Chemsex is the crisis quietly killing gay men across Europe’s cities – in London alone, the Metropolitan Police estimate that one person dies every three weeks from chemsex-related causes. Yet, a worrying and familiar silence continues to shroud the endemic problems exacerbating the emergency.
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‘Chemsex’, ‘high and horny’, ‘party and play’: phrases that quietly loom over the queer community. The widespread availability of GHB, mephedrone and crystal meth (colloquially known as Tina) is easily seen on Grindr, while seshing for days at a time is considered banal at this point. But how did we get here? And why are so many people taking dangerous chemical drugs during sexual encounters? GAY45 interviewed Ignacio Labayen de Inza, a specialist who works for the organisation Controlling Chemsex; Lucky (identity anonymised), an ex-chemsex user; and Lucas Moreno, a sex worker, about the rising issue of chemsex in queer circles.
Lucky is a Manchester-based business owner and an ex-chemsex user. Meeting at his apartment, we discussed his experiences experimenting with chemsex and how it has become commonplace within the gay community – to the point that it’s spoken about casually among gay and bisexual men, even during intimate moments.
“The last person who tried to fist me,” starts Lucky, “literally said ‘oh, if you are like this when you are sober, I can only imagine what you would have been like when you were high,” and this was a weird conversation to have.” According to researcher Jamie Hakim in his article ‘Critical Chemsex Studies: Interrogating Cultures of Sexualised Drug Use Beyond the Risk Paradigm’ , the element of “[drug] administration” acts as an arousing component and a “key to the scripting and particular pleasure of sex.” The idea of taking drugs during sex is just as thrilling as the act of sex itself because a guaranteed effect is factored in. Lucky agreed with this statement: “there were nine of us in my apartment, and we found it hot that we were all going to take G[HB] at the same time, and come up and have really good sex.”
Lucky used to host chemsex parties as a way to wind down and became familiar with both the chemsex scene and those who partook. “I bet you could go down the grid on Grindr and 30% I’d say is people that I’ve seen at chillouts, and they’re clumped together so you know exactly what they’re doing,” he says. “I think [chemsex] is so multilayered as you have enjoyment [from] the drugs and sex but I don’t know if that’s the main side. For me, chemsex was a search for intimacy.”
Ignacio Labayen de Inza, a chemsex specialist who works with Controlling Chemsex, shared the same sentiments as Lucky. “99% of my clients,” he explains, “mention loneliness and intimacy when they speak to us. Users believe that if they stop, they’ll have no one.” However, it seems to be a paradoxical problem as some users continue to search constantly for that sense of community, even while at chemsex parties. “I’ve seen people naked at some chillouts, just on Grindr scrolling and looking for even more validation from more guys, even when surrounded by such hot guys,” says Lucky. Hakim has penned another article, ‘The Rise of Chemsex: Queering Collective Intimacy in Neoliberal London,’ in which he echoes Lucky’s belief: “chemsex is a way for some…gay and bisexual men to experience a sense of unabashed collectivity,” writes Hakim. In other words, chemsex replaces loneliness with a temporary, uninhibited, and fleshy sense of community.
Chemsex is such a nuanced issue as it isn’t just about how drugs enhance sexual pleasure, but about the pleasures and new personalities that drug consumption produces, too. That feeling of being judged for things like what you want from sex, how long you last, or even being an inability to get an erection: these are insecurities that disappear under the chemical fog of GHB or Tina. “I had a client once who looked pretty rough”, recalled Labayen de Inza, “he said that he plays the dominant, rough role in sex and [that] chems make him feel selfish… people like that because that is what they expect from [him]. But, what [he wanted] to have is intimacy.”
The client continued by saying: “I don’t remember the last time I had sex for me because I always feel like I’m performing.”
It’s difficult to only focus on one aspect of the issue, as explained by Labayen de Inza. He discussed having a client who is addicted to cocaine as a sexual stimulant. “If a drug and alcohol service were to be with him to address his cocaine issues, they would forget the sex and the difficulties with intimacy, they won’t be able to help with that problem. It’s why chemsex isn’t just a drug problem – it’s more complicated than that.”
