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Abstract

Chemsex has received increasing scholarly attention over the past few years and is frequently defined as the sexualised use of synthetic drugs. There is an emerging binary within the literature on chemsex that portrays it as either inherently risky or liberatory. This binary assumes that chemsex is a stable category of sex and always involves integrating ‘dangerous’ synthetic substances into sex. Drawing from interviews with 16 gay/queer men and individuals who identified with the gay community from Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, I critique the underpinning assumptions of this binary and show how these individuals used chemsex as a technique of ‘wild self-care’. This unique model of self-care recuperates ‘dangerous’ practices in emancipatory and life-affirming ways. It shows how chemsex is both risky and liberatory in ever-changing and unexpected ways.

Keywords

Chemsex self-care drug use condomless sex risk

Come on, Barbie, let’s go party.

- Aqua

Introduction

Academic interest in chemsex has grown exponentially over the last few years, and the emergent literature is polarised. On one side, chemsex is presented as inherently hazardous and a major public health issue. On the other side, it is viewed as a practice that enables members of the queer community to enhance their sense of belonging, celebrate their gender-sexual identity, and create new ways of being in the world. While some literature straddles these competing paradigms, the bulk of chemsex research tends to fall into one of these camps. Chemsex is a complicated phenomenon, and to reduce it to a binary minimises the true extent of this complexity. In this article, I draw from the experiences of 16 gay/queer men and individuals who identified with the gay community from Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia to challenge and destabilise this binary thinking and offer an alternative way of understanding this practice: chemsex as a technique of ‘wild self-care’.

Defining chemsex

Chemsex continues to be a site of contention and disagreement. There is a wide range of definitions of chemsex in the literature. Some scholars have argued that chemsex is often used as a synecdoche for ‘sexualised drug use’ because of the fluid and sometimes ambiguous nature of this practice. These scholars highlight that chemsex should be considered a sub-type of sexualised drug use rather than two interchangeable practices (Hibbert et al., 2021). In his interview with Jamie Hakim, Kane Race offers a more nuanced definition of chemsex (Hakim and Race, 2023). He describes how chemsex is a confluence of culturally-situated relations, discourses, carnal pleasures, digital technologies, and modes of substance use. It is an arrangement of socio-cultural dynamics that shape and are shaped by the sexual geography of hook-up apps, nightclubs, sex-on-premises venues, and the private-turned-semi-public home. Certain social roles, forms of etiquette, and cultural language are expected too (Hakim and Race, 2023; Møller and Hakim, 2023).

Chemsex, ‘bad gays’, and modes of freedom

The public health literature on chemsex often frames this practice as intrinsically dangerous and a sign of pathology. This research tends to emphasise how gay and queer men use drugs in ways that perpetuate the ‘epidemic’ of HIV and STIs within this community. They are also wilfully exposing themselves to disease and addiction. This is made all the worse because these individuals do not see any issue with their ‘problematic behaviour’ and are therefore indifferent towards ‘fixing’ it (Pufall et al., 2018; Stevens et al., 2020; Troya et al., 2019). Many public health studies suggest that gay and queer men are using chemsex as a maladjusted coping mechanism because they are suffering from ‘internalised homophobia’ or ‘minority stress’ and do not have the resilience to ignore/overcome the myriad harms of systemic violence (Platteau et al., 2019; Pollard et al., 2018). Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that increased medical monitoring is necessary to protect these already highly-surveilled men from themselves because they are unable to care for themselves nor be trusted to behave in ways that do not burden the healthcare system (Giraudon et al., 2018; Ottaway et al., 2017).

Members of the gay community are not immune to this moralistic pathologisation. Daniel Joloy (2023) and Sharif Mowlabocus (2023) both explain how ‘good’ gay men mobilise the phenomenon of chemsex as a technique of homonormativity. ‘Good gays' position themselves against the ‘bad gays’ (chemsex practitioners) whose ‘hedonism’ is preventing legal, social, and political progress. The disavowing of bad gays works as a social currency that grants access to heteronormative institutions like marriage, and demonstrates that good gays are as normal as the next straight person. Siobhán Healy-Cullen et al. (2024) report a similar phenomenon. In their qualitative study on the way chemsex practitioners discursively conceptualise their practice, they describe how their participants place other practitioners on a moralistic, hierarchical continuum between ‘flourishing’ (the good gay) and ‘flailing’ (the bad gay). Flourishing individuals were seen as respectable and morally and ethically superior, whereas flailing practitioners had a natural/essential predisposition towards destructive behaviours. These bad gays were considered deviant, other, and responsible for giving chemsex a negative reputation.

