Seeking Derangements - SD 458 - Dear Tina User, w/ Dallas Bragg

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

*VIDEO VERSION IS FREE ON PATREON* Ben here, today Dallas Bragg joins me to discuss his journey from being a closeted father, to drug user, to chem sex recovery coach. We talk about how hookup apps profit from drug addiction and social alienation, Sniffies response (or lack thereof) to the recent arrests of their own users, and the gaps within the mainstream recovery industry that Dallas fills with his own non-traditional program. Plus I ask him about his famous Instagram videos wherein he delivers messages via card stock.

POMAYOR. Oh, oh, oh, oh, Hello, everyone, welcome to Abangana. Hello, everyone, welcome to Sikidurangements. It's your host, Ben.

I'm here with a very special guest, Dallas Bragg. How's it going, Dallas? How's your day? It's going great. So far, I'm in Charlotte, and the weather is just perfect. It is perfect. It's like almost 70 degrees. sunny little love

and autumn yeah yeah yeah I'm in Des Moines Iowa right now I'm I'm from Des Moines Iowa I'm I moved back here maybe six months ago my just like some family stuff going on but I was living in New York City for a while but I've been really wanting to escape winter like nothing else I really hate it it's the worst

I think maybe that's part of being a gay guy is that I want to be like in Miami around right I know I I used to make fun of people who said they got sad, the seasonal affective disorder. It was real. But last year I came down with it hard. It was like karma, I guess. Yeah. This year I'm fighting it because when it gets dark and cold so fast, so early, I just

crawl into my bed and just forget everything. The sun goes down at four o'clock here. And I, not to sound dramatic, but I'm like, I'm going to kill it. myself i'm going to do something insane it keeps happening so miserable well i'm so happy you came to join me today i found you through your your instagram and i was um i kind of did a deep time and i'm just very impressed by your work and by your story could you just introduce yourself to our our listeners and tell them some about what led you to your line of work and and what you do yeah so i call myself a chem sex recovery coach and kim sex is a relatively new term and

And in the U.S., it's not really caught on yet, it seems like. But basically, it's Kim sex is men who have sex with men who are engaging in sexualized drug use. So what we know of here is basically crystal meth, you know, crystal meth addiction. In Europe and other countries, there's a lot of other types of drugs that are considered. But here in the U.S., I used to call myself just a crystal meth recovery coach. Right. Right. And morphing into something else. So anyway, in my experience, I came out late. I was 36. So I was married to a woman, was closeted. I had the whole story of religious trauma, grew up in a rural state, you know, and just a Bible thumping family that, you know, I just always was afraid Jesus would come back any second. And if I was masturbating to my men's health magazine, I would burn in hell. It would have been hard to even be straight because you can't even be like sexualized as a straight person in that environment.

Right. It's a difficult life for anyone. And so I married a woman because it was safe. We had two kids. I had kids right away because I was like, if I have kids, there's no way I'm ever coming out. I'm sticking with it. And then there's proof right there. You think I'm gay? Look at the two kids.

That's right. That's right. Exactly right. Eventually I was suicidal. It was just no way. I just couldn't live that way. Of course. And so I came out and, you know, not knowing anything about gay life.

I didn't even know any gay people. I watched Will and Grace and felt bad about that. And so that's what I kind of thought I would be either, I don't know who I was. Was I Will or was I Jack? Right. The first gay guy I saw when I was a kid on TV, much like you, I'm from Des Moines. I might there's not much religious trauma in my family but I was still closeted up until I don't know 16 17 I had a girlfriend and she knew she knew I was gay the whole time but the first gay guy I remember seeing on TV was Andy Dick remember Andy Dick oh yeah yeah and I was like oh god I have to be Andy Dick like oh no not him yeah yeah the reality show where he was trying to hire an assistant and yeah so cruel to everybody

And he's so queenie and so bitchy. And I've kind of become anti-Dick, if I'm being honest about it. But sorry, please continue your story. No, it's fine. Go ahead. It was like tearing off a band-a-bundit. Like, I didn't come out of the closet. I, like, exploded the closet, you know, because I had just lived in this miseries for so long.

So I left my wife within two weeks of coming out. And I had met up, I realized that a friend from high school, because we were both in North Carolina now we we I grew up in West Virginia but in there was a lunch group of these misfits that didn't fit in any of the clicks the weird kid table we were right we were the leftovers all three of the guys in that group came out as gay later but he he was gay and he was living in the same city and so he offered me a bedroom to rent so I had somewhere to go really fast and I left her and distressed myself into this gay world thinking You know, I've pretended all my life.

