WEBVTT
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Chemsex.
00:00:01.760 --> 00:00:09.119
Sexualized drug use among men who have sex with men, typically involving methamphetamine, methadrone, and GHB, among others.
00:00:09.359 --> 00:00:18.399
Chemsex misuse is a worldwide epidemic that needs attention, dialogue, and hope for those lost in it, which is the purpose of the Aftermath Podcast.
00:00:18.559 --> 00:00:28.239
Please note the views expressed by the host and guest on this podcast are not to be taken as medical advice, and the content around sex and drug use can be triggering.
00:00:29.519 --> 00:00:31.920
All right, welcome back to the Aftermath Podcast.
00:00:32.079 --> 00:00:37.119
In this solo episode, do not forget there is a supplemental study guide that goes along with the episode.
00:00:37.280 --> 00:00:38.640
The link will be in the show notes.
00:00:38.799 --> 00:00:52.799
If you want to get that emailed to you, just go to recoveryalchemy.org, click on blog, and then put your email address in the subscribe button, and you'll get an email every time a podcast comes out, which is twice per week.
00:00:53.039 --> 00:00:59.359
Remember to like, subscribe, and rate the podcast so we can get the algorithm to place it in the ears and eyes of those who need it.
00:00:59.759 --> 00:01:07.680
One of the first places I found to nourish my recovery was a spiritual center near my home.
00:01:08.560 --> 00:01:20.079
My own quote-unquote fellowship was a group of mainly middle-aged women, you probably heard the story before, who like to talk about interdimensional guides and angels and crystals and past lives.
00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:35.519
You know, I really, really, really treasure that season of my recovery because I felt such a relief from the perpetual conversation around meth and not using meth, meth, meth, and how I was powerless to meth.
00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:47.040
But instead of focusing on the past, labeling myself as a tweaker, or pronouncing myself as an addict every week, and that addiction was a life sentence.
00:01:47.200 --> 00:01:58.079
We focus on the soul, the soul self, the future, healing, what's serving us, what's not serving us, and finding peace in every step.
00:01:58.400 --> 00:02:02.959
And in this, in this uh the center, we had a chance to share our story.
00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:06.879
So the first time I publicly shared my story was there.
00:02:07.040 --> 00:02:13.439
And in preparation, I got out and flipped through some old family photo albums.
00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:18.479
And hopefully, if you're listening to this, you're old enough to remember those photo albums.
00:02:18.719 --> 00:02:23.360
Little sticky pages, you pull the plastic back and it was sticky, and you put the pictures on.
00:02:23.680 --> 00:02:26.479
You know, I don't know if you remember that or not.
00:02:26.639 --> 00:02:28.639
Um, but a photo album.
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Okay.
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Anyway, I wanted to find pictures of me as a boy and I was and growing up and I was going to supplement my story with visual aid.
00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:49.439
Well, what I discovered was a key component to the causes of my meth use, my chemsex use.
00:02:49.919 --> 00:03:00.080
Because I saw picture after picture an unhappy little boy, scowls, frowns, crossed arms, pouty.
00:03:00.719 --> 00:03:07.520
The albums told the story of my self-concept now, currently then.
00:03:08.479 --> 00:03:14.319
So in a group of smiling family members, I was noticeably feeling out of place.
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Uncomfortable, mad, angry, left out, somehow an outcast.
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Tears are coming to my eye coming to me now as I talk about this.
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My childhood was just taken from me.
00:03:33.680 --> 00:03:39.680
And I can still feel the pain that that little boy was living with.
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Having no idea how to articulate what was happening inside him.
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And no one truly interested in finding out.
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So for a long time after I chose to focus on those pictures, um, I I I I chose to create this narrative.
00:04:04.159 --> 00:04:10.960
And I grew more and more angry with my parents, my family, the church, my schoolmates.
00:04:13.520 --> 00:04:22.560
And then I began searching the recesses of my brain for all the memories of more and more evidence of how I had been wronged.
00:04:23.120 --> 00:04:25.439
And I had been unhappy and I had been left out.
00:04:26.560 --> 00:04:29.680
There was the comments from an uncle about how I walked.
00:04:30.639 --> 00:04:34.959
The rhymes the kids made up about Dallas Bragg being a fag.