Many public health studies on chemsex are underpinned by the assumption that this practice is a homogenous phenomenon with a standard/consistent set of risks. Some argue that while this practice may begin as relatively benign, there will be a turning point where things start to fall apart. The party lifestyle will slowly erode an individual’s mental and physical health; they will become vectors of disease; drug dependence will infiltrate their life; chemsex may even be their downfall and result in death (Platteau et al., 2019). It is not only problematic to frame chemsex as inherently dangerous, but there is substantial evidence to the contrary. Pires et al. (2022) and Santoro et al. (2020) demonstrate the heterogeneity of chemsex. They note the diversity of substances that can be present at chemsex sessions and the different types of people who engage in chemsex. The authors describe the range of sexual practices that might occur at a party and how these various factors influence risk. They detail how chemsex parties will vary in location, intensity, and duration. Parties may be hosted at the home or in a sex-on-premises venue; they may be more established events that go for 48 h+ with intravenous drug use and kinky/adventurous kinds of sex. Alternatively, the party could be a spontaneous and ephemeral occasion and take place over a single evening with more normative forms of sex. The types of social connections will also shift. It might be an open party with a rotation of anonymous people or a private one with a handful of friends. Moreover, chemsex is not particular to gay/queer men and men who have sex with men. Many different types of people engage in chemsex, including trans and non-binary individuals, sex workers, lesbians/non-heterosexual women, and heterosexual men and women (Hibbert et al., 2021; Miltz et al., 2021).

There is increasing scholarly interest in the self-directed and community-based harm-reduction techniques that chemsex practitioners use. Individuals will often provide their own drugs and tools of administration, keep track of their drug intake, and measure and ration their substances (Greenspan et al., 2011; Hakim, 2019). They will monitor the drug use of others and help them if things go wrong. Many party-goers also engage in different safer sex practices like serosorting and taking PrEP (Greenspan et al., 2011; Herrijgers et al., 2020). For some individuals, chemsex parties can foster a sense of intimacy, produce empowering community connections, and instil a greater resilience to the impacts of systemic marginalisation (Souleymanov et al., 2021). These parties have helped some individuals navigate troubled times, create meaningful romantic relationships, and radically reconfigure how they approach and experience pleasurable sex (Amaro, 2016; Power et al., 2018). Some studies have shown how love and romance can be a defining element of the chemsex experience: parties become sites of blossoming relationships and places where one quells the heartache after a lover has left (Amaro, 2016; Milhet et al., 2019). The deviance associated with chemsex parties represents a form of radical politics and a way of engaging the queerness of being queer in a heteronormative and homonormative society (Mowlabocus, 2023). Chemsex parties are also sites of collective and disclosive intimacies where attendees can engage in deep emotional talk and feel a profound sense of togetherness, both erotically and communally (Hakim, 2019).

Self-care in chemsex literature

I am not the first to notice this intersection of self-care and chemsex. The aforementioned benefits that chemsex parties can yield for practitioners can be considered forms of self-care: individuals are using parties to assuage feelings of loneliness and isolation, create stronger community connections, and bolster their resilience against systems of social violence. Self-care in the context of chemsex is sometimes spoken about in terms of self-governance and the various after-care measures people put in-place after partying to soften the come-down (Mowlabocus, 2023). Kieran Pienaar et al. (2020a, 2020b) reference how drug use can be a ‘technology of the self’ for queer people. Substance use becomes an immanent tool to explore one’s identity; it is a self-affirming technique of gender-sexuality experimentation that produces a new sense of confidence and agency. In this study, I expand this burgeoning discussion on the relationship between chemsex and self-care by showing how this practice can be a technique of ‘wild self-care’.

What is self-care?

