EP 3:47 Self-Empowered Chemsex Recovery with Damon

Send us Fan Mail Supplemental Study Guide: https://www.recoveryalchemy.org/newsletters/blog/posts/selfempowered Host Dallas Bragg sits down with Damon Hunter — former public health professor, social worker, and harm reduction content creator — for a candid conversation about why the U.S. still flinches at harm reduction and what it actually looks like in practice. Damon traces the country's fear of drugs back through a century of racially motivated drug panics and explains that language like "meth mouth" and "tweaker" does nothing but perpetuate stigma and push people who are already marginalized further away from help. He shares his own story with disarming honesty: coming out in a rural, deeply religious environment, being introduced to Tina through Grindr, a spiral into use that led to a federal embezzlement charge, house arrest, and prison — and the turning point that finally worked, an ADHD diagnosis in his late twenties and a psychiatrist willing to treat it with a stimulant medication. Eleven years of abstinence later, he's clear that his path was his own, not a prescription for anyone else, and that criminalization is never the answer. The second half turns to what fills the space after Tina. Damon credits building queer community as the single biggest protective factor in his life — he volunteered at a rural LGBTQ youth center, made lifelong friends, and met his husband there — alongside education, hobbies that keep his hands busy, dogs, and a small circle of people he can call without judgment. He and Dallas walk through sexual reintegration in real detail: the planning, conversations, and exit strategies that let him return to bathhouses and kink without substances, including going back to the very bathhouse where he first used. They discuss what supportive partners should actually ask ("Where are you at? What do you need from me?"), why a slip is not a reset, screening potential hookups, and drug checking with FTIR machines and Good Samaritan laws. Running through it all is Damon's core argument: pleasure is intrinsic to chemsex, and any public health approach that ignores it — or leads with shame instead of information — will keep failing the men it claims to serve. Contact Damon: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedamonhunterx/ 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