More feelings, endurance — and danger to life: What makes CHEMSEX so dangerous

Prakash W. knows all about the big feelings. “People feel like heaven when they have sex on these drugs,” says the 39-year-old. By “these drugs” he means substances like crystal meth. He used to take them himself regularly during sexual intercourse. But heaven can be followed by hell. So-called chemsex is a game of vabanque.

The British David Stuart coined the term in 2001, and the word refers to the use of special synthetic drugs during or before sexual intercourse. According to Holger Wicht of the German Aids Association, Chemsex users hope for more fulfillment, more stamina, more self-confidence. But the desire for more can be difficult. In the search for more intense feelings, those affected often increase their dose more and more. “There are more and more men who have problems because of their substance consumption,” says Wicht. In doctors’ practices and counseling centers, there has been a sharp increase in the number of inquiries about this.

Sex on drugs

According to Wicht, besides crystal meth, other amphetamines, the euphoric mephedrone, GHB and its precursor GBL are also consumed at Chemsex. The latter — also known in the scene as “liquid ecstasy” or simply “G” (pronounced: Ji) — are considered particularly dangerous because of their difficult dosage and can cause respiratory paralysis and circulatory shock. Chemsex users take the substances voluntarily because they hope to be stimulated. However, GHB and GBL are also abused as a rape drug when they are mixed into drinks as knockout drops against people’s will.

Love act with intoxication: This idea has been around since ancient times. But in contrast to champagne binges and pleasures between marijuana smoke clouds, amphetamines can cause more serious damage, according to Anne Iking: they quickly lead to addiction, they provoke coups to wake up for days on end, suppress the feeling of thirst — “that can quickly become life-threatening,” says the Therapeutic Head of Addiction at the Salus Clinic in Hürth near Cologne.

In 2015, the rehabilitation facility developed what is, according to Iking, the only inpatient treatment concept in Germany specifically for chemsex: “The men hardly find themselves in classic addiction care because they do not define themselves as addicts,” says King. In Hürth, up to 15 patients with diagnosed drug addiction are in therapy. The aim of this therapy is abstinence: the accustomed alliance between sex and consumer drugs is to be broken. This usually takes up to 26 weeks. In comparison: alcoholics stay in the addiction clinic for about 15 weeks during the initial treatment.

The Chemsex patients at the Salus Clinic are men who have sex with men. The practice is particularly common among gays. Some heterosexuals appreciate sex with substances, says King. But these heterosexuals are less likely to have sex with men than some homosexuals. King suspects that experiences of exclusion or a perceived loss of attractiveness when using drugs could play a role for gays.

Prakash W. himself moves in the gay scene and describes the attractiveness of chemsex: “Sexuality has a high status and identification value here and is associated with a certain pressure to perform.

Disinhibition as a danger

However, the maximum disinhibition is not only motivation but also determines the risk of chemsex: 60 percent of Iking’s patients are HIV positive, in some cases, the infection was a direct result of chemsex. According to the experts, drug use can be accompanied by loss of control and lax use of condoms and the risk of infection with sexually transmitted diseases increases.

According to Holger Wicht of the AIDS Hilfe, Chemsex practitioners are particularly targeted by the so-called PrEP, pre-exposure prophylaxis, a relatively new method of preventing infection with the AIDS pathogen HIV. This is a relatively new method of preventing infection with HIV. HIV-negative people take a drug to protect themselves against infection with HIV.

The AIDS Hilfe estimates the proportion of homo- and bisexual men who have sex always or almost always under stimulating substances to be up to 20 percent in larger cities. The queer Berlin scene magazine “Siegessäule” wrote in its December issue: “You can say it all right: In many places in Berlin’s nightlife nothing happens without drugs and especially for many gays substance consumption has become a significant part of good sex.

The red-red-green state government of Berlin now wants to enable a so-called drug-checking in the capital, where consumers can legally have party drugs purchased on the black market checked for dosage and purity. The idea behind this kind of accepting drug work: if consumers are already using drugs, they should at least be informed to be able to reduce risks.

Chemsex also in rural areas

However, Chemsex is not only a phenomenon of metropolises with vibrant party culture. Prakash W. is now running prevention programs for the AIDS charity throughout Germany. In his opinion, the desire for more and more kick during sex is also problematic for residents of rural areas.

According to the University Hospital in Tübingen, the Swabian Alb and Lake Constance in southwest Germany are two of the most popular areas. In December, the clinic opened an outpatient consultation hour, which is intended to offer affected people from the entire metropolitan area a contact point and anonymous exchange. According to Carsten Käfer, addiction physician at the University Hospital in Tübingen, psychoses, depression, organ damage, and even fatal overdoses can be the consequences of the consumption of synthetic drugs.

After years of complete abstinence, Prakash W. is now occasionally having sex under drugs again. The meditation teacher calls himself a “controlled user”. Carsten Käfer considers this to be a contradiction in terms: “Controlled consumption is not possible. It’s like dancing on a volcanic crater.”