I've never belonged anywhere, not in church, not in regular world. I was like, this is where I belong. And so, you know, I got on a grinder and started meeting people that way. What year was this? This would have been. So this was 2013. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But what I met was not what I expected, you know, because I inserted myself into the club scene, the bars, because I didn't know where else to go. at the time um and then when i got on grinder i was getting this instant gratification immediately from the messages but what i would get in person were comments about well you're a lot more effeminate than what i thought really yeah you're not even that you're not even that queenie to me i mean i don't know you but you don't think so either yeah well it's just when they found that i had kids i guess and then i don't know my pictures they just assumed that was this like straight acting dad right right um well we're all on grinder so right we also dicks right so when i

started getting those comments i was like wait a minute this is the first time i can be myself but i can't still right right well because i mean i think for a lot of gay men um especially in like more conservative areas who've been out for a while they kind of fetishize recently out men or clausted men or d l men because it's It's like, it's kind of risky, it can be sexy, but it's not, it's all this ideating about what someone else is. It's a pure projection. And then, of course, that projection, that veil is going to be pierced because he's a gay man. He's not a, you know, construction worker or whatever, like, yeah.

See, I mean, that makes sense you to experience a lot of that. Yeah. And I'm in the South still. Right. So there's, you know, a ton of internalized homophobia. There's a ton of mask for mask kind of, you know, no, femes kind of thing here right um which i didn't i didn't have any idea about yeah and so anyway i got thrust into this community where i was disillusioned about what would happen i thought i'd be

welcomed in and it was more of like side eyes and clicks and you know people there would be a couple of guys who were friendly to me but it was only because i knew somebody they needed to know you know or whatever right and so i i was i spiraled with that i was spiraled in my emotionally, again, thinking I belong to nowhere on the planet. Sure. Until one day when I was, you know, a Sunday morning and everybody's, mostly everybody who you talk to, a gay guy who used crystal meth, their stories want to start like this. Like, I met this guy on Grindr who asked if I partied. I didn't know what party meant.

And sure, I'd love to go to a party. Right. It's Sunday morning. I thought, oh, day drinking, mimosas, you know, I don't know. So, but I got to this house that was kind of, you know, overrun. The yard was overrun. It was kind of the show when I was, I don't know. But the guy came to the door, hot guy, which is another, you know, this other, this, misunderstanding that people who use meth are gross. Right.

You know, we're still gay men. We still, there's a book on stay hydrated, do this, do that. Oh, and I mean, do you have all that. I heard you just stay in the gym as well. Right, right. Yeah. Right. And so he came to the door.

and he was of course very attractive and hot but the thing that caught the thing that that that really stuck me was he looked at me talked to me touched me treated me in a way that i had always in my entire year for decades wanted right right he didn't care what i look like he didn't care what i acted like he didn't care what my body was like you know he just wanted me for me now i didn't know it's because he was high on meth and he would have fucked anything that walked through the door on my end but acceptance is a is a powerful drug of its own you know like that kind of feeling is very hard to replicate yeah you've been searching for you're in your 30 you're almost 40 years old and you've never been accepted anywhere but you get this

unconditional sexually charged acceptance right and so when he handed me the pipe I was, I don't know what this is. And he was like, well, you said you partied. I was like, well, I do. Who knows what a capital T means? Right. I thought it was a misspell. You know, I don't know.

I remember one time I was in, this is when I was living in Denver, Colorado. And there's a lot of men there who struggle with meth addiction. Yeah. And a guy messaged me, do you want to come to my apartment and smoke meth? And he, I think, was so high that he didn't realize. the t in the math was capitalized oh it's like you're missing up the car you're just saying it what's the point exactly but i think he was just i think he was just so out of yeah yeah you do get to that point when you're so high you just don't get fuck anymore yeah yeah yeah there was you know

tvs with porn everywhere there was a sling this the living room looked like the set from like sketchy sex or fraternity x you know like disheveled trash you know all stuff and so he here's the thing is we're programmed our arousal template is program like you said about the you know the straight acting dominant like we've been programmed to like that by the porn industry and and through like various forms of trauma or right you know just just even just mainstream media you know specifically gay mainstream media i think it's changed recently but yeah there's always been the model of hypermasculine domineering yeah etc right so i I just did what he wanted.

You know, he taught me how to smoke the pipe, and he had GHB, which always typically goes with us. And we took a shot of that and we were off to the races and we fucked for two days. Whoa. No sleep, nothing. Yeah. No sleep. He just, he, he had me buy more. We went back to my place.

He kept giving it to me in different ways, you know, never explained what was going to happen after. But so he, you know, when we were finally out, he left. Right. I missed, I missed, that was the first day. I missed work, you know. And so I was then addicted. But here's the thing is that the recovery industry treats crystal meth addiction in gay men as a chemical dependency. But for most of us, what we're addicted to is that feeling of finally getting relief living in the world we live in.

