Adam Zivo: Meth-fuelled orgies are bad

Harm reduction policies are leading to mixed messages about the unequivocal danger of meth-fuelled sex in the gay community.

By: Adam Zivo

As a gay man, I’ve always believed that meth-fuelled orgies are a bad thing. The prospect of smoking crystal meth, and then having condomless sex with a harem of strangers for days on end, has always struck me as a tad reckless. Yet some harm reduction messaging of late has become rather equivocal on this point; a plain reading of some of the literature being presented to the LGBTQ community would have us note that meth-fuelled orgies have many benefits, and that we should tolerate, perhaps even celebrate, them.

These voices aren’t exactly on the fringes, either. They include some of Canada’s leading harm-reduction activists — the kind of people who receive generous public funding and give quotes to major media outlets — as well as several of the country’s largest organizations dedicated to HIV and gay men’s health. While well-intentioned, this approach illustrates the risks of allowing harm-reduction radicalism to fester without public scrutiny.

Now, you might wonder: “Are meth-fuelled orgies really that big of a deal in Canada? How many crystal-hazed fuck-fests are actually happening here?”

My dear reader, you’d be surprised.

Substance use is a significant problem within the gay community, partially because being a sexual minority can be isolating and painful. Gay men sometimes face excommunication from their families or ethno-religious communities, and those who don’t can still find themselves haunted by a persistent sense of shame. Just like straight people, some of these men turn to drugs to avoid or displace their unresolved traumas.

Combined with a generally progressive and permissive outlook in much of the gay community, a party culture has taken root where heavy drinking and drugs are normalized. Even as the broader social isolation of the gay community has receded, addiction and substance abuse has remained a major issue.

Up until the mid-2000s, gay men were not overdosing or developing drug-induced psychosis in large numbers. In the 1980s and 1990s, the most popular drugs within the community were ecstasy and cocaine — which are relatively low-risk when unadulterated. In the late 2000s meth rapidly became popular, as did GHB (a depressant that can easily lead to death if dosed incorrectly) and ketamine (a dissociative anesthetic).

Concurrently, and perhaps not unrelatedly, the rise of hook-up websites and apps made it much easier for gay men to have sex with like-minded strangers.

This precipitated a new problem: “chemsex” (also known as “party and play” or “PnP”), which is the practice of using these more dangerous drugs, particularly meth, to enhance sexual pleasure. Chemsex is associated with riskier behaviours — such as group sex and BDSM — and is popular among HIV-positive men who face stigmatization and exclusion. (It should be noted, however, that many, but not all, of these men are very unlikely to spread the disease due to effective antiretroviral treatments.)

All across North America and Western Europe, chemsex is now an enormous problem. According to the 2021 Sex Now Survey, which focuses on gay, bisexual and transgender men in Canada, 7.6 per cent of respondents self-reported using crystal meth over the past six months, while usage rates for GHB and ketamine were 7.9 per cent and 4.5 per cent, respectively. To put that in perspective, a 2018 study found the overall rate of meth use in the Canadian population to be only 0.2 per cent — a vastly lower figure than what was self-reported in the Sex Now Survey. Another study, conducted between 2017 and 2019 by Engage (a Canadian health organization), found similar results in Toronto specifically, where meth use among gay and bisexual respondents was roughly seven per cent.

As both surveys were voluntary and respondents were not randomly selected, these figures are likely somewhat inflated. However, significant uncertainties around sample bias aside, these numbers remain concerning, especially compared to the baseline rate for the broader population.

Given the apparent scope of this problem, one would hope that health experts would be doing all they can to dissuade men from participating in chemsex — but that doesn’t seem to be happening. Instead, organizations operating in this space are so zealously obsessed with harm reduction that, in many cases, they ignore drug prevention to the extent that they glorify meth use.

Personally, I first became aware of this in late 2017 while volunteering for a gay community group in Toronto. We had organized an educational workshop on crystal meth, which was taught by a fellow volunteer who worked for one of Canada’s leading HIV organizations. I had expected that prevention would be a major component of the presentation. Oh boy, was I wrong.

The presenter, who was a passionate harm-reduction advocate, emphasized that we shouldn’t judge people for using meth because having sex on the drug is mindblowingly amazing — so amazing, in fact, that normal sex can never compare. The ecstasies of chemsex were described so thoroughly and vividly that, at times, the presentation felt like a sales pitch. In lieu of prevention, we were told that we needed to “destigmatize” chemsex and simply use meth more safely.

“What the hell was that? I feel like I’m more open to using meth now than I was two hours ago,” I thought to myself as I left.

The issue largely fell off my radar until last year, when I attended another presentation on chemsex that was geared towards health-care professionals working in addictions. I was curious: had the presentation I’d seen years before been an outlier? Had messaging around chemsex evolved since then?

Nothing had improved.

The presenter (a very progressive gay man) portrayed chemsex as a rather normal, and often beneficial, phenomenon — a cherished cultural practice, essentially. He stressed that we shouldn’t just say that drugs are bad, and that more attention should be given to the positive impacts of illicit substances. Chemsex fosters a sense of connection and belonging, apparently, and can also be an effective equalizer in the sexual marketplace. Thanks to meth, older men can sleep with younger men, and ugly men can hook up with guys out of their league. How lovely.