00:04:35.759 --> 00:04:41.680
The commentary from teachers about how different Dallas was from the rest of the Bragg family.
00:04:43.360 --> 00:04:53.199
Slowly and surely I built a case to blame my addiction, my self-concept, my world, my circumstances outside of me.
00:04:54.399 --> 00:05:01.439
But that's until at that spiritual center and after I became more enlightened around how life really works.
00:05:01.759 --> 00:05:16.319
And I don't have the space, the time to go into how I believe now, maybe another podcast, but I do believe our souls chose types of circumstances to heal certain elements, such as rejection.
00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:22.800
If I want to heal rejection and feel connected, I have to be born into that kind of situation.
00:05:23.199 --> 00:05:26.160
Isolation, um, injustice, you know, whatever it is.
00:05:26.319 --> 00:05:28.000
We all each have our own thing.
00:05:28.240 --> 00:05:49.839
But that aside, what's important here is that I noticed when I went to put those pictures back in the albums a couple years later that I had subconsciously skipped over the photos showing me laughing with my brother.
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Excited on Christmas morning, hugging my grandma.
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Wow.
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My brain was so conditioned to notice the negative aspects of my childhood that I literally did not see those other photos.
00:06:10.720 --> 00:06:17.040
And that's the point in my recovery, where some true evolution occurred.
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Because that's when my awareness went deeper, and I was able to step outside of my self-concept, step outside of what I had created and written, and see the realities of my life.
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Because what you focus on is what you get.
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Your circumstances are the effect of the cause, which is your self-concept.
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So today I want to challenge you to look, take a very hard look at how you see yourself and how you see the world.
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And this could not only help you leave chem sex behind, but change the whole trajectory of your life and your emotional well-being.
00:07:02.160 --> 00:07:09.199
So, one thing that I've studied that I really love and I really want to get into deeper is NLP, neurolinguistic programming.
00:07:09.279 --> 00:07:13.600
So Steve Andreas is one of the early NLP developers, right?
00:07:13.759 --> 00:07:15.519
So he wrote Transforming Yourself.
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It's in 2002.
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His core idea is a self-concept is not a belief, it's a collection of examples.
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So it's a mental album, it's a mental photo album of images, sounds, and feelings that your brain pulls up as evidence, like a chronochrome or something.
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So ask yourself, am I reliable?
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Just some kind of question.
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Am I reliable?
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Watch what happens.
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Your brain doesn't answer with a word.
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If you think about it, how it works, it opens up an album.
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So you will begin pilfering through photo albums in your memory, trying to find evidence for or against am I reliable?
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And my guess is most of you listening to this, if you're in the ChemSex Recovery at any stage, usually early stage, you're going to see the negative pictures.
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You're going to find the negative images, like my frowny faces first.
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And that's what you're going to focus on, and that's what you're going to build your self-concept around to answer that question.
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Listen, what's true about you is often only a perception that is based on how you have arranged your photos and what you focus your energy on.
00:08:35.279 --> 00:08:44.320
And what that means is that your truth is variable, subjective, all based on something you've accepted as truth.
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You've accepted as truth.
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Are you reliable?
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Well, one might one one friend could say yes, he's very reliable.
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Another friend could say, hell no.
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So which is true.
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Two men can have identical life histories and completely different self-concepts, all due to their perception, the photos they see, they focus on.
00:09:12.320 --> 00:09:24.000
So Andreas' most probably one of the useful insight for us is that a strong self-concept also includes counterexamples.
00:09:24.159 --> 00:09:24.960
So let me explain.
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So this goes back to episode three have read down.
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So in recovery.
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So where we talked in this episode, we talked about accepting all of you unconditionally, the reality of who you are.
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There are always upsides and there are always downsides to everyone and everything.
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Every real family album has a bad photo in it.
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Somebody blinking, right?
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Somebody crying, a haircut gone wrong or whatever, right?
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Nobody, nobody throws out the whole album because there's some bad ones in there.
00:10:09.679 --> 00:10:21.120
No one makes a judgment call about the entire family history based on a few bad shots or catch of maybe there's a, you know, maybe there is somebody frowning in a picture and you remember that bad day.
00:10:21.279 --> 00:10:24.399
That doesn't mean the whole the whole history was bad.