The literature on self-care has grown substantially over the past two decades, particularly in relation to neoliberal self-care. This discourse of self-care pushes people to always be their ‘best self’, one that is entrepreneurial, efficient, and economically productive. Within neoliberalism, self-worth is based on financial success (Paltrinieri, 2017). Human life is commodified by quantifying the body, health, and identities into digital data sets which private corporations can then barter about (Ajana, 2017). Talia Welsh (2020) describes how neoliberal self-care ‘fetishises’ the ‘future body’. This fetishisation emerges from the neoliberal imperative to take personal responsibility for one’s health in the present to ensure future economic productivity. Not meeting this responsibility is a moral failure and casts the individual as a wilfully obstructive subject who burdens society, the state, and the public health system.

In response to this problematic approach to self-care, scholars like Inna Michaeli (2017) have described how feminist self-care can offer a way out of the ‘neoliberal trap’. Audre Lorde, one of the early writers on feminist self-care, famously wrote: ‘Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare’ (1988: 131). Feminist self-care focuses on empowerment, supporting communities, engaging in political activism, and celebrating the beauty and value of disenfranchised bodies (Hobart and Kneese, 2020). It is about understanding disability and illness as sites of political power, and revolting against systems of oppression like patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy (Kim and Schalk, 2021). Feminist self-care encourages us to adopt a holistic way of life by fully embracing our spiritual, physical, emotional, and psychological selves (Michaeli, 2017). Elizabeth Bell (2005) also highlights that feminist self-care is about ‘truth-telling’, expressing one’s desires, and being a responsible and ethical person.

Michel Foucault’s (1986) concept of le souci de soi-même, or care of the self, is the other major theorisation of self-care. From the 1^st century CE in Greece to the early modern era across Europe, Foucault describes how caring for oneself was seen as an ethical project focused on treating one’s life as a work of art and perpetual self-cultivation. It was about developing a set of rules to live by and striving to become a better person. Embodying these ethics will ultimately lead to greater satisfaction in life. These ‘technologies of the self’ or methods of bettering oneself were designed to increase self-revelation and enable a more thorough understanding of oneself (Foucault, 1988).

Wild self-care

Using a bricolage of theory as a foundation, my unique approach to self-care emerged from a set of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 16 gay and queer men and individuals who identified with the gay community from Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. This project began as an investigation into how subcultural identity influences gay men’s well-being and health-related behaviours (e.g., Lyons and Hosking, 2014; Quidley-Rodriguez and De Santis, 2017; Willoughby et al., 2008). I read widely and became fascinated with poststructuralist philosophy and radical theorisations of the body, queer identity, community, and health. Queer analyses of gay men’s health (Bersani, 1995, 2010; Dean, 2009), posthuman and queer feminisms (Hester, 2018; Neimanis, 2017), anti-psychiatry (Pilling, 2022), and crip theory (McRuer, 2006) were particularly formative for my thinking. The concept of self-care caught my attention and led me to consider using an ethics of care as a lens to understand this intersection between gay/queer identity, community, and well-being.

The interviews were rich with accounts of self-care. Participants described how they would use various health-related practices to mollify difficult emotions, pursue new ways of being, enhance and strengthen relationships, and find a way through troubled times. I repeatedly turned to theory during the fieldwork process. Jack Halberstam’s (2013, 2020) approach to ‘the wild’ caught my attention as it resonated well with my participants’ experiences. These individuals were engaging in a fraught dialectic of care where they would use practices typically deemed ‘dangerous’ by public health to improve their well-being. This dialectic produced a range of tensions that challenged how one ‘should’ care for oneself, unsettled normative conceptualisations of health, resisted neoliberal biopolitics, and were often centred on becoming something more.