Sex can be daunting, and even though sexuality is well embraced within the queer community, there seems to be a disconnect caused by a focus on self-image over pleasure. Lucky concurred and discussed how taking drugs during sex removed internal barriers for him which held him back from genuine connection. “I’ve got sexual trauma, and chemsex was a way of overcoming that… the drugs would quieten down the trauma, so I could have sex.”
I noticed Lucky slump back into the sofa. He stopped for a moment to breathe in. “I finally felt good at [sex] and got an obvious validation from it, from myself and others, and when you’re high it feels so good. People who didn’t want to have sex with you suddenly do, but you don’t think about why because you’re high.”
Drugs lower inhibition, which is a core piece in the chemsex puzzle. Labayen de Inza agreed: “After doing chemsex drugs like Tina or GHB, the world gets a little bit less complicated. You can look in a mirror and go ‘woah I am so sexy, everyone finds me so hot, look at my body,’ even though if you take a picture and look at it a week later, you may look really tired and skinny from being up for so long. But, at that moment, you feel like a sexy superstar.”
Lucas Moreno discussed this in the context of the adult content industry and highlighted the normalisation of drugs like Trimix, injected into the penis to maintain erections, which help portray a ‘fantasy.’”‘I’m sympathetic to viagra,” he says, “as it is medically tested. But I have experienced it several times where I meet with another creator, and we are on location then they drop how they’re going to inject themselves.”
He prefaced how he had never engaged in chemsex directly but he recognises how, in Barcelona, “it is kept very quiet and very private.” Moreno relays the same feelings on how chemsex seems to be trying to “fill an emotional void” as people search for intimacy. Yet, chemsex also holds that intimacy back. “People can get so high at these parties,” Moreno continues, “they forget who they have even seen or got with at these parties…sex becomes depersonalised when these people become extreme with these drugs.”
Moreno emphasises how he doesn’t want to shame those who engage in chemsex and feels very lucky that he has been able to explore sexually without the use of chems. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m into kinky stuff and fucking people anonymously but, a lot of the time, people are not in the right mindspace and because of that, there is shame. So, they take chems, as they don’t want to be judged.”
Labayen De Inza says that “chemsex is pretty” as it can give you what you want in that moment, but can also “take all of it away from you” so much, as it is difficult to keep everything separate when it consumes your life. He has had clients “who are high in the corporate ladder” and who receive more pleasure and validation from being able “to hold a fist than from their work.” The enhanced pleasure and impact of drugs leads to craving those sensations more, but it also comes at a cost, as expressed by Lucky: “you open a door and it may let a lot of good in, but also a lot of other stuff. For me that was an addiction and problems with maintaining an erection.”
Moreno attested to this: “mixing sex, which is something that is naturally pleasurable, with something artificial like chems, is very dangerous. The sexual pleasure becomes numb and is replaced by this artificial dependency, leading to things like erectile dysfunction.”
On paper, chemsex seems to be the answer for many to negate an issue such as a lack of self-confidence, but it merely acts as a plaster on a stab wound. The extreme use of drugs during sex is leading to deaths within the queer community – and they’re only increasing. Queer people shouldn’t have to teeter on the edge to derive pleasure, only to get punished.
London’s Metropolitan Police currently estimate that, in the English capital alone, one person dies every three weeks from ingesting chemical drugs for sexual stimulation. “From my perspective, the dangers of [chemsex] are the biggest tragedy in the gay community since the HIV and AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s,” says Labayen de Inza. “Chemsex is subtle,” he argues, something reflected in the lack of official public data on its death count – and the absence of a drive to investigate further. “I believe [the figure] is much more than that,” he says – and, until the public silence and stigma around queer intimacy and chemical use is unbuilt, an issue that has long worsened LGBTQ+ emergencies, we may never know the true number, nor how to properly address it.
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