When I asked whether the presenter’s organization had any mechanisms in place to dissuade gay men from engaging in chemsex, I was told: “we focus on harm reduction” and that prevention doesn’t work.

But were these two presentations indicative of a wider, sectoral problem? Supporting materials suggest yes.

In a 2019 op-ed for NOW Magazine, Tim McCaskell, one of Toronto’s pioneering gay rights activists, described chemsex as a “silent epidemic” reminiscent of AIDS in the 1980s. He lamented how, from what he could see, almost no effort was being put into prevention: “At the height of the AIDS epidemic, the baths were full of posters and material warning people not to have sex without a condom. There are no similar messages warning people about crystal meth. Why?”

In response, a group of five harm reduction activists wrote an article, also published in NOW, arguing that “stigmatizing” meth is harmful because the drug can allegedly be used safely and “there is no shortage of shitty prejudices against meth use.”

“You never hear the stories about how much fun your friend had at his chemsex hook-up because the fear surrounding crystal meth use has created an echo chamber. To speak casually or in a positive light about using such a vilified drug immediately creates a panic in those who care about you,” they wrote.

These authors were not randos. They included Zoë Dodd, a prominent harm reduction activist who is often quoted by the CBC, as well as Nick Boyce, a senior policy analyst at the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, an influential drug legalization advocacy group.

Educational materials published by some of the country’s leading gay health organizations have been just as questionable.

In 2008, a consortium of 13 Toronto-based community agencies, including Toronto Public Health, launched “Hi My Name is Tina,” the city’s first crystal meth awareness campaign tailored to gay men (“Tina” is slang for meth). The project lives on a website that remains operational to this day, and is currently managed by the AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT) and cited as a valuable resource by some organizations.

While the project helps gay men recognize “when the party is over” — aka: a crippling addiction has developed — comparatively little effort is put into dissuading gay men from experimenting with the drug in the first place. Instead, it is implied that meth-fuelled sex can be enjoyed responsibly; just eat enough food, hydrate, and sleep, so you can “minimize the negative health impacts and have more enjoyable highs.”

“Tina Sex can be the most amazing sex we’ve ever had, in terms of piggy-ness, being nasty, feeling liberated, wild and unconditionally accepted by yourself and others also using Tina,” claims the website, which further states that sex on meth “can be incredible, mind-blowing and like nothing else.” Harms were mostly addressed with briefer, relatively muted wording.

ACT is also responsible for “Safer PnP: From Dusk ‘til Dawn,” a 2023 brochure that glorifies chemsex and provides a “how-to” guide on it. “Loading syringes and prepping in front of others can be difficult and take away your play time, especially if you’re already high. Try to load syringes and premeasure doses earlier than the party.” Images of hot men can be found on almost every page.

“Your Party & Play Field Guide,” another brochure published by the Gay Men’s Sexual Health Alliance (a publicly funded organization) in 2023, uses similar framing.

“Around 25 per cent of guys who party will experience PnP turning from pleasurable escape into a severe problem that has consequences in their everyday lives,” the guide notes. “Playing the odds you won’t be one of these 1 in 4 isn’t a good strategy.” It then goes on to explain how users can “improve [their] chances.”

While the guide ignores prevention, it does find the time to caution readers about more important things, like the dangers of leaving valuables out during a drug-fuelled orgy, or accidentally leaving with someone else’s cock ring.

“When you think about PnP, crystal meth and GHB are the drugs that come to mind. These two have a bad reputation that follows them around. Yet, guys still love to party with them — why? Well, sex on these drugs can be hot and intense, not to mention it can last for hours. You feel more connected to people and better about yourself. Of course, there are downsides like dehydration, losing sleep, and increased anxiety,” it states.

Chemsex destroys people’s lives. It has destroyed the lives of people I know. Meth ruins relationships, induces paranoia, leads people to miss their HIV medications (increasing the risk of complications and new infections) and can trigger psychosis, homelessness or death.

The sense of connection chemsex evokes is a poisonous mirage that, upon dissipating, leaves ever-growing misery and emptiness. It is not uncommon for gay men at chemsex parties to pass out, only to later realize that, while unconscious, they were sexually assaulted by the very people they’d sought “belonging” from.

Chemsex is objectively bad. Whatever fleeting pleasures it gives are more than outweighed by the associated harms. Downplaying these realities is obscene when people are dying.

Tolerance of the practice betrays a subtle homophobia of low expectations. If a straight patient were to say: “I feel deeply sad and want to fix this with meth-fuelled orgies,” would any reasonable person expect health-care providers to forgo prevention? Of course not. If a researcher said: “Meth-fuelled orgies have the benefit of allowing older or uglier men to sleep with younger or prettier women (often by supplying them with meth),” there would rightfully be an outcry.

But this is what Canada’s gay health and HIV organizations are teaching to everyday homosexuals and clinicians of all orientations. It's no surprise, then, that chemsex remains a silent epidemic. The problem has flown under the radar because it’s rather niche, but the rest of society should take note: this is what happens when harm reduction extremism is allowed to reach its logical conclusion.

Health organizations that glorify chemsex and meth need to have their funding reevaluated. Grants should be restructured to impose a greater focus on prevention. Lives are at stake, and the current approach is repugnant.

Adam Zivo is a freelance writer, a weekly columnist at National Post, a veteran LGBT rights advocate, and the founder and director of the Centre For Responsible Drug Policy.

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