Yeah, there are two things that I think are very hard to separate because you do the meth because you want to feel free, you want to feel unencumbered by anxiety or stress or shame, whatever it may be. But those two things when they're together are extremely powerful. So I think when it comes to treating, you have to address the root causes of trauma, acceptance, et cetera, and with, yeah, just the pure chemical high of methamphetamine. Right. that you know the body does crave it as it would as it would a nice chocolate cake right it just craves that so um but i i was in it at that point like i have found my place you know i had found my magic elixir and i dove in hard because i at the time i was just finishing up my doctorate so i did i did have a professional doctorate i defended my dissertation i was teaching in an

MBA program. I was an executive at a law school, and I had the time and the money. Right. And so I just dove in. And so fast forward three years, I was homeless. I mean, the kids had to move out. I lost my car, my job. I was arrested four times and was evicted, finally evicted, and was out on the streets. In the recovery part of that story, my kids saved the day. I mean, my 16 and my 16 year old daughter my 14 year old son came to get me from jail and they were like okay have you are you done you know basically like we need we need you back and so and plus i was facing prison so i mean the choice was pretty simple the first that first um but the what i noticed in going through recovery was that the the therapist the the drug courtment the drug treatment

court the judge um the rehab no one no one understand what it was like that to be a gay man addicted to crystal meth no one understood it was that it's an entire subculture on its own that it has its own language yeah you know that it has its own zoom channels it has its own telegram channels you know it is we have created just a separate underworld in plain sight you know and so now around the world in any city There's going to be meth orgies going on 24-7 anytime you want them. And all you have to do is open up a grinder app to get them. None of them understood that. And then I mentioned something as simple as piss play in rehab. And they called a special session to talk about my mental viability. Like as if you were like insane?

Yeah. But like I needed extra help because I talked about drinking piss. I mean, there's a reason why it's happening mostly in gay communities, like, for everything we're talking about because gay men struggle with acceptance and gay men are more prone to, like want to party because they feel like maybe they didn't have an adolescent, like most people had. And with that comes weird kinds of weird kinds of sex. And so, like, of course you need to have the space within a recovery program to not be shamed for whatever sex you had. Who cares? That's right. and in this subculture you're always chasing the next dopamine high right so it is common to do

to get freakier and freakier and freakier and freakier right yeah it's it's never enough right so you i didn't have a space where i felt seen and i felt heard um and so when i got out of you know when i when i found my way i found my own spiritual connection to the world i got myself to a point where I looked back and thought, I, I did this myself. Twelve steps didn't help me. And I made my own way and I did it for, as for a gay man with this particular substance. You know, trouble with the substance. So I always kind of thought I was going to do something to give back.

And so in 2013, I'm sorry, 2023, I decided to launch my own coaching business for men who have sex with men. to help, to help fill the gap, basically. Sure. Once you get out of treatment, I'm the middle ground so you can be therapist, let's get you away from the substance long enough, give you a little pregame of what the therapist might want to look at, and then go work on your trauma because it's a mental, it's a mental illness. Well, that's the root of it, I think is like the trauma,

the need for acceptance, everything we've talked about. I think that's the root of why gay men turn to methamphetamine. And beyond that, just in general, we have a huge drug crisis in this country. And I think the real reason when people turn to drugs is because it's simply just very hard to build a life in this country right now, unless you come from some genuine privilege, like financial privilege, you know, it's hard to get a job. It's hard, even if you have a job, health care, et cetera, et cetera. And I think there's this very American kind of perspective where it's like, well, the problem is just the drugs. The problem, there's no holistic understanding of the economic problems that people have, that the familial problems that the economic problems cause. People look for an escape wherever they can find it.

And I think gay men have needed that escape for a long time. But we see many people turning to drugs for all of these reasons. And of course, people need to get sober from the chemical dependency on the drug, but there is a much bigger problem underlying it that no one really talks about in these programs. which maybe makes sense because you want the programs to focus on the drugs, but let's have a secondary program where you do talk about all of these things. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And it, it, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the recovery industry does focus on behavior, like, let's stop using. What I tell, what I tell, what I tell my guys,

like, once you do stop using, the hard work begins. Right. Like, not using meth is easy, because it requires, you know, the, you know, fundamental changes in your identity yes right but the hard work now comes because now you're just an exposed raw nerve all that shit that got you in the myth in the first place needs to be resolved and it's still waiting for you right that's tough that's the hard part yeah for sure I think the first post of yours I saw was you with the cardstock that you used to deliver messages with the shark which I it's such a nice touch it reminds me of like in high school in the early like 2000s You know, you'd always see girls with like, is that, is that what inspired?

It's a great way to deliver a message. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And an ex did that too. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. But I saw one of yours that said, um, grinders bottom line depends on your rock bottom.

And I've been thinking for a long time about this. And I have maybe a separate argument, but I think tangential to yours. I see like the economy. right now, especially post-COVID, of course, like the nuclear family model has always been an economic bedrock, but I think post-COVID, we have further integration of tech into our lives. They make a lot of money, and all of that money depends on us being on the phone. Like, their raw material is our attention spans. A new kind of economic subjugation is coming in the farm of people being atomized, being completely alienated from their surroundings, not being very

social. Everything is mediated through the phone. You think about food delivery. I mean, just very basic things. Uber. Your social life is all mediated through the phone. And I see that as the atomization there being something that is really pushed by tech and really pushed by even if you think about the real estate market. Like BlackRock would rather much have us be renting small apartments, living alone, being on our phones in bed. That's the most profitable model that they could come up with. Given that that's the economic model here is increased atomization. I see gay men and through no fault of their own, I think these things are like fortuitous. I don't think gay men are conspiring with people or anything. But I see gay men and gay male culture as kind of being