Many scholars have discussed the issues that unruly queer bodies and health identities pose for governing systems of normativity. Queer fat activists, trans scholars, and writers on disability have all noted the way bodies that stray too far from convention are pathologised, monsterised, abjectified, and ultimately de-humanised (Chalklin, 2016; Malatino, 2019; McRuer, 2006). Race (2009) calls this queer incompatibility ‘counterpublic health’ – the set of ethics and ways of being that challenge ‘the mass mediation and medico-moralisation of pleasure and health’ (110). Wild self-care employs a polity and ethics of counterpublic health. It latches onto the deviancy and stigma associated with certain health-related practices and mobilises this deviance as a productive force to aid the pursuit of well-being. Wild self-care also contains reverberations of edgework. Ford Hickson (2018) argues that chemsex is a form of edgework where practitioners seek out their limits and push them: How high can I get? How much sex can I handle? How can I extend the limit of ‘too much’? Patrick O’Byrne and Holmes (2011) conceptualise this as ‘boundary play’ rather than edgework to highlight how chemsex is a type of sexual play (see also: Clay, 2024). Wild self-care is about dancing with boundaries and mapping out new territories. It asks: What are my limits when it comes to sex and substance? When I am at my mental/emotional limit, how can I bring myself back? How can I create a world of unlimited potential?

Wild self-care can be considered a kind of Foucauldian-feminist self-care pushed to the extreme. It combines the Foucauldian notions of constant-becoming and pursuing a better self augmented with the feminist values of community, connection, emotionality, and self-preservation as a political project. But it drives these things into wild territory. Halberstam (2013, 2020) describes how the wild opposes the civilised, modern, cultivated, and constructed. It unsettles and disrupts the ‘natural’ order of things. We become wild with desire, take wild guesses, conjure wild ideas, and allow our imaginations to run wild. Wildness is unrestrained chaos and refers to a loss of control and structure. As a place, the wilderness is a site of exile and violence that must be cordoned off from society. Halberstam views the wild as potential, one that invites ‘languages of unpredictability, breakdown, disorder, and shifting forms of signification’; it is ‘a set of alternatives that we are in the process of making, imagining, and inhabiting’ (2013, 127).

My concept of wild self-care considers how we might care for ourselves using practices that appear dangerous and antithetical to the pursuit of well-being. It positions health and well-being as dynamic personal constructions rather than static conditions to be achieved. We do not eat a salad and go to the gym 1 day and suddenly attain ‘good’ health; we must continually tend to our feeling bodies as we vacillate between the blurry states of healthfulness and debility. This wild approach situates self-care as an emergent and emotional practice that nurtures the body, not a discipline-based practice designed to coerce and cajole the body into normative ways of being. Wild self-care articulates how care is inherently communal. It always involves others (directly or indirectly) and is grounded in the pursuit of agency. This model of self-care shows how states of embodiment shift and shimmer into different forms. Wild self-care recuperates ‘dangerous’ practices and enacts them in life-affirming ways. It is the use of subversive methods to reclaim the marginalised self; it is emancipation through deviation. I have described elsewhere how sex work, kink, and sex in public can be forms of wild self-care (Clay, 2022). I have also discussed how wild self-care can be incorporated into the research process and the implications this model has for research ethics (Clay and Treharne, 2022).

Wild self-care actively clashes with neoliberalism. The healthy neoliberal subject is forbideen from engaging in behaviours that could economically burden society, and works at procuring a lifestyle and body that maximises productivity. Neoliberalism and heteronormativity are also intrinsically linked (Ludwig, 2016; Nguyen, 2023). Economic growth relies on marriage and heterosexual unions to ensure the continual production of ‘healthy’ bodies (i.e., bodies without mental illness, disability, or chronic illness). Chemsex is immoral and deviant within a neoliberal context because it involves non-procreative sex, the consumption of illicit substances that damage the body, and can lead to socially ‘burdensome’ health conditions like HIV and drug dependence. Identifying chemsex as a form of self-care is an act of dissent. Neoliberal self-care is grounded in recovering the ‘broken’ body through discipline and abstention. For example, the fat body represents slovenliness and gluttony and can only be redeemed through disciplining the self, disciplining the body with exercise, and abstaining from ‘junk food’. Chemsex is hedonistic and yields no economic potential; it is anti-productive. Using chemsex and other ‘dangerous’ practices as techniques of wild self-care resists these social and economic neoliberal imperatives and produces a wild subject that cannot be controlled.

Expressions of wild self-care

Based on my interview data, there are three expressions of wild self-care: protective, emancipatory, and therapeutic. Protective self-care focuses on protecting the body, mind, and/or self from direct harm. It attempts to mitigate the impact of a potential threat and works to reduce the severity of harm. Emancipatory self-care practices aim to open new ways of being, break away from oppressive dynamics or relationships, and seek out something new that re-invigorates life. Therapeutic self-care is grounded in healing, recovery, and tending to the body and mind. It is restorative and meditative and focuses on processing difficult emotions and exorcising trauma.

