EP 3:54 Chemsex Recovery: The “Good News” Trigger

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/goodnews In this solo episode of The AfterMeth Podcast, Dallas Bragg names a trigger that almost nobody in recovery talks about: good news. He opens with his own pattern from his drug court years, when he found himself relapsing after nearly every NA key tag and drove straight from the courthouse to pick up a guy to party on the day he was released from probation. Milestones, he realized, were one of his biggest danger zones, and he suspects they are for many listeners too. Dallas walks through G. Alan Marlatt's cognitive-behavioral model of relapse, which shows that while negative emotions and interpersonal conflict account for most relapses, positive emotional states are a real category of their own. In those moments, people are not trying to escape a feeling. They are trying to amplify one, and meth amplifies better than almost anything on earth. The heart of the episode is a simple neurological reframe: during active use, the brain learned the rule "big feeling, use," and it does not distinguish between a promotion and a breakup. Both are intensity, and intensity is the trigger. Dallas unpacks the "I deserve it" whisper that arrives exactly when defenses are lowest, and why milestone days are the sneakiest version, since nobody thinks to check on someone who looks like they are winning. He then turns practical: put good news on your danger zone list, train your recovery team to go on alert when something good happens, run fire drills for the hours after a celebration when the dopamine dives, and keep doing the boring daily work on your best days, because a routine that only shows up when you are struggling is not a routine. He closes with compassion and a promise: plan for these inflationary experiences, get through enough of them, and eventually you just get to live your life. The AfterMeth: Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaftermeth/ Dallas Bragg Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/newsletters/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdallasbragg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdallasbragg/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdallasbragg YouTube: The Aftermeth Podcast X: https://twitter.com/Drdallasbragg Free online course to End the Relapse Cycle: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/e7c2Eo22/checkout Meth-Free Blueprint EBOOK: https://www.drdallasbragg.com/offers/o8qFhK5i/checkout