I feel you man, I cant stand hotpot, so I had to live on some not so spicy dishes, chinese food from other areas, or lao wai food. For cheap decent food, Many CQ locals go to CSC, its like a CQ mcdonalds, actually not bad, and not very spicy at all. As for dishes at local restaurants, i would usually stick with a few safe dishes ( my pingyin is horrible so excuse me ) Yu shung ro si ( like a sweet and sour fried pork slices thingy.. Or the kung pao chicken my friend.
Also, the next time your friends enforce the thrice weekly hotpot session, switch it up... theres a restaurant called yum yum, all over the place ( many times next to CSC!) where they do individual hot pots, and they have non spicy! like a chicken soup hot pot, healthier and far better in my books!

I agree with the Yue Xiang Rou Si (literally fish-smelling meat), and my other favorite.. Yue Xiang qie zi! (Fish-smelling eggplant). mm so good. I also like:

Twice cooked pork (hui gou rou) 回锅肉
Dan dan noodles (Dan dan mian) 担担面
Kung pao chicken (Gong bao ji ding) 宫保鸡丁
Sweet and sour pork (Gu lao rou)古老肉 or just (tang cu)
Fried rice (chao fan) 炒饭
Any kind of dumplings (Jiao zi) 饺子

Yum! If you ever come to Chengdu let me know!

You can get some great shui jiao chongqing style, a spicy dumpling soup.

Or if you sweet talking the right cook, you can get gong bao ji ding chao fan. Yeah you heard that right, fried rice cooked with kung pao chicken.

And thought you already mentions hotpot, you always have chuan chuan, the poor man's hotpot. You pick skewers of what you want to eat from the bins along the wall, cook them in your tables hotpot, and then they charge you a few jiao for each skewer you have at the end.

Yeah you can try some CHong qing spicy noodles. If you don't like hotpot that much your best alternative could be there spicy noodles...

 Besides that. I think tie ban shao is a good ideas.