New Chemsex Study Examines the Prevalence of Drug-Fueled Sex

Popular gay hookup site Squirt.org has found chemsex, also known as Party and Play (PNP) or drug-fueled sex, is prevalent with 30 percent of survey respondents admitting that they have engaged in the activity.
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The study, which surveyed 22,248 Squirt.org members, also showed that despite widespread usage of illicit drugs during sex, only about 39 percent of respondents said they would consider engaging in chemsex while 61 percent said they would not.
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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."
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"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.
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"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 percent of respondents said they remembered everything to mostly everything and 10 percent said they recalled half of their experience. Only 4 percent said they remembered almost nothing. The remaining 0.5 percent recalled nothing of the experience. The survey also showed that during chemsex 51 percent of men did not use protection during anal sex and 93 percent did not use protection during oral sex.

The drug of choice for study participants was crystal meth (36 percent), followed by marijuana (19 percent), cocaine (13 percent), and MDMA, better known as ecstasy (11 percent).
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