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So instead of I'm reliable, how about I'm reliable and sometimes I'm not reliable?
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So say these two things.
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Say I'm reliable, and then say, I'm reliable, and sometimes I'm not.
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Say it out loud and notice how your body responds.
00:10:45.200 --> 00:10:48.000
Because your body's going to respond to the truth.
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And it's going to you're going to feel the difference when it's not the truth.
00:10:54.720 --> 00:11:02.320
So again, you're not focusing on only the good pictures, and you're not focusing on only the bad pictures.
00:11:04.639 --> 00:11:11.279
So, because when you focus on a statement like I'm reliable, it may activate some sort of anxiety, some sort of feeling, right?
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That's going to signify this feels untrue.
00:11:16.639 --> 00:11:20.320
That's because the second statement is the truth.
00:11:20.639 --> 00:11:27.360
And accepting that allows you to stop searching for photos to back up a positive or a negative.
00:11:27.519 --> 00:11:30.000
You accept the humanity of who you are.
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Men in recovery build an album called I'm Kim Sex Free.
00:11:36.480 --> 00:11:40.080
And in this album, there's no room for relapse.
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There's no room for slips, learning experiences, whatever you want to call it.
00:11:43.759 --> 00:11:46.960
Then one using episode, it happens.
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The whole album gets chucked in the trash.
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And they go back to that nasty ass album that they've saved all their transgressions in, to collection of all these photos, right?
00:12:01.840 --> 00:12:07.919
And look, think about the last 365 days of your life.
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How many days were you chemsex free compared to how many you were actually using?
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My guess is, the truthful statement is, I'm chem sex free more often than not.
00:12:22.080 --> 00:12:29.039
However, I bet your narrative is I had X amount of days and now I'm on day six or some shit like that.
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That is not true.
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You are chem sex free more than more often than not.
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That's the honest truth.
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I'm chem sex free now, sometimes I'm not.
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The whole album is there.
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And that statement dissolves you of the shame of counting your days and allows you to move forward.
00:12:55.600 --> 00:13:04.240
So a using episode becomes a photo in the album with a note on the back, hopefully about what it taught you, learning experience.
00:13:04.720 --> 00:13:07.200
Just another page in the book.
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It's feedback.
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It's not a verdict of who you are.
00:13:12.720 --> 00:13:22.960
And it's the difference between I must stop using myth and the real, real, real question underneath it, which is, how do I live in peace?
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How do I find peace right now, no matter when the last time it is I used, and move on from there?
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How do I live as my best and highest version?
00:13:33.360 --> 00:13:36.480
So let's beat this metaphor to fucking death.
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Back in the olden days of my day, we used to have those photo albums in plain sight in the living room, on the den on the coffee table, right?
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It was such a good way to invite friends.
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Like you want to review a vacation, you want to see your photo photo, your wedding photos, get to know each other better.
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You know, the boyfriend comes over and the mom shows you, shows him the kids' pictures or your kid pictures or whatever.
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What would the photo album contain if you had a photo album that was labeled my self-concept?
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If you could show that to somebody you met, what would it have in it?
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How would you chronicle the story of who you are?
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And would you show them page after page of you smoking a pipe and crying in a pillow?
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Would every page be doom, gloom, and sorrow?
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Let me show you I'm an addict.
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Would it be a true reflection of who you are and your story?
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You are somebody who has experience with chemsex.
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Some pages show you hugging your friend after a crying session.
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Some pages show you running in the park feeling hopeful and grateful.
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Some pages you're leaving work satisfied, a job well done, you got a lot of sleep.
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Some pages may show you walking into a treatment center, or smoking that pipe, or staring out the window wondering, what the hell did I do with my life?
00:15:06.080 --> 00:15:13.600
Maybe someone who looked at the reality of your life would say, You are someone who sometimes uses chems.
00:15:14.159 --> 00:15:18.879
And looking at this album, you're on the pathway to stopping.
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That's the truth.
00:15:22.480 --> 00:15:26.879
But they won't come to that conclusion if they're given an edited photo album.
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This is the time for you to accept the totality of who you are and where you are.
00:15:35.360 --> 00:15:39.840
And I'm telling you, it is exactly where you're supposed to be.
