00:00It's strange how when the world hates the sex you're having, how you can internalize
00:14that and it can ruin your experience of gay sex.
00:18And so if that population struggling to enjoy gay sex was suddenly exposed to drugs that
00:26served that purpose, wow, they would take them up in very large numbers.
00:31And they have.
00:33And it's called chemsex.
00:37Catenones, crystal methamphetamine and GHB, GBL.
00:52So it's usually those three kinds of drugs that became incredibly popular via gay hookup
00:58apps and have pretty much defined our own drug use epidemic.
01:04I was first introduced to chemsex at the age of 24.
01:07There was a period of quite heavy usage specifically with crystal meth, which was that drug and
01:14everybody has that thing that's like hits the spot and that's what worked for me.
01:20I was a little bit lonely at the time.
01:22I was in my very formative years still figuring out myself.
01:27And then suddenly with chemsex, you could let go of any inhibitions.
01:31You had the drugs available to you.
01:33You had a sense of community that came with it.
01:36Suddenly had access to all these guys and all these experiences that were out of your
01:41reach beforehand.
01:43And I think a big seductive part of the experience was the fact that I was no longer isolated,
01:53that I had a community all of a sudden.
01:55It was so easy to make as well.
01:57All you have to do is have drugs with you.
02:07It changed the life of gay men immediately from underground, from cruising areas, from
02:12dark and black painted windows, sort of pubs in secret and shame or not being able to say
02:19you're gay and trying to figure out and signals if someone else is gay.
02:22So it was very much a burst of gay sexual liberation in tech format.
02:29Those apps were, some in particular, were being used to propagate new drugs.
02:34Gay men have always preferred socializing drugs to sort of introverted ones like heroin
02:41and crack cocaine.
02:42They've always preferred drugs that help you connect and commune.
02:45And that kind of makes sense considering quite a lot of gay men and other people sort of
02:49very isolated within their own families or keeping secrets at school or ashamed to come
02:54out.
02:55And so they're looking for community.
02:56It becomes a very urgent human need.
02:59And so they find drugs that help deliver that need.
03:11Let me demystify some of the myths.
03:15I think some people think that it's an organized thing where you get an invitation, wow, they're
03:20in Grindr in the post and you get a bottle of wine and you go to someone's house at a
03:23certain time and there's a group of people there and you all have sex with one big orgy
03:26which has a beginning and a finish date.
03:29And no, that just doesn't happen.
03:31Nearly all chem sex is one-on-one sex, but because the chems, particularly crystal meth,
03:37keeps you awake for a very long time.
03:40Very few people do chem sex for less than two days.
04:02In London, two gay men die every month from a G overdose in a chem sex context.
04:08And that's happening in other cities around the world too.
04:09It's not always being recorded.
04:10But when I was trying to find help, I kept being sent to heroin addiction services, which
04:17are brilliant and there's great staff that work in them, but they're really familiar
04:20with those contexts of street homelessness, often the crime, the physical addiction and
04:24the descent into chaos that happens so quickly and dramatically with heroin, crack cocaine.
04:30I needed people that understood gay sex, hookup apps, the role of HIV and AIDS in the last
04:3830 years in our lives, the role of religion and gay sex in our lives that makes it kind
04:42of complicated.
04:44The role of so many straight people thinking gay sex is disgusting and internalizing that
04:49to gay men are disproportionately affected by having problems with sex.
04:54Not being gay, this is not people medicating homosexuality.
05:00Straight people wave flags at gay pride marches.
05:02We have legal rights.
05:04We're not medicating homosexuality.
05:05We're medicating gay sex.
05:07The cultural competence that is held within the word chem sex, which is why the word chem
05:15sex came into being and it was adopted and it shifted chem sex support out of heroin
05:20addiction services and into places where gay sex is discussed really easily, like sexual
05:26health clinics and gay charities.
05:28I think the idea of harm reduction is to not give people solutions, but help them make
05:36self-realizations to a level that it feels comfortable and right for them.
05:40I don't think my life was balanced when I was doing chem sex, when I was indulging in
05:47it to a level that was problematic.
05:54You forgetting your friends and your family members and all of that starts imploding.
05:58If anyone listening is experiencing sort of chem sex issues and they want to do it, don't
06:04go necessarily to your addiction services.
06:08Find somewhere where gay sex is better understood.
06:10That might be a better starting point to find support around chem sex.
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