In mainstream media, almost everything has been labelled as self-care: drinking water, sleeping, paying bills, ‘letting yourself be normal’, buying plants, having good posture (Shannon-Karasik, 2018). The list goes on. It is important to differentiate between essential forms of personal maintenance and self-care practices. Things like affordable and nutritious food, suitable housing, a supportive social network, and adequate financial support are fundamental to living a desirable and sustainable life. I do not view these as forms of self-care. If everything is self-care, then nothing is self-care. However, they are still forms of care. I categorise these more mundane practices as forms of ‘caring-maintenance’. Self-care on the other hand is a response to a situation that can/will threaten one’s well-being; it is reactionary. Caring-maintenance is the work we must do to maintain well-being and lead an enjoyable life.

These four components of wild self-care (protective/therapeutic/emancipatory self-care and caring-maintenance) are not discrete categories. They blur and blend together in myriad ways. Caring-maintenance and self-care are always working together rather than diametrically separate. One defines and informs the other. Self-care only becomes apparent when contrasted with more ordinary forms of care. Likewise, the mundane can only be seen when compared to the exceptional. This is not to say that we must decide if we are engaging in self-care or caring-maintenance at any one time: elements of each are present in everything we do. For example, we must have a stable and sufficient income to sustain ourselves (caring-maintenance), but this need for income is borne from the threat of houselessness and the desire to achieve and/or maintain a fulfilling lifestyle (self-care). We can seek out any job that provides a suitable income (caring-maintenance) but often pursue professions that enrich our lives and facilitate personal growth (self-care).

Methods

Over 12 months in 2018, I conducted open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 16 gay/queer men and individuals who identified with the gay community from Aotearoa New Zealand (Wellington, 6; Christchurch, 2; Dunedin, 1; Undisclosed, 1) and Australia (Sydney, 4; Brisbane, 2). The average participant age was 39, with the youngest being 20 and the oldest 60. Ethics approval from the University of Otago (approval number: 17/164) was granted at the start of 2018 and interviews began shortly thereafter. I recruited the majority of my participants (11) through the geo-social networking app Grindr. I invited the remaining five participants based on their demographic backgrounds, and as I had a pre-existing relationship with these individuals, I was aware they had certain lived experiences that would add valuable nuance and depth to my data set.

All interviews were conducted in-person at the participant’s home or in a semi-private public location (e.g., a conference room in a public library). Instead of a traditional interview schedule, a tailored list of questions was developed based on the participant’s background and whether they were recruited from Grindr or had a pre-existing connection with me. Each interview opened with general questions about the participant’s connection to the gay community then narrowed down into intimate relationships and experiences with substance use. Discussing these topics invariably brought up stories of trauma, personal hardship, mental illness/suicidality, and heartbreak. All participants described instances where they used sex and/or substances to deal with these troubled times. Once this theme began to emerge, it became apparent that the concept of self-care was a useful way of understanding these experiences. And while I had entered the field with the notion of self-care in mind, interpreting these dynamics of managing trauma and hardship with sex and/or substances as forms of self-care was an accurate and nuanced way of presenting participants’ experiences. Each interview ran for approximately 1.5–2 h and was audio recorded with the participant’s permission. These recordings were then transcribed verbatim and analysed in NVivo using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006). To ensure the confidentiality and anonymity of all my participants (and their partners, where applicable), I assigned pseudonyms and removed any potentially identifying information.

Complex desires: Participant experiences of chemsex

Alkyl nitrites (known colloquially as ‘amyl’) are very common in the chemsex scene (Vaccher et al., 2020) and were used by several of my participants. Amyl has been used extensively, and almost exclusively, by gay men since the 1970s due to its brief yet powerful high and ability to aid relaxation during anal sex with few long-term side effects (Romanelli et al., 2004). Among my participants, some described their pronounced dislike for amyl as it gave them a headache and did not enhance the sexual experience. Others found amyl to be a beneficial substance that enabled them to explore new erotics. Damien (20, ANZ) was one of these participants. He regularly visited his local sauna and felt safe and comfortable enough there to start experimenting with more adventurous forms of sex, like fisting. Amyl enabled him to flex and test the limits of his erotic body and facilitate the flows of sexual desire:

I’ve tried [fisting], I was open to it. The thing is, if you’re gunna do [it], you have to be into it [and be] in the right mindset… and probably have a crap tonne of amyl… because that would get your head clear basically and everything moves.

