me and nothing bad would happen.
- The last time I stayed silent when I had something to say, where did the leftover feeling go? What did I reach for, or want to reach for, later that day or night?
- Finish this sentence honestly: "When I don't say the true thing, what I'm really telling myself about my worth is..." Then ask where I first learned that.
- Whose voice do I hear when I decide to stay quiet? Whose table am I still sitting at? Describe the room, the age I was, and what happened when I spoke up back then.
- What's one thing I'm currently carrying that was handed to me and isn't actually mine to solve? What would it feel like to hand it back?
Actionable Exercise: The Unspoken List
This week, make a list of every conversation you're currently not having. The one with your boss. Your brother. Your partner, about the thing from March. The friend who keeps doing the thing. Don't filter, just get them down.
Next to each one, write two things: where that conversation sits in your body when you think about it (chest, jaw, gut), and what it costs you to keep carrying it.
Then pick the one that feels most manageable, not the biggest. Write out word for word what you want to say. Read it out loud to an empty room, twice. Notice what your body does. You're not scheduling the conversation yet. You're letting your nervous system meet the fear in private, where the stakes are zero, before it ever meets it live.
That's the whole assignment for the week. Not to have the conversation. To prove to your body that forming the words doesn't kill you.
Responses