What is Chemsex?

Get answers to this unique gay culture phenomenon 

Chemsex. This is a buzzword that I have been hearing a lot of lately. Both in the news and in my office. So what is chemsex and why is everyone talking about it?

According to therapist /activist David Stewart, who is the first to coin the term “chemsex”, the term is uniquely a gay culture phenomenon. Combining drugs like crystal meth, mephedrone or GHB/GBL specifically for the purpose of gay sex.

But why is it just a term used for gay sex and why is it now becoming so prevalent is society? 

Let’s first take a look at dopamine, which is a feel good neurotransmitter( a brain messenger). Dopamine is associated with pleasures, rewards and most things that make us feel good. Dopamine is also a factor in motor, mood and decision  making and can be associated in some mental disorders.

Dopamine is released when you are expecting a reward (think of good sex or baked cookies). Just the thought or smell can start to release dopamine. Now that will continue to rise as you partake in the act (either having good sex or eating fresh cookies). But if your beard is taken away (maybe you have erectile dysfunction or someone ate all the cookies) your dopamine levels will fall below normal leaving you in a funk or even causing depression and can make you want said reward all the more, causing a vicious cycle.(This has an even more effect due to dopamine acting with serotonin and adrenaline).

How does this effect sex and meth? Dopamine is usually at a 100% output. Food can raise that to a 150%, sex can raise that to a 200% (two times the natural baseline), Nicotine is around 225%, Cocaine raise this to 350%, and Meth takes our dopamine levels past 1000%!!!!

Terry Gatgewood certified sex addiction therapist and founder of Blue Tiger Recovery, sent me a video by UCLA ISAP explaining how exactly meth works “Meth enters the blood stream and travels to the reward center of the brain where it invades the neurons …meth causes dopamine to unnaturally leak into the neuron then spill into the synapse then blocks transporters that recycle dopamine back into the sending neurons… this keeps levels abnormally high which over stimulates our brains. Giving us a powerful rush of pleasure,lasting 8-12 hours.”

Now we can see why the cycle happens. We are use to a certain level (100%) then we spike 10X that level , then we drop below our normal level and fall into depression. This added with side effects of withdrawal can be too much for some to handle.

So lets get back to why there is this phenomenon in the gay world called chemsex. Through my sex coaching practice, as well as research online and in person with experts, I believe that the reason chemsex is so popular in the gay community is do to it’s extreme “high” which leads to feelings of ecstasy and forgetting oneself. Many gay men have lived a life of fear, shame and lack of self-acceptance, they want to forget who they are and their past, yet they want to feel connected. Many find sex as a way to connect, even if it is brief (Many of my clients prefer the brevity of a one nightstand so no-one will know the real them). In the short term, meth feels like it is helping release inhibitions and allowing their own judgement of themselves to leave their mind. So, feeling free mixed with a form of connectedness, is a potent cocktail many gay men find hard to resist. But in reality meth will make all your problems much worse because you have to come down at some point or die.

It is important to remember that there is help out there and there are alternatives to getting “high”.  Sex in itself can be taken to extremes and be an amazing high all by itself. And many former addicts tell me after they get clean and get their bodies back to some form of homeostasis they can get an amazing high from working out, meditating or through simply having new life experiences.