O’Byrne and Holmes (2011) describe how their participants used amyl to not only enhance pleasure and extend the duration of sexual connections but to also enable sex with a greater number of partners. Some consider fisting to be a ‘high-risk’ sexual practice due to the potential for physical trauma and transfer of STIs. However, Jared Martin (2023) and Barcelos’s (2023) studies on gay men’s fisting practices show how ‘fisters’ and ‘fistees’ engage in a range of safety practices to ensure these risks are minimised. Damien’s experiences with amyl align with Martin and Barcelos’s studies. For him, amyl created a safer environment to try fisting: it physically and emotionally loosened him so he could venture into this exciting new sexual terrain.

Isaac (55, AU) also noted that the way amyl can create a safer sexual environment. Isaac runs a gay sauna in Sydney and felt a strong obligation to sell amyl because he could see how it facilitated pleasurable sex for many members of his surrounding community, particularly older men. However, this desire to sell amyl was complicated by the Australian government’s 2020 proposition to re-classify alkyl nitrites from a Schedule four substance (Prescription Only) to Schedule 9 (Prohibited Substance):

We used to [sell amyl]. We don’t anymore… My lawyer has asked me for years to stop selling it because it’s now on the [restricted substances list]. I’m really doing my clients a disserve because they enjoy a sniff of amyl, particularly if they’re bottoming. I really want to sell it, but it is illegal… I get why [people] use it, but as a business, to sell it, it’s a different thing… [Providing amyl is] actually a service, and some people my age and over really can’t have sex without amyl anymore, so they really need it…

The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration ultimately re-classified alkyl nitrites as a Schedule three substance (Pharmacy Only) due to the outcry from community advocacy groups who iterated the same points Isaac and Damien made: while amyl has ‘minimal medical therapeutic value’, it plays an important role in many people’s safer sex practices and enables greater sexual community connectivity. For Damien and Isaac, amyl helped to create a more relaxed -and therefore safer - sexual environment and facilitate deeper forms of intimacy, both physically and emotionally.

Some of my participants described how they used substances not traditionally associated with chemsex in ways that aligned with the chemsex experience. Gregory (38, AU) was one such participant. He spoke about the particular way he incorporated cannabis into sexual scenarios:

Every now and then it’s fun to get really stoned and to be used basically. That’s always fun. That’s a special occasion thing where you just get really stoned and get a couple of guys to come over and do whatever the fuck they want. That’s pretty fun.

Cannabis is not a drug associated with chemsex; however, Gregory shows how it can be used in a chemsex manner. Parent et al. (2021) conducted a qualitative study on sexualised cannabis use among young sexual minority men and noted the similarities between the experiences of these men and chemsex. These individuals used cannabis to heighten sexual pleasure, lower inhibitions, enhance sexual connectivity, and experiment with new types of sex.

Gregory detailed some of the other ways that substance featured in his sex life. He spoke about how sometimes it is the other person who consumes drugs while he remains sober. This difference in states of mind and the emergent erotic power dynamics is what heightens the experience for him:

One of my really good fuck buddies, he’ll quite regularly do all sort of different [drugs], and it can be quite fun to fuck him while he’s under the influence of whatever it is that he’s on - acid (LSD) or mushrooms (psilocybin) or MDMA or whatever it is - because it seems to give him this sort-of heightened experience that I also get-off on… What makes it hot is that they’re so out of it, they don’t know what’s going on... but I only do that with him or other people that I know and trust.

