“So you can do what you want in your own home and get everything delivered to your door. We all were told we’d be better connected on the phone. Now, most people would argue we’re potentially lonelier than we’ve ever been in our lives.” He has a similar opinion of at-home STI testing kits, arguing that while they are cost-efficient for the NHS, not everyone can use them effectively, “particularly if you don’t have the skills, the confidence, the mobility.” The lack of face-to-face interaction in a clinic, with all its awareness posters and outreach workers means “we run the risk of basically corrupting relationships that we’ve had between sexual health services and the LGBT community.”
Gayle warns: “We are cruising for a bruising, in terms of chemsex, the support that is available compared to the train that’s barreling down the track, it’s pitiful.”
London’s 56 Dean Street sexual health clinic is a world leader in its work. It’s been a decade since Stuart, who wrote that chemsex paper, pioneered a project there placing drug outreach within a sexual health context. The idea is to provide a specialised service with “the knowledge and skills… to discuss the issues relating to sex and the nuances of chemsex” because, as Stuart put it in 2015, many chems users “don’t perceive themselves as having a drugs problem and so would be unlikely to access a traditional treatment service.” His hope was to “create a model here that can be rolled out to other sexual health clinics”, he told VICE in 2015.
We are cruising for a bruising, in terms of chemsex, the support that is available compared to the train that’s barreling down the track, it’s pitiful
Stuart passed away suddenly in 2022, and two years to the day I’m on the phone to one of his former service users. “It’s amazing what he achieved,” says Darren Murphy. It was 2011 when Murphy first got into chems, and by 2014 he was diagnosed with HIV. Murphy only met with Stuart twice “because I was an absolute chaos at the time”, but it would have an eventual impact. In 2019 Murphy was imprisoned “because of chemsex-related crimes, selling crystal meth, mephedrone and GBL.” After moving back in with family in Leeds as part of his licence conditions, he discovered “there was no specific chemsex-oriented support, at all.”
Murphy is now a drug recovery coordinator at Forward Leeds, an alcohol and drugs organisation, and has begun the work of filling the “massive gap in chemsex support” by linking LGBTQIA+ organisations to provide holistic services to those suffering from chemsex-related harms.
And over in Merseyside, a former colleague of Stuart’s has set up a similar clinic. Chris Higgins, who worked with Stuart for over a decade at London Friend and Dean Street, has set up the Ctrl Alt Delete clinic with Axess Sexual Health clinic. However, “The landscape of drug use here in Liverpool is completely different.” Yes, some people use chemsex drugs, but the LGBT+ drugs scene in Liverpool centres on “cocaine, ecstasy, MDMA, ketamine and weed” and “a lot of the referrals when I first opened the clinic were for alcohol”. Higgins’ theory is that “Liverpool just hasn’t had that same environment for chemsex drugs to blossom”, because it’s never had “licensed sex on premises venues, no saunas, no bathhouses… So if chemsex is taking place, it’s in people’s homes, not in public places”. In Manchester, its Reach Clinic is for people who would like support to manage or reduce their use of chems, and operates out of The Northern Contraception and Sexual Health and HIV Service.
GAY TIMES contacted NHS Trusts covering other areas with large LGBTQIA+ populations such as Newcastle, Bristol and Cardiff to ask if they have services with drug harm reduction working within sexual health clinics. None did, although each made clear that if someone presents at a sexual health clinic with drug concerns, they will be triaged to these services. As for Brighton, its sexual health service staff have all received training in identifying patients who may need chemsex support.
A spokesperson for The Department of Health told GAY TIMES: “The government is aware of the harms caused by chemsex and has issued guidance to local authorities on managing this issue. We have allocated £532 million of funding to local authorities to reduce harm and improve recovery rates from drug addiction and to assist with rehabilitation… We continue to work with substance misuse commissioners and sexual health commissioners to improve access to support services for those who use drugs in a chemsex context.”
Chemsex-related harms may be, as Kingsley puts it, “niche” issues that are hard to secure funding for, but with fatality still a risk, it needs addressing. Analysis of ONS figures shows that hundreds have died from chemsex-related drugs. While 111 people have died in the past 10 years from a mephedrone overdose, 937 people have died from amphetamine overdoses. Disaggregation of the data to show crystal meth deaths started in 2018 and in the time between then and 2022, 113 died of crystal meth overdose. 238 people died from G/GHB/GBL overdoses in the past ten years. Even a conservative estimate shows that almost 500 people have died from chemsex-associated drugs in the past decade.
This could be an overestimate; people may have not been taking these drugs in a chemsex context. However, it could also be an underestimate; G/GHB/GBL is not routinely tested for in toxicology reports, and this must be requested for by the bereaved. And in cases where multiple drugs were present, as there were for a fifth of drug-related deaths in 2019, any drugs in the deceased’s system is not named in coroner’s reports, rather the cause of death listed as “multiple drug toxicity” or “drug overdose”.
Campaigners also warn of seizures and fits, the risk of contracting new STIs, especially HIV and Hepatitis C, which needle users are at higher risk of, as well as addiction. Consent is also an issue that needs more awareness, experts agree, with Kingsley explaining: “If you take disinhibiting drugs, the blurring of the lines around consent is enormous, isn’t it?”
If you take disinhibiting drugs, the blurring of the lines around consent is enormous, isn’t it?
Chemsex is a public health issue for many queer people, however, it is also treated as a criminal justice issue, with police allegedly turning up instead of the ambulances that have been called. Chemsex participants live in fear of this happening, with Kingsley citing a callout where “somebody had phoned for a collapse from a crystal meth overdose. And when the crew arrived, the front door to the property was open. Everybody else had left, lying him on his side in a sort of recovery position and unconscious, with a blanket over him.” Murphy’s also heard of people “going under” and then “just getting put outside the house. [The people in the house] didn’t want any ambulance coming, or the police coming, because there were a lot of substances in the house, people were scared to get arrested.”
The Metropolitan Police was approached for comment on allegations in this article that they have attended incidents where the 999 caller requested an ambulance, however without specific times and dates of the calls, they cannot respond.
For their part, Kingsley, Lynch, Phillips, and Gayle have collaborated to create discreet cards to be handed out at chemsex sessions gone wrong. Just as someone is stretchered off is a “reachable moment” for the rest of the room, Kingsley says. So partiers aren’t admonished, rather given useful information via a QR code that pulls through to www.stuffyoucantunsee.co.uk, by crew who have been trained by Lynch on Phillips on how to approach those affected by chemsex harms, including overdoses and drug-induced psychosis.