HIM Magazine No.15 (English)

Lifestyle 32
As it turned out, there are several reasons
why gay guys repeatedly resort to it: an
intense high, a higher sense of pleasure,
a stronger sense of belonging and the
reduction of sexual inhibitions are the
four most frequently cited motives. In the
view of many health experts, the study
comes just at the right time, because drug
use in the gay community is on the rise
again, which is why the EU drug strategy
2021-2025 recently explicitly included
LGBTQ people for the first time.
Research director Thijs Albers wanted
to delve deeper into the subject matter
and therefore, together with colleagues
at Utrecht University, devoted his study
entitled “Meth, Sex, Health and Pleasure”
to the topics of chemsex, the gay community
and slamming.
To this end, the team of experts interviewed
gay and bisexual men between the
ages of 22 and 75 - including both singles
and couples, men from the countryside as
well as from the big city. The goal is clear:
to be able to offer better adequate support
and to improve prevention measures.
Put simply, the better you understand
chemsex friends, the more likely you are
to be able to meet them at eye level and
offer help when needed. No coercion, no
paternalism, but direct contact and an
understanding of possible motives.
“Since I stopped using, I'm still in contact
with friends from my user network.
That's a problem. Building a new circle
of friends. When I heard someone say at
a meeting that they used to do chemsex
too, I immediately thought, yeah, let's
exchange numbers, then maybe we can
help each other, or it was my addiction
thought, there you go. (30 years)
“
I am afraid that I will lose my contacts. Looking for other
activities, it‘s not easy to build a new circle of friends. I know
people who use it from time to time, and then I would have to
stop seeing them too, even though we have a friendship, and I
think that‘s pretty hard. (61 years)