Gregory’s second experience raises the topic of partners and chemsex. The traditional chemsex session is imagined to feature multiple casual partners, many of whom may be unknown to others at the session. This is part of the reason why chemsex is considered to be such a risky activity. However, this is not always the case, as Gregory’s experiences demonstrate. A chemsex session might feature a group of partners or just two people. When other participants shared their one-on-one chemsex experiences, trust, safety, and desire emerged as key issues. Gregory enjoyed the potent eroticism of having sober sex with someone who is ‘so out of it, they don’t know what’s going on’ (within the context of a trusting relationship and ongoing sexual consent practices). Ali (28, AU) did not enjoy this. He described the anxiety and fear he experiences when encountering an over-intoxicated potential sex partner, which was particularly acute when he was sober:

I prefer to be in the same state of mind as the other person. I don’t want to be in a different place than he is. Because, you know, it’s all about connection, and [being in a different state of mind] kind-of takes away from this connection, you know? You feel like you’re with his buddy and not with him… [‘Wired’ guys] jump around so much and do other things, and I can’t handle that. I have a tiny build, so I can’t control a whole body... It’s too much.

Gregory and Ali’s experiences highlight how disparate levels of intoxication among sex partners can make desire flourish or wither away. Being in a ‘different place’ to one’s partner/s is evidently more about trust and emotional intimacy rather than level of intoxication.

Jason (45, AU) used to have regular chemsex sessions with his recent ex-partner Michael. They were a monogamous couple, and he described how the drug highs and euphoria of new love were inextricably linked. Their chemsex sessions strengthened their relationship and enabled them to experience and express new forms of intimacy and connection:

[When] Michael came into my world, it was very intense. The sex was great in the beginning because it was fuelled with GHB and all that stuff. It was great. We had a really good physical relationship the whole time.

Chemsex as wild self-care

My participants’ experiences are key examples of wild self-care. As outlined above, wild self-care describes forms of care that have gone wrong in the eyes of public health. The person who exercises wild self-care rallies against neoliberal ideals of being and the systems of control instigated by medico-state powers. Acts of wild self-care focus on nurturing the feeling body with creative, counterintuitive, and seemingly risky practices. This framework of care describes how self-care is relational and carried out through a rhizome of emotional bodies, allowing alternative forms of living to rupture into existence. There are three forms of wild self-care: protective, emancipatory, and therapeutic. Protective self-care focuses on protecting against potential or immediate harm/s; emancipatory self-care is about experimentation and pursuing new ways of being that create a sense of freedom and revitalisation; therapeutic self-care is grounded in healing and recovery. Self-care also overlaps, opposes, and complements caring-maintenance. The former is a response to a harm or threat of harm whereas the latter pertains to the care involved in tending to the necessary aspects of everyday life.

The ways Damien, Gregory, and Jason and Michael incorporated drugs into their sex lives are forms of emancipatory self-care. Damien used amyl to stretch the limits of his erotic body, find new forms of carnal desire, break open unimagined pleasures, and explore the unmapped facets of his burgeoning sexual identity. For Gregory, chemsex was about engaging in immersive forms of drug use that consumed the body, produced heady states of pleasure, and created erotically potent power imbalances. Chemsex allowed Jason and Michael to expand their flourishing love for each other and see how far their desire for each other could reach. In each instance, chemsex produced new assemblages of desire and sensation and mobilised ecstasy as a way of creating possibility.

The safety measures Gregory and Ali put in place are examples of protective self-care. Both of these participants had distinct rules around the kinds of people they felt comfortable having chemsex with. Gregory only had chemsex with fuck buddies and people he knew well and trusted, and Ali would not engage with people who were not on ‘the same level’ as him because it made him feel unsafe. These protective boundaries helped to reduce the likelihood of physical/sexual violence and/or STI transfer. Furthermore, Gregory’s personal preference for cannabis was not just grounded in the particular pleasures it gave him. He actively avoided other substances (particularly methamphetamine) due to concerns of dependence. This is another example of protective self-care. Designating cannabis as ‘his’ drug forecloses discussions on what substance/s he might take during a session.