the shock troops and the salesmen of this kind of lifestyle, this atomized single lifestyle. because gay men, a lot of us rent our whole lives. A lot of us are bachelors for very long. We don't have kids. We're not doing this kind of traditional life that is now very profitable. I see gay men post-aids, there's a kind of re-emergence of gay men into popular culture and into a formalized economy. Of course, it's going to be a little bit more conservative and a little bit more traditional in appearance. you need to be able to, you know, in the wake of AIDS, you need to be able to prove that you're

not some, you know, sex freak or, you know, not that I agree with that. That's, of course, homophobic archetype, but we have to operate with them as they exist, right? And I think gay men and gay male culture has been accepted on the terms of, that they are consumers, that they are consumers and that they are a convenient kind of model with which to accept the atomization and alienation of contemporary economic American life in that I think a very good example of this very good cultural example of this is the show queer eye the reinvention of queer eye on Netflix I mean I understand this is a show so I'm not trying to take it too seriously here but I think it's just a good example of what I'm talking about in that the conceit of the

new addition of kuriai is essentially they go to these people's homes these people are struggling they have terrible jobs they're struggling to raise their kids they don't have much of an economic future in this country of course jonathan vanness and anthony can't fix that but what they can offer is hey queen why don't you get a murphy bed why don't i teach you what cilantro is in some way you in a non cynical way you could say that these are coping mechanisms for people who deal with their atomization. And another way, you could say that gay men are aestheticizing the atomization and making that atomization aspirational in some way, because gay men are also curators of taste

and culture. And it's something that really troubles me because I really love and respect gay culture, and I don't want it to just be a convenient tool of control, because it's also much easier to control people. us if we're just in our beds on our phones accepting the fact that we are just going to live these lonely desperate poor lives i don't mean to sound so like harsh about it but that's what i really see happening the last frontier of social atomization as it's mediated by tech they've kind of already conquered our aesthetic lives our home lives we're renting our family lives you know you can't

see your family that much you're working too much your friends are all talking to them through the phone. I think the last frontier of this is your sex life, your intimacy. And so to go back to what you said, Grinders' bottom line depends on your rock bottom. I think these tech industries are really pushing to have your sex life and your intimacy mediated by their apps. And I think gay men and gay apps are on the frontier of that. And we'll see it happen more and more and more. And that's really troubling to me. Have you heard of Sniffies? Do you want Sniffy's? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think Sniffies is a really, really crazy. And I'm not, I don't shame anyone who uses.

Right. I'm not speaking necessarily negatively about individuals, but I'm speaking negatively about the corporate bottom line of these apps. Can you elaborate on Grindr's bottom line depends on your rock bottom? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think Sniffy's basically said, Grindr has too many controls. Yeah. You know, you can't put your dick on your profile.

Right. Nobody's going to allow me. Nobody's going to stop me from putting my dick as my opening. Well, it's funny on Grindr, it's like, everyone is like, you have to send face picks. But on Sniffy's, it's like if you host a face pick, you're out. Right. Exactly. Only Jay.

It's more really. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in Sniffy's is blatantly saying, here's a party to go to. You can look on the map. It's easier than Grindr. Right. Well, people, people, I tried to be as clear as possible.

be as clear as possible, however, you know, I get accused of saying Grindr is the problem, right? Right. And, you know, it's like saying Grindr's a problem is like saying McDonald's is a problem for obesity, right? Where's the argument there of, yeah, but whatever. That's not what I'm saying. No, I agree.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Grindr is for, it's for us as gay men. The behaviors of someone who's high on myth is, We are on Grindr for days, days at a time. What happens on the drug for some reason? It makes you insatiably sexual, but a lot of times sex doesn't happen because you're always on Grindr looking for more.

You have a guy beside you. You're both looking for a third. You have a third. You're all looking for a fourth. You have a party. You look around. Everybody's on their phone, on Grindr. There's a hot guy just, you know.

And so I think that Grindr knows this. We have, as a recovery industry, informed them over and over and over. Please, just put something in there where it pauses. You know somebody's been on there for days. It pauses and says, are you okay? Yeah. Or here is a KimSex support line. Something.

Right. Something. Right. Because that's who is supporting them. And now they're going public, right? They're taking it to the next level. But who is supporting them are tweakers, quote unquote. Right.

Because most guys, if they're not high, they're on there for a while to, you know, it might be. Well, I mean, these are the people who are paying. What is it? Grindr not charges at like $30 a week to see more than 10 profiles. Like they know this. They know that they have a desperate consumer base and they will exploit them not only for their attention, not only to rob them of the chance of genuine intimacy, but to accelerate their drug use. Right.

You know, this is anecdotal. This is my personal experience. I did a test. I got on Grindr. And I started talking to guys with the capital T. Like I started having conversations in Grindr like this, right? And I didn't buy. I didn't purchase the ultimate grid.

