Partee-ing or chemsex, or using drugs when engaging in sexual activities, is now commonly done by gay and bisexual men; but at least those who do so are familiar with HIV prevention.
This is according to a study – “Sexualised drug use among gay and bisexual men in New Zealand: Findings from a national cross-sectional study” by Samuel Andrews, Mohamed Hammoud, Garrett Prestage, David Newcombe, and Peter Saxton – that appeared in Drug and Alcohol Review.
According to the researchers, while drug use among LGBTQIA people may have already been studied, there still remains “minimal attention given to how drug use shapes sexual practice, especially in the era of biomedical HIV prevention among gay and bisexual men.”
For this research, 739 gay and bisexual men from New Zealand were tapped for an online cross-sectional study touching on their drug use, sexual practices, health and community. The researchers particularly looked at drug use patterns, and identified three discrete groups determined by intensity of recent (past 6 months) sexual practice: no recent sex, recent sex and recent sexualized drug use. We examine factors associated with these groups and identify factors independently predicting sexualized drug use.
The researchers found:
- almost a third (29%) of the participants engaged in group sex
- 17.5% were taking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)
- 6.5% were HIV positive
- 59.5% had recently used illicit drugs (16.9% methylenedioxymethamphetamine, 6% methamphetamine, 3.3% gamma-hydroxybutyrate acid, 1.4% ketamine)
- sexualized drug use was common (35.7%)
- those engaged in sexualized drug use were connected to gay community and had a high uptake of biomedical HIV prevention
- independent predictors of sexualized drug use included being sexually adventurous, knowing their HIV status, having more than 10 recent sexual partners, engaging in group sex and sex at a sex-on-site venue
But while there is risk of harm from sexualized drug use, according to the researchers, it was worth stressing that “many gay and bisexual men engaging in sexualized drug use manage HIV transmission risks through regular testing, PrEP and HIV treatment”.
For the researchers, responses to sexualized drug use should focus on ensuring maintenance of testing and HIV prevention tools, and understand factors that lead to people engaging in sexualized drug if they previously had not. Exploration of chemsex should also be considered as a subset of sexualized drug use… since the local drug market and sexual culture could lead to this practice taking a different shape to other settings.”