There are aspects of caring-maintenance in these participants' experiences. Ali and Gregory used chemsex to fulfil their sexual needs and basic desire for touch, connection, and affection. Gregory’s sexual encounters with his fuck buddies were a way for him to maintain and deepen his relationship with these intimate friends. Similarly, Jason and Michael used chemsex to establish a solid foundation for their relationship and create additional layers of intimacy and connection. The way these participants approached drugs could also be considered a type of caring-maintenance. For them, taking drugs was fun – it was an easy way to turn regular sex into something more exciting and interesting. These substances prevented boredom and monotony from settling in. Another example of caring-maintenance is Isaac’s decision to continue selling amyl at his sauna despite his lawyer’s advice to the contrary. He felt a pronounced duty of care to his community, particularly the older gay men who attended his sauna. By making amyl available to his patrons, he was looking after members of his community and nurturing his relationships with his patrons. By caring for others and looking after his community, he was caring for himself and deepening his sense of purpose in life.

Wild self-care as an analytic tool

Wild self-care offers an alternative way of understanding chemsex. As an analytic tool, aspects of wild self-care can be seen in the existing literature on this phenomenon. Florêncio (2023) discusses how chemsex can be a ‘life-affirming cultural practice’ that enables the materialisation of queer-becomings among practitioners. That is, chemsex allows queer folks to understand themselves on a deeper level and bolster the survival of queer subcultures. This is a key example of emancipatory self-care: using chemsex as a way of opening up new possibilities and exploring oneself. The problematic public health literature that frames chemsex as a maladjusted coping mechanism inadvertently demonstrates how chemsex can be a form of therapeutic self-care. Individuals are using chemsex to create temporary lines of flight out of the psychological distress caused by systemic violence and develop ways of recognising and reckoning with past traumas that continue to live in the body. The research that describes how individuals use chemsex to mollify the devastation of lost love and romantic breakups is another example of therapeutic self-care. And of course, the variety of community-based harm-reduction techniques that chemsex practitioners use are clear examples of protective self-care.

Viewing chemsex as a wild self-care practice breaks the binary approach that exists in the literature. It demonstrates how the risks highlighted in public health literature are legitimate. Consuming drugs (particularly intravenously) and having condomless casual sex in a group setting over an extended period does pose a range of risks to one’s physical and mental health. But these risks are complicated when we consider that these practices are being used to pursue well-being and that a range of creative and nuanced techniques are being used to offset the risks related to STI/BBV transfer, acts of physical/sexual violence, substance dependence, and sexual health more broadly. Both approaches hold true, yet both approaches only tell half the story.

Conclusion

‘Chemsex’ is a loaded term. It carries a myriad of images and connotations. Many in the public health industry view chemsex sessions as high-risk parties that result in the proliferation of disease and drug use ‘disorders’. Others view chemsex as a queer technology of self and a site of collective intimacies. The existing literature on chemsex tends to fall into one of these two categories. There is an underlying assumption within most of this research that chemsex is a phenomenon with distinct, uniform, and easily identifiable traits. My participants’ experiences show that chemsex does not manifest in this way. It is an ambiguous and uncertain practice; a chemsex session can feature any kind of substance; going to a party can both increase the risk of STI/BBV transmission and help people have safer sex; and couples in committed relationships can practice chemsex as much as those who enjoy sex with multiple casual partners.

My participants’ experiences show how engaging in chemsex can be an act of wild self-care. These men combined sex and drugs in ways that allowed them to connect more deeply with themselves and others, feel new forms of desire, and experiment with alternative erotics. Chemsex helped strengthen their relationships with lovers and romantic partners and establish safer environments for them to explore more adventurous types of sex. This practice came with risks, like the risk of sexual/physical violence from an over-intoxicated casual partner, STI transfer, developing substance dependence, or the legal repercussions of illicitly selling amyl under the counter. Participants were acutely aware of these risks and negotiated ways to address them.

Viewing chemsex as a technique of wild self-care creates an alternative way of understanding this phenomenon and expands the possibilities of what chemsex can be. It also adds another layer of depth to the existing literature. Chemsex research is replete with examples of individuals using chemsex as a form of wild self-care to deal with trauma and create new connections, and many have discussed the ways chemsex practitioners use sex and drugs to push and play with boundaries. The pleasures and possibilities of chemsex are unlimited.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Simon Clay

Simon Clay is an early career researcher whose work focuses on the relationship between drug use and expressions of well-being and emerging treatments for substance dependence. His recent work has focused on the ethics of qualitative research on drug use and taking a critical approach to the mobilisation of trauma-informed research. Simon’s research also extends into examining the intersection of gender/sexuality and spirituality.

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