What happened was when I started to slow down, I put the phone away, profiles out of my range, go up that we're using it is it's predatory i completely i look i completely believe it because again like with the algorithmic way things are working the algorithms are getting stronger and stronger and stronger right and even if grinder isn't intentionally showing you other users what grinder will probably do is see that you're like you're looking at every bottom's profile right you're looking at everyone's profile that's 5-8 and then if you log off they'll say here's some more bottoms or here's some more five eight guys because it's just data points but yeah

if the data point is who wants to party they'll probably just throw you at more parties exactly if you know this as a as a company being responsible for in this community please just put in some type of barrier some type of warning some just a number a phone number to call and how much money would they lose if they right exactly yeah no i know it's it's really troubling and Did you hear about the, there were some raids at Penn Station in New York City? But I think it was the NYPD going in and raiding cruisers at Penn Station. And the strange thing to me is that Sniffies never said we did not, we did not collaborate with police on this. I mean, of course, it's easy enough for a cop, the unfortunate cop who has to download Sniffies and then find which pump and dump he wants to go.

raid and I don't it's not for me to say whether or not sniffies worked with police on this I don't know but the fact of the matter is they haven't said that they didn't work with police right and the question is it's an open question did sniffies collaborate with the NYPD to get their own users arrested they haven't said anything about it and there have been reports of sniffies much like this sniffies raids happening in Atlanta in 2023 and they haven't said anything about it And now you have the problem of we live in an increasingly homophobic country. And we have all of this data capture on gay men through sniffies.

I mean, have you ever used the citizen app before? Yes. Yeah. Isn't it funny how the citizen app looks exactly. It's like shooting here, stabbing here, fire here. Instead, it's just like glory hole bumping up. You know, blow and go. Right.

But I just mean to say it's incredibly easy to find all these things. And Sniffy's does owe a clear, transparent process and explanation to their users when a police raid happens. I just, it's crazy to me they haven't addressed it at all. Yeah, I know. Or we're not asking them to either. Right. Right. You know, I mean, the influencers in the gay community aren't talking about this problem.

Right. And I think it's like what you said about not wanting to look like deviance. Yeah. Yeah. We don't want to cast like this negative picture of, or, you know, and reinforce stereotypes that exist. But at the end of the day, they do exist. And it's worth talking about, at least within our own community. And I mean, my big enemy here is not the gay men who are using the apps. It's the apps and it's the increased appification of all of our life really troubles me.

me and it really scares me because, again, I think gay men set, gay men are in some way guinea pigs for tech encroachment into our lives because gay men, much like your story, we're in positions where it's hard to meet other gay men. We might not be able to be out or we might just have trauma or maybe we're just more horny than the average person. There are very many, the various reasons why we are more prone to need apps in our life. But because we're more prone to need apps in our life. I think a lot of these tech companies, social tech companies, you know, companies that run dating apps, sex apps, et cetera, I think they see us as a interesting and profitable test group to see, well, how can we get for, how can we make them spend more time

on their phone? And then we'll find out how we can make them some more time on the phone. And then we'll do it to straight people. Like straight sniffies will probably be. happening enough and then everyone is just on their fucking phone they're on their own even at the sex party exactly it's crazy you can't stop i know it's a dopamine addiction yeah dopamine addiction that hijacks sex which is the most righticting part of your your brain in your your internal chemistry right and that's the problem too is once you've had sex on it it's fused together in your brain right so you can't think of sex without meth. Right. The process, after stopping meth of untangling, what's my arousal template? What's

meth arousal template? What really turns me on? Right. And how do I watch porn now? How do I even jack off without thinking about myth? Right. Right. It's this total rewiring, dewiring of the brain that is, again, is what makes this different too. Right. Like, an alcoholic a heroin addict a weed addict they don't get triggered when they get horny immediately they don't associate the two yeah right and so it's just a whole different different yeah and when you talk about that connection i think when your whole social life even if on a on a on a less severe scale than than meth addiction the connection between meth addiction and and sex even just grinder being the thing like you're if you're horny you're just

like oh i have to get on grinder to find a guy what happened to going to the fucking bar what happened to just talking or even old old school cruising you know right yeah i think these things it will sound ironic to say but i think these things are actually a much more social good for everyone for our society to have people just on their phones less if i if i could if i was president i would ban every gay sex app i would ban them all and i would just do like an fDR like work style program where we build a gay bar every 20 feet in the country. Yeah. I think that's great.

Be everywhere. Right. Well, you know, one of the most common, it's becoming probably one of the top three now reasons men are using is loneliness. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And our connect, these guys, there's many, many, many guys, especially since COVID, who are using meth alone, lock themselves in their bedroom. a bedroom two or three days but they have their grinder as they're outward you know they're

they're they're it's like a gambling addiction almost yes it really is it really is what was the first gay bar you went to in charlotte yeah it was called 316 it's not there anymore oh what was what was it like back then because this was 2013 i started going to I started going to gay bars when actually I'm 30 so I started going to gay bars yeah around 20 well I started going to gay bars legally around 2013 probably I'm living in Denver at the time and I mean the meth was huge I've never I only did meth once accidentally in high school because a girl this was this was girl on gay violence this wasn't gay on gay. A girlfriend of mine, and I say girlfriend, like, I was already gay at the time, but like, she sold me Molly. And all of our friends and my friends and I, we just did Molly. We were out all night. We were walking around.

