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Chemsex Statistics May Be Over Sensationalized by Mainstream Media According to Experts On Trends in LGBT Community
TORONTO (January 5, 2017) – Popular gay hookup site Squirt.org has found chemsex, also known as Party and Play (PNP) or drug-fueled sex, is prevalent with 30% of survey respondents admitting that they have engaged in the activity.
The study, which surveyed 22,248 Squirt.org members, also showed that despite widespread usage of illicit drugs during sex, only about 39% of respondents said they would consider engaging in chemsex while 61% said they would not.
Dr.Bourne, who recently interviewed with the prominent Gay News Network (GNN) after the release of his statements emphasizing the sensationalization of chemsex reports, expressed that "Chemsex is something we have to remain vigilant about, but we also have to be wary of drawing simple conclusions without considering the right evidence. Only a small minority of gay men use drugs on a regular basis, and only a minority of those do so in a sexual context."
"We wanted to provide our members very important information about chemsex within the gay and bisexual community," said Attila Szatmari, Digital Business Director for Pink Triangle Press, Squirt.org's parent company. "We now have statistics from real people showing infrequent participation in chemsex, not this hyper-usage that seems to be reported in mainstream media."
The Victorian AIDS Council (VAC) has recently called for greater awareness of the needs of LGBTI people within mainstream alcohol and other drug (AOD) services, in addition to increased funding for LGBTI-specific AOD services.
"The reality is mainstream AOD services will continue to provide most of the treatment for LGBTI people, and those services do need greater awareness of LGBTI issues. But a lot of people don’t feel comfortable accessing a mainstream service—we also need better funded LGBTI-specific services," Bourne commented. Squirt.org took on this survey with the intention to provide a safe place for its members to share. One survey section asked members about protection and recollection of their experience. When asked how much they remember from their chemsex encounters, 85.5% of respondents said they remembered everything to mostly everything and 10% said they recalled half of their experience. Only 4% said they remembered almost nothing. The remaining 0.5% recalled nothing of the experience. The survey also showed that during chemsex 51% of men did not use protection during anal sex and 93% did not use protection during oral sex.
The drug of choice for study participants was crystal meth (36%), followed by marijuana (19%), cocaine (13%), and MDMA, better known as ecstasy (11%).
Complete results of the study as well as a video outlining the survey results are available at http://www.squirt.org/press/chemsex.
The Squirt.org study comes after a survey of about 8,500 gay men by European Centre for Diseases Prevention and Control (ECDC) showed 11% of respondents were HIV positive. However, only 51% responded to the question about their HIV status. The study was conducted by the ECDC as part of the implementation of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), an antiretroviral drug meant to prevent HIV.
"Our goal in providing this data to our members was to show that above all, we care about them and want them to be properly informed. Our website also acts as a knowledge hub for resources on PrEP, protection and unprotected sex. We encourage our users to get as much information as possible and decide based on their comfort level how far they are willing to go," Szatmari said.
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