00:15:40.159 --> 00:15:50.559
And when you come to that conclusion that you have upsides and you have downsides, and you accept the real truth of that statement, then you can love yourself fully.
00:15:50.720 --> 00:15:52.559
You can accept all of you.
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Then you can be set free from the shit and find the wholeness inside to move forward.
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Zoom out, zoom out right now at your whole life and give yourself a fucking break from this day count and see the beauty of the whole picture.
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I want you to decide today to change yourself concept and know you are strong, you are blessed, and you are chem sex free.
00:16:22.320 --> 00:16:28.720
You get to choose which album sits on the shelf or on the coffee table.
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You get to choose.
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This also takes repetition because your brain is going to resist you at first.
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It wants to back up your feelings.
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It wants to back up whatever you've told it.
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I'm a piece of shit.
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I'm a key, I'm an addict.
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That's what it wants, that's the only pictures you'll see.
00:16:47.039 --> 00:16:49.200
Your brain's going to resist it at first.
00:16:49.840 --> 00:16:53.279
But you have to force yourself to look at all the pages.
00:16:53.600 --> 00:16:57.600
You have to force yourself to begin changing this self-concept.
00:16:59.279 --> 00:17:07.920
So that brain will keep reaching, like, you know, for that old decrepit album that you've edited and curated as showing all the ways you're terrible.
00:17:08.559 --> 00:17:11.039
But you have to integrate them both.
00:17:14.079 --> 00:17:14.720
Wow.
00:17:14.880 --> 00:17:16.400
I hope this helps you.
00:17:16.640 --> 00:17:17.759
I hope it helped today.
00:17:17.839 --> 00:17:18.799
I hope it made sense.
00:17:18.960 --> 00:17:19.920
Tell me in the comments.
00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:21.519
I'd love to hear from you.
00:17:21.839 --> 00:17:24.000
And I will see you next week.
00:00:00.479 --> 00:00:01.520
Chemsex.
00:00:01.760 --> 00:00:09.119
Sexualized drug use among men who have sex with men, typically involving methamphetamine, methadrone, and GHB, among others.
00:00:09.359 --> 00:00:18.399
Chemsex misuse is a worldwide epidemic that needs attention, dialogue, and hope for those lost in it, which is the purpose of the Aftermath Podcast.
00:00:18.559 --> 00:00:28.239
Please note the views expressed by the host and guest on this podcast are not to be taken as medical advice, and the content around sex and drug use can be triggering.
00:00:29.519 --> 00:00:31.920
All right, welcome back to the Aftermath Podcast.
00:00:32.079 --> 00:00:37.119
In this solo episode, do not forget there is a supplemental study guide that goes along with the episode.
00:00:37.280 --> 00:00:38.640
The link will be in the show notes.
00:00:38.799 --> 00:00:52.799
If you want to get that emailed to you, just go to recoveryalchemy.org, click on blog, and then put your email address in the subscribe button, and you'll get an email every time a podcast comes out, which is twice per week.
00:00:53.039 --> 00:00:59.359
Remember to like, subscribe, and rate the podcast so we can get the algorithm to place it in the ears and eyes of those who need it.
00:00:59.759 --> 00:01:07.680
One of the first places I found to nourish my recovery was a spiritual center near my home.
00:01:08.560 --> 00:01:20.079
My own quote-unquote fellowship was a group of mainly middle-aged women, you probably heard the story before, who like to talk about interdimensional guides and angels and crystals and past lives.
00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:35.519
You know, I really, really, really treasure that season of my recovery because I felt such a relief from the perpetual conversation around meth and not using meth, meth, meth, and how I was powerless to meth.
00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:47.040
But instead of focusing on the past, labeling myself as a tweaker, or pronouncing myself as an addict every week, and that addiction was a life sentence.
00:01:47.200 --> 00:01:58.079
We focus on the soul, the soul self, the future, healing, what's serving us, what's not serving us, and finding peace in every step.
00:01:58.400 --> 00:02:02.959
And in this, in this uh the center, we had a chance to share our story.
00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:06.879
So the first time I publicly shared my story was there.
00:02:07.040 --> 00:02:13.439
And in preparation, I got out and flipped through some old family photo albums.
00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:18.479
And hopefully, if you're listening to this, you're old enough to remember those photo albums.