Yeah. I got home and I, every Midwestern teen at some point, you just like migrate to the basement of your home. You know, because you're like, like, your parents like make you move to the basement. and I my my mom was gone it was just my mom's house it was just me there and I was probably 3 a.m. and I got into the basement I went to tried to go to sleep and I was like in and out of consciousness and then I woke up and I hallucinated um two people robbing me like and it was at the looking back on it of course these were just like dancing shadows I was like fine right tweaking yeah in the moment, I was like, oh my God, this guy is trying to steal my TV.

So I ran upstairs and I put, you know, like when you're like fighting with their siblings and you like put a chair under the doorknubs. I did that and I grabbed a knife and I was like, I'm called the fucking and I called the cops and I went out into the front yard and I'm sitting there in my underwear holding a knife. thank God they didn't shoot me when they pulled up but they were like what's going on it's like these two guys were these two guys are robbing me they're robbing me they're stealing all my stuff and the cops went in and they searched the house and they came back out flashlight like the big like LED light in my face and they're like did you do any drugs tonight I was like no sir

I have not done any drugs today and then they just they drove me my dad's house and he was really mad at me and it stopped but then i messaged the girl who sold me the molly and i said what is that i called i called the cops on myself yeah yeah she was like oh actually i found out that it was tron and i have you heard that before yeah it's it's it's mdma caught with meth which is it's meth cut with mdma if you're right probably basically yeah and i was like oh my god and i in some way i'm kind of glad that I had that experience at an early age. Because since then, I was just like, I'm not going to almost get killed by the police.

I can't do this. But I mean, it was in 2013 in Denver, it was everywhere and still is. It still is. Yeah. It's around the world. And what's sad here is it's in countries where it's illegal to be gay. Sure. You can't admit you have a drug problem or you get outcast.

Yeah. And you have no support. It's sad. Grindr came into your country. You got on Grindr because you were lonely and trying to find other gay men. You found them, but you also found meth. And now you have no way to stop. It's crazy.

But sorry, what was the gay bar like? What was your experience? I mean, you must, like, I know this was a traumatic time in your life. And it's something that you've, I mean, you've learned from and you're doing great way because of it. But you had to have had some fun as well. Yeah. Well, I will say.

In the very beginning, I went to a gay bar because I met this guy on Grindr, who said, I want to show you what a gay weekend's like. Sure. You know, and so he wanted to show me what he does, right? And we started at this bar. And so they taught me how to take a shot. Listen, I had never been in a bar. Whoa. Gay or straight.

Really? Were you just sober up until that point? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they taught me how to take a shot. And, you know, it became like the, in the very, very beginning. It was like, I was a novelty.

Sure. It's like those, it's like those movies where like a high school or finds a caveman, like, bring them back to life. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I was unfrozen. Yeah, I was unfrozen. That didn't last long because there was, so in that same weekend, I went to another bar. It was a, it was like a dancing club.

They were going to have a drag show, you know, the first time. all drag and everything but a i was trying to meet people there was a guy that came walked up who knew the guy people i was with and he recognized me he knew somebody who knew me and my my wife and i oh wow and he pulled me to the side and he was like what are you doing and he was like why didn't you couldn't you just pretend to be straight until your kids at least graduated high school was he already out and gay yeah oh okay and he was like you know do you realize the the therapy bills you're going to have to pay for these kids now he's a teacher he was a teacher well is he living his whole life in the closet what

what an unfair thing to say and and it's something about that really just put me inspired i went to my car and i was just sobbing and again again i'm like where do i belong because this isn't where i belong right this is not it like if i don't belong here i belong no fucking where right um which then went sent me into this sexcapade of meeting guys on grinder refusing to speak like i like my my fetish became i'm walking in fucking no no no speak no talky but because i was afraid that they would be a bitch something yeah about me and so it just became this like dark little world and then of course you know it bled into to mess i didn't have a good experience um and Until after, in my, in my recovery, I have gone back to overwrite, rewrite, enjoy a gay club.

And right. And then I, and then I met a different, you know, I understood that this is not a, a reflection of the entire gay community. No, yeah. Like, so I started volunteering at LGBTQ nonprofits. And I'm, oh, I've never seen you on Grindr, you know, business owners at the Chamber of Commerce. I haven't had to block you on sniffies for messaging me too many times. Right. Right. Yeah. So, you know, the, the experience, unfortunately, I didn't have a guide either. You know, one thing that is in my heart is to help older men when they come out to try to, you know, because older men like me when you come out, you're like, I got to make up for lost time. Right. You know, I've got to fuck everything. I've got to party hard. You know, I've got to do it all right now before I get too old. It just isn't, you know, it isn't healthy. Do you think that there is, I mean, I will be honestly, I do dabble and drug you.

