‘Chemsex’ risk messages should target all, says survey

LONDON: Combining sex and drugs is common among all genders and sexual orientations, with people in Britain more likely to engage in the practice than Americans, Australians or other Europeans, according to a global survey.

The findings suggest that messages about reducing potential harm from the practice – including overdosing, date rape and the risk of sexually transmitted diseases – should be targeted at all genders and sexual groups, researchers said.

The findings, published yesterday in The Journal of Sexual

Medicine, showed that alcohol, cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy, or MDMA, are the drugs most commonly combined with sex, and that users say MDMA in particular enhances “intimacy”.

Survey respondents from Britain were the most likely to combine drugs with sex – known as “chemsex” – as compared with America, other European countries, Australia and Canada.

And while people of different sexual orientations reported engaging in substance-linked sex, gay and bisexual men were more likely to have done so.

“While using drugs in combination with and to specifically enhance the sexual experience tends to be associated with gay and bisexual men, we found that in our sample, men and women of all sexual orientations engaged in this behaviour,” said Will Lawn, an expert at University College London’s Psychology & Language Sciences department who co-led the research.

He said this highlighted the need for harm-reduction messages to be targeted to all groups, and not just towards gay and bisexual men.

“By engaging with your audience and accepting that drugs provide pleasure as well as harms, you can deliver harm reduction messages in a more trustworthy and nuanced manner,” Lawn said.