00:02:18.719 --> 00:02:23.360
Little sticky pages, you pull the plastic back and it was sticky, and you put the pictures on.
00:02:23.680 --> 00:02:26.479
You know, I don't know if you remember that or not.
00:02:26.639 --> 00:02:28.639
Um, but a photo album.
00:02:28.879 --> 00:02:29.199
Okay.
00:02:30.400 --> 00:02:39.039
Anyway, I wanted to find pictures of me as a boy and I was and growing up and I was going to supplement my story with visual aid.
00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:49.439
Well, what I discovered was a key component to the causes of my meth use, my chemsex use.
00:02:49.919 --> 00:03:00.080
Because I saw picture after picture an unhappy little boy, scowls, frowns, crossed arms, pouty.
00:03:00.719 --> 00:03:07.520
The albums told the story of my self-concept now, currently then.
00:03:08.479 --> 00:03:14.319
So in a group of smiling family members, I was noticeably feeling out of place.
00:03:14.879 --> 00:03:20.159
Uncomfortable, mad, angry, left out, somehow an outcast.
00:03:23.439 --> 00:03:28.800
Tears are coming to my eye coming to me now as I talk about this.
00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:32.800
My childhood was just taken from me.
00:03:33.680 --> 00:03:39.680
And I can still feel the pain that that little boy was living with.
00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:45.360
Having no idea how to articulate what was happening inside him.
00:03:45.840 --> 00:03:49.280
And no one truly interested in finding out.
00:03:50.159 --> 00:04:03.039
So for a long time after I chose to focus on those pictures, um, I I I I chose to create this narrative.
00:04:04.159 --> 00:04:10.960
And I grew more and more angry with my parents, my family, the church, my schoolmates.
00:04:13.520 --> 00:04:22.560
And then I began searching the recesses of my brain for all the memories of more and more evidence of how I had been wronged.
00:04:23.120 --> 00:04:25.439
And I had been unhappy and I had been left out.
00:04:26.560 --> 00:04:29.680
There was the comments from an uncle about how I walked.
00:04:30.639 --> 00:04:34.959
The rhymes the kids made up about Dallas Bragg being a fag.
00:04:35.759 --> 00:04:41.680
The commentary from teachers about how different Dallas was from the rest of the Bragg family.
00:04:43.360 --> 00:04:53.199
Slowly and surely I built a case to blame my addiction, my self-concept, my world, my circumstances outside of me.
00:04:54.399 --> 00:05:01.439
But that's until at that spiritual center and after I became more enlightened around how life really works.
00:05:01.759 --> 00:05:16.319
And I don't have the space, the time to go into how I believe now, maybe another podcast, but I do believe our souls chose types of circumstances to heal certain elements, such as rejection.
00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:22.800
If I want to heal rejection and feel connected, I have to be born into that kind of situation.
00:05:23.199 --> 00:05:26.160
Isolation, um, injustice, you know, whatever it is.
00:05:26.319 --> 00:05:28.000
We all each have our own thing.
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But that aside, what's important here is that I noticed when I went to put those pictures back in the albums a couple years later that I had subconsciously skipped over the photos showing me laughing with my brother.
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Excited on Christmas morning, hugging my grandma.
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Wow.
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My brain was so conditioned to notice the negative aspects of my childhood that I literally did not see those other photos.
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And that's the point in my recovery, where some true evolution occurred.
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Because that's when my awareness went deeper, and I was able to step outside of my self-concept, step outside of what I had created and written, and see the realities of my life.
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Because what you focus on is what you get.
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Your circumstances are the effect of the cause, which is your self-concept.
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So today I want to challenge you to look, take a very hard look at how you see yourself and how you see the world.
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And this could not only help you leave chem sex behind, but change the whole trajectory of your life and your emotional well-being.
00:07:02.160 --> 00:07:09.199
So, one thing that I've studied that I really love and I really want to get into deeper is NLP, neurolinguistic programming.
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So Steve Andreas is one of the early NLP developers, right?
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So he wrote Transforming Yourself.
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It's in 2002.
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His core idea is a self-concept is not a belief, it's a collection of examples.
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So it's a mental album, it's a mental photo album of images, sounds, and feelings that your brain pulls up as evidence, like a chronochrome or something.
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So ask yourself, am I reliable?