It's not like chem sex, but, you know, if I'm at a bar, I'll do a little bit of coke, I'll drink. And I don't have like necessarily much of a problem with it. I mean, I've certainly gone too far. I've stayed up a little bit too late. But I always am like, well, you know, it's good to do it and know what your limits are and get it out of your system. So you don't have this moment in your life where you're like, well, what if I know, do you think that there is a way to sponsor? responsibly use drugs. And even if people want to, like, participate in chemsex, do you think that there's a

responsible way to do that? This is a big question that's being bounced around the Kim sex world right now. Because there's a lot of leaders in the industry in Europe where it's more common. But they use MephaDron, MEP8, and it's like meth-light, you know. I have done Mepadron. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

It's big in New York City because of all of the. the berlin to new york city that's right berlin yes yeah yeah berlin is common um so there's an argument that you can be done responsibly my my thing is that there's enough negative effects it's affecting enough people negatively that we have treatment centers and we have me who honestly i stay on a waiting list almost right i mean like there's enough demand for guys who it who spin out of control that it is a problem sure can it be done responsibly i think in some ways it can but the thing is i've in my world i've never spoken to anyone who says they can or here i have guys that come and like i just met this attorney and he uses twice i don't know three times a year

he's able to do it and what i say to them is you're seeing one one point on his journey sure You can't judge what's going to happen when, you know, I don't know, he has a big bender that goes too far and then he's, you know, and then he loses his bar license and he's whatever. But can it be done? I think so. And I think it comes down to the intention of using it. Right. Right. Like if I am, I have a secure attachment.

I am emotionally mature. I'm in love with myself. I'm all these checkboxes. And I want to go and have a little. little fuck fest for a weekend, then I'm going to, but knowing that I can stop and go to work on Monday morning, sure. If I'm doing it because I'm lonely, I need validation, I need attention. I'm trying to escape the voices in my head. There's a huge surge of neurodivergent men who are using it because it's the only time their head is quiet. Right. Right. And I mean,

that goes back to the underlying issues here. Like we've been talking about like there are the underlying issues that are due to homophobia, are due to just living in a country that exploits you for all of your time. Everyone, like we've said, needs an escape. My kind of thinking on it is that if you're someone who doesn't have the predisposition to addiction that is based in familial trauma, conservative upbringing, or just having to work too much, which everyone has to work too much. But let's say you take those things off the table. I think that there's probably a way to do that and not spin out of control because you don't have the underlying issues that make you predisposed to addiction, et cetera. But I kind of feel like we're living in a world

with those underlying issues are getting stronger and stronger. Right. Right. And not to mention there's super myth in the U.S. now. What is that? The Biden administration went after the use of, God, what's the Sudafed If that's an upper in it Yeah, yeah So they went after that And what happened was all these meth labs

These homemade meth labs And the larger ones went out of business So all the demand shifted To the Mexican cartel And so they had these labs like you would see In Breaking Bad Sure Where the substance is now 99% pure

And 50% cheaper And 50% cheaper and so you try to do it in a moderate way but it's so fucking potent that it lasts so long also it's causing psychosis faster and longer than ever i don't think there's a responsible way to do super meth all i don't think so either we can agree on that what do you think about i mean i in new york and in berlin All of these big hotspots of gay male culture, raves are everywhere. And the drug of choice for many gay men and transgender women in these spaces, I know many of them. The big choice of drug right now isn't really meth.

It's actually G. Yeah. What do you think about G? G really scares me, I'll be honest. Also, because I'm kind of a drinker. If I'm out, I'm going to have like six beers. And if I did a drop of G, I'm going to, I'm going to. I'm going to drop to the floor.

What do you think about G? G's, I think it's dangerous, too. The thing about it is it's so hard to monitor the potency of it, too. I tell the story of I used to sell G. Really? And if we needed more money, we would dilute it. Right. You know, and so we're selling this diluted G.

Well, let's say I do G for the first time and it's diluted. and I do point two or point three or whatever I don't know then the next time I get the real the good stuff right and I fuck gee the fuck out right so it's for one thing it's it's just a little bit too much sure it's dangerous I mean so I had I knew this guy who owns the largest um sauna gaysana in the world it's in Brazil what's his number hire their own medic team to keep up with the amount of guys jeeing out every day that had to be rushed out to the hospital. Yeah, it's crazy. And so what do I think of it?

I think that it is just as addictive in a very different way. Right. Right. I mean, it's like taking the edge off with some some beer, some alcohol. Right. But it's just a little squirt and, you know, and it's becoming really common just in social settings. yeah yeah yeah i know a girl who did it on a plane yeah because she was just like i'm like i'm like what happened is just taking a xanax or or melatonin like what are you doing g on a plane

for no i i think it can be very very addictive um yeah it's it's a when i get guys coming in the program who have a g issue it's a whole different set of techniques for that um because it's a big withdrawal too i mean you know your meth withdrawal is you're going to sleep for a week and your emotions are going to be out of whack but it's not too bad for the G withdrawal though is as a real chemical dependence and it's tough sure sure before we wrap up here I just wanted to talk a little bit about your recovery program and some of the methods you use and some of the success stories you may have I'm sure there's many success stories but can you talk a little bit about what what

what you're up to now so the the program As I said, it doesn't, yes, abstinence is the ultimate goal, but it's not how we measure success or failure. It's not how we measure how well you're doing in your recovery. We measure other things, like how are your relationships, right? How is your job going? How about your mindset? You know, how about your self-esteem? That inner critic has it lightened up some?

