“I lost control pretty quickly”: these chemsex fans who are now having a hard time giving it up

“My first rail broke barriers at home.” A few months ago, Logan was unaware of “chesmex.” Until his new boyfriend proposes to her. 3-MMC (sometimes promoted as a cheaper alternative to cocaine)) during intercourse.

Since this discovery last September, the life of the 21-year-old has been marked by “Chemsex” sessions, sexual relations under stimulating or euphoric products. – a highly publicized practice after the traffic accident of Pierre Palmade.

Under these conditions, “sex is 10 times better,” says Logan. “As soon as I take it, my desire is multiplied by ten,” describes the young Alsatian. “I want to jump on the person in front of me. And then I feel a deep well-being, I no longer have any pain.”

“We no longer see time pass”

A few years ago, her boyfriend Hugo started in the same way, at the age of 19. “I was with an older man at the time, who offered to try me out to make me more comfortable, because I’m quite a private person and he thought he had to work really hard to open me up to the world,” he describes.

“And that changed everything: suddenly I wasn’t afraid anymore, more pain, sex could last for hours and hours,” he says. “We no longer see time pass.”

“Often it is a starting point: we resort to chemsex because we seek pleasure and we want to break with loneliness”, analyzes Fred Bladou, in charge of prevention and reduction of risks linked to sex. Helpers Associationwho fights against HIV and discrimination against HIV-positive people.

disinhibition

“Substances give the impression of being dominated, wanting to communicate with others and party,” explains the specialist to BFMTV.com, who specifies that chemsex followers are mostly men with relationships with men.

14% of them had practiced chemsex during the previous year, according to the report of the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction published in 2019.

“People will then feel very alive: any feeling of fatigue disappears and everything that we could normally forbid ourselves for many reasons, we will allow them.”

However, the substances consumed during a chemsex session are not without their health risks, stresses AIDS information serviceRemember that these can cause cardiovascular or cardiorespiratory problems, overdose, loss of consciousness, panic attacks, depressive disorders and suicidal thoughts… Without forgetting the risks of STI transmission.

From occasional use to addiction

At 23, Hugo admits to having “an ambivalent relationship” with chemsex. On the one hand, he believes that he has a “reasoned” consumption, which has “helped him a lot” in terms of his sexuality. “With moderate doses, we are not making a full recovery,” he says. “I have almost no side effects: my lows (phases of decline in the effects of the psychoactive substance, editor’s note) are not violent, nothing,” the young man confessed.

If “studies show that 3 out of 10 chemsexers may encounter difficulties (psychosocial, financial, sexual) linked to their practice”, Fred Bladou would like to point out that “60 to 70% of them also have a controlled consumption and who doesn’t don’t let themselves overwhelm by their consumption”

“Just as there are people who drink a glass of alcohol from time to time, there are chemsexers who do a 4-hour session every quarter and will never have any problem,” he says.

At the same time, “others will switch to these addictive behaviors, develop very severe addictions, perhaps to the point of breaking down.”

Hugo also calls for “caution”. He tries to space out the sessions as much as possible, with a limit of 2 or 3 drinks a month to “leave his body a bit calm” and “give him time to return to normal”. He also avoids mixing with alcohol and is prohibited from passing the slam course -the consumption of intravenous psychostimulants-.

Boundaries that her boyfriend Logan finds harder to set. Since September, the young man drinks several times a week, even every day. His downs are more violent than those of his friend: punctuated by “anxiety”, “nervousness” and “frustration”.

“After a few days without, I’m only in a hurry: go shopping to have the pleasure of feeling again, of feeling free,” confesses Logan, who works as a clairvoyant in the Alsatian region. .

He acknowledges that these sessions involve “a fucking budget”: from 180 to 200 euros per week.

In the thread of “happy consumption”

The two men are aware of the addictive side of these sexual relations under substances. “Sexually, I still manage to do without, but it’s admittedly clearly not that great,” Logan admits.

He also knows that these sessions have made him miss obligations, friendly, family or professional on several occasions. “Sometimes I cancel my doctor or client appointments or family gatherings because I don’t feel like going out…You just risk ruining this high or low moment.”

Nicolas* was 18 years old when he discovered chemsex through gay dating apps, when he came to Paris to study. Six years later, he no longer wants to hear about it.

“I had a moderate and happy consumption for a year, and the rest were 3 years of galleys,” explains the young man, who used to mix alcohol, ecstasy and GHB, to BFMTV.com.

“At first, I felt like I had found something that suited me,” he recalls. “A very handsome boy proposes to me, I let myself be tempted because I feel that I have access to something exclusive. And so it didn’t have a negative impact on my life: I was giving it to myself, it helped me compensate for my stressful studies.”

Access to substances that raises questions

The young man, now a public sector executive, recalls “losing control pretty quickly.” “I started to increase the frequency and there was nothing around it. In the end, I started injecting and then the addiction was much more frontal. I could wake up on Saturday morning, at 8 am, and want to get high,” he says. Nicolás, who managed to get out of this spiral thanks to anonymous support groups for drug traffickers.

This spiral is precisely the reason why Fred Bladou refuses to fall into “angelism”.

“To say that these practices are risk-free would be lying to people,” he explains. “From the moment we exceed a limit that we had set for ourselves, it can go very fast.

In his day-to-day life, this Aides specialist is concerned with “working on risk reduction rather than cancellation”. To do this, he recommends that chemsexers know the products they consume well, in order to consume them in the correct doses. “But most of all,” he insists, “don’t forget to have an extra life. Chemsex shouldn’t take precedence over everything else.”

“It’s the accessibility to these substances that we need to talk about,” said Loïc Michaud, a former fan interviewed on the BFMTV set. “Today you can order them very easily online and they arrive in your mailboxes. It’s possible because they are designed in Asia, in the Netherlands, in Poland, and designers are always one step ahead of the legislator: they manage to change the molecule of the product so that it stays on the nails.”

Jean-Luc Romero, deputy mayor of Paris whose husband died in 2018 during a chemsex session, welcomes that the issue is finally being addressed publicly. However, he regrets having resurfaced in relation to something “unhealthy and moralizing”, due to the accident caused by Pierre Palmade. “In chemsex, it’s not people who kill other people,” he concludes.

* The first name has been changed, at the request of the interested party.