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Just some kind of question.
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Am I reliable?
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Watch what happens.
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Your brain doesn't answer with a word.
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If you think about it, how it works, it opens up an album.
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So you will begin pilfering through photo albums in your memory, trying to find evidence for or against am I reliable?
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And my guess is most of you listening to this, if you're in the ChemSex Recovery at any stage, usually early stage, you're going to see the negative pictures.
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You're going to find the negative images, like my frowny faces first.
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And that's what you're going to focus on, and that's what you're going to build your self-concept around to answer that question.
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Listen, what's true about you is often only a perception that is based on how you have arranged your photos and what you focus your energy on.
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And what that means is that your truth is variable, subjective, all based on something you've accepted as truth.
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You've accepted as truth.
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Are you reliable?
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Well, one might one one friend could say yes, he's very reliable.
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Another friend could say, hell no.
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So which is true.
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Two men can have identical life histories and completely different self-concepts, all due to their perception, the photos they see, they focus on.
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So Andreas' most probably one of the useful insight for us is that a strong self-concept also includes counterexamples.
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So let me explain.
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So this goes back to episode three have read down.
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So in recovery.
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So where we talked in this episode, we talked about accepting all of you unconditionally, the reality of who you are.
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There are always upsides and there are always downsides to everyone and everything.
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Every real family album has a bad photo in it.
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Somebody blinking, right?
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Somebody crying, a haircut gone wrong or whatever, right?
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Nobody, nobody throws out the whole album because there's some bad ones in there.
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No one makes a judgment call about the entire family history based on a few bad shots or catch of maybe there's a, you know, maybe there is somebody frowning in a picture and you remember that bad day.
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That doesn't mean the whole the whole history was bad.
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So instead of I'm reliable, how about I'm reliable and sometimes I'm not reliable?
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So say these two things.
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Say I'm reliable, and then say, I'm reliable, and sometimes I'm not.
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Say it out loud and notice how your body responds.
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Because your body's going to respond to the truth.
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And it's going to you're going to feel the difference when it's not the truth.
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So again, you're not focusing on only the good pictures, and you're not focusing on only the bad pictures.
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So, because when you focus on a statement like I'm reliable, it may activate some sort of anxiety, some sort of feeling, right?
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That's going to signify this feels untrue.
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That's because the second statement is the truth.
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And accepting that allows you to stop searching for photos to back up a positive or a negative.
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You accept the humanity of who you are.
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Men in recovery build an album called I'm Kim Sex Free.
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And in this album, there's no room for relapse.
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There's no room for slips, learning experiences, whatever you want to call it.
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Then one using episode, it happens.
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The whole album gets chucked in the trash.
00:11:51.120 --> 00:12:00.320
And they go back to that nasty ass album that they've saved all their transgressions in, to collection of all these photos, right?
00:12:01.840 --> 00:12:07.919
And look, think about the last 365 days of your life.
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How many days were you chemsex free compared to how many you were actually using?
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My guess is, the truthful statement is, I'm chem sex free more often than not.
00:12:22.080 --> 00:12:29.039
However, I bet your narrative is I had X amount of days and now I'm on day six or some shit like that.
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That is not true.
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You are chem sex free more than more often than not.
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That's the honest truth.
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I'm chem sex free now, sometimes I'm not.
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The whole album is there.
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And that statement dissolves you of the shame of counting your days and allows you to move forward.
00:12:55.600 --> 00:13:04.240
So a using episode becomes a photo in the album with a note on the back, hopefully about what it taught you, learning experience.
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Just another page in the book.
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It's feedback.
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It's not a verdict of who you are.
00:13:12.720 --> 00:13:22.960
And it's the difference between I must stop using myth and the real, real, real question underneath it, which is, how do I live in peace?
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How do I find peace right now, no matter when the last time it is I used, and move on from there?
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How do I live as my best and highest version?
00:13:33.360 --> 00:13:36.480
So let's beat this metaphor to fucking death.
00:13:36.799 --> 00:13:45.759
Back in the olden days of my day, we used to have those photo albums in plain sight in the living room, on the den on the coffee table, right?
00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:48.159
It was such a good way to invite friends.
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Like you want to review a vacation, you want to see your photo photo, your wedding photos, get to know each other better.