There's so many metrics that are missed in a program that just says, you cannot use and if you do use you fail do use you have to start numbers your days your day count back at zero and in the thing is is that shame got us in the addiction the use in the first place shame is not going to get you out right some of these traditional programs rely on shame and fear as you said yeah and god a lot of them are like we're in christian too right it's so so I'm gonna just go ahead I'm not anti-12 steps. However, some of the groups in this program of 12 steps, it's mirrored after traditional Christianity. Right. There's only one book you can read, and it's the only

way, right? And there's only one way to success. And if you don't do it, you're a failure and you're going to have to do a walk of shame in front of all of us to get your new tip, right just like they used to make me walk up to the altar right to confess my homosexuality and get it you know expunged out of my sister out of my spirit the same when i walked up the first time to get the chip i was totally fucking activated i was like i'm at church again right right and so there's none of that in my program like we don't count days unless you want to celebrate how many days you've been absent great sure you know but there's no old timer there's no newcomer there's no hierarchy, you know, these gay groups get into, they bring all that stuff into

the recovery industry where we're going to, you know, we're going to exile you if you don't do it. We don't need, you don't need clicks at rehab. Right. Yeah. But you got them. Yeah. And so, so we focus on becoming a better and higher expression of yourself. And when you become an elevated expression of yourself, meth falls away. Sure. You don't need it anymore. Sure. Right. So a lot of my guys, To expect somebody who's using it every weekend to just stop cold turkey is fucking ridiculous. And it's been proven that it's not possible. I mean, statistically speaking, with Crystal Met, you're not going to be able to stop cold turkey.

Yeah. So we set realistic goals because these guys need to know, they need trust return to themselves. They need to know that they can do this. And so we set small, attainable, realistic goals. and if you're going to use we do it in a contained environment like check-ins with me check-ins with the other guys how much are you going to use when are you going to use who are you using with like let's let's empower ourselves because I want these guys to be the executive of their own life sure to think for themselves to always question you know because 12 steps may say you cannot date

for a year why why where's an arbitrary year come from right think for yourself know your limits know what you can and can't do and yeah like you need to feel responsible for your own life and that makes you more proud in your like success i feel like like makes more proud yeah exactly so i always say you need to act out of inspiration you're inspired to do this not obligation because you're told from a book from somebody that in the 60s created this yeah you know that you have to do this right and so i it's been been very successful. I got a text this morning from a guy who came to us slamming, like using IV meth. Wow. Every day. Wow. He came to us. And we tapered him off point one a week. But he

texted me this morning. He's six months abstinent from now. And so it, because he'd been so many rehabs, he'd been here, he'd been there, and he just always felt like he was a piece of shit. Sure. And if you feel like you're a piece of shit and you can't do it, and you can't stomach getting another chip, then you're just going to keep using because it underscores and excites your beliefs about yourself. Well, it becomes a shame, like, vicious cycle. It puts you back and being like a child, I think. You know, you're shamed by parents, and then you have to escape from the parents

and do drugs, then you have to go back, and it's a very vicious cycle that doesn't, that doesn't break most times, so. Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of the model that I have. It's non-traditional. It's not, I get, you know, some some pushback from some of the people in the industry about it, but I don't know. It's working. Your kind of their program is auxiliary to whatever other programs you want to go to. Right. You're not saying you can't do 12 steps at my program. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Do both. Yeah. Why not?

Experiment. Jerry picked from everything. There's recovery Dharma. There's refuge recovery. There's smart recovery. There's all these different recovery programs. Do it all. And take what resonates for you and create your own program. Again, it's empowerment. We want to be empowered. We want to show ourselves that we can make our own decisions. And that's what gets us out of this, like you said, this shame cycle. Right, right. Well, if anyone out there wants to find you, where can they find your work and no more about you?

And, hey, maybe even someone listening is slamming right now. One of them, there's probably at least one of them that's out there doing it. So if they want to find you, where can they find you? Yeah. So all of my socials are DR Dallas Bragg, D-A-L-L-A-S-B-R-A-G. So that's every social out there and my website. It's all kind of streamlined to DR-Dal-S-Brag. Perfect.

All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Ben. I really appreciate that. Good conversation, yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe I have you back some time.

Maybe if there's some... We do. Yeah. You know, they won't let me on the Sniffie's podcast. I keep asking to go on. They won't know. Really? They won't let me.

I asked, too. You asked? yeah really did they respond to you they don't even respond to me anymore no they don't no nope i wonder why i know well maybe maybe i'll see you on this news podcast maybe we'll have to go together we'll go on together and teach the teachers that's lesson well thanks so much we'll talk fun never fun how to move left and right You know,