00:13:54.559 --> 00:14:02.159
You know, the boyfriend comes over and the mom shows you, shows him the kids' pictures or your kid pictures or whatever.
00:14:02.480 --> 00:14:12.159
What would the photo album contain if you had a photo album that was labeled my self-concept?
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If you could show that to somebody you met, what would it have in it?
00:14:17.039 --> 00:14:21.600
How would you chronicle the story of who you are?
00:14:23.519 --> 00:14:29.279
And would you show them page after page of you smoking a pipe and crying in a pillow?
00:14:30.720 --> 00:14:33.919
Would every page be doom, gloom, and sorrow?
00:14:34.080 --> 00:14:35.679
Let me show you I'm an addict.
00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:39.679
Would it be a true reflection of who you are and your story?
00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:43.120
You are somebody who has experience with chemsex.
00:14:43.360 --> 00:14:46.399
Some pages show you hugging your friend after a crying session.
00:14:46.559 --> 00:14:49.919
Some pages show you running in the park feeling hopeful and grateful.
00:14:50.159 --> 00:14:54.960
Some pages you're leaving work satisfied, a job well done, you got a lot of sleep.
00:14:55.759 --> 00:15:04.639
Some pages may show you walking into a treatment center, or smoking that pipe, or staring out the window wondering, what the hell did I do with my life?
00:15:06.080 --> 00:15:13.600
Maybe someone who looked at the reality of your life would say, You are someone who sometimes uses chems.
00:15:14.159 --> 00:15:18.879
And looking at this album, you're on the pathway to stopping.
00:15:19.200 --> 00:15:20.720
That's the truth.
00:15:22.480 --> 00:15:26.879
But they won't come to that conclusion if they're given an edited photo album.
00:15:28.480 --> 00:15:35.120
This is the time for you to accept the totality of who you are and where you are.
00:15:35.360 --> 00:15:39.840
And I'm telling you, it is exactly where you're supposed to be.
00:15:40.159 --> 00:15:50.559
And when you come to that conclusion that you have upsides and you have downsides, and you accept the real truth of that statement, then you can love yourself fully.
00:15:50.720 --> 00:15:52.559
You can accept all of you.
00:15:52.799 --> 00:15:59.120
Then you can be set free from the shit and find the wholeness inside to move forward.
00:15:59.360 --> 00:16:10.639
Zoom out, zoom out right now at your whole life and give yourself a fucking break from this day count and see the beauty of the whole picture.
00:16:11.120 --> 00:16:21.279
I want you to decide today to change yourself concept and know you are strong, you are blessed, and you are chem sex free.
00:16:22.320 --> 00:16:28.720
You get to choose which album sits on the shelf or on the coffee table.
00:16:28.960 --> 00:16:30.000
You get to choose.
00:16:30.399 --> 00:16:35.679
This also takes repetition because your brain is going to resist you at first.
00:16:35.840 --> 00:16:38.639
It wants to back up your feelings.
00:16:38.879 --> 00:16:41.200
It wants to back up whatever you've told it.
00:16:41.279 --> 00:16:42.240
I'm a piece of shit.
00:16:42.320 --> 00:16:43.679
I'm a key, I'm an addict.
00:16:43.840 --> 00:16:46.799
That's what it wants, that's the only pictures you'll see.
00:16:47.039 --> 00:16:49.200
Your brain's going to resist it at first.
00:16:49.840 --> 00:16:53.279
But you have to force yourself to look at all the pages.
00:16:53.600 --> 00:16:57.600
You have to force yourself to begin changing this self-concept.
00:16:59.279 --> 00:17:07.920
So that brain will keep reaching, like, you know, for that old decrepit album that you've edited and curated as showing all the ways you're terrible.
00:17:08.559 --> 00:17:11.039
But you have to integrate them both.
00:17:14.079 --> 00:17:14.720
Wow.
00:17:14.880 --> 00:17:16.400
I hope this helps you.
00:17:16.640 --> 00:17:17.759
I hope it helped today.
00:17:17.839 --> 00:17:18.799
I hope it made sense.
00:17:18.960 --> 00:17:19.920
Tell me in the comments.
00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:21.519
I'd love to hear from you.
00:17:21.839 --> 00:17:24.000
And I will see you next week.
