Chemsex
This hard-hitting, timely documentary about London’s underground ‘chemsex’ scene started life in 2013 as a Vice article entitled “The Meth-Fuelled, Week-Long Orgies Ravaging London’s Gay Sex Party Scene.” Though sex, drugs and Bacchanalian excess are undeniably involved and explicitly documented in Chemsex, William Fairman and Max Gogarty’s film has come a long way from the clickbait title of its origins, and tries to avoid sensationalist gawking in order to shine a light on a very real sexual and mental health epidemic among gay and bisexual men.
The term ‘chemsex’ originates from gay hook-up apps like Grindr, and broadly means the use of drugs to facilitate sex between men. Chemsex has its own litany of slang discourse, a language that one interviewee tells us is used to “tart up” the stigma and seediness that comes with drug use. “G” is for GBL; “Tina” (as in Turner) is crystal meth; “slamming” is the injecting of crystal meth; “chilled sessions” is code for drug use; and “pozzing up” is the extreme sadomasochism of intentionally trying to transmit or catch HIV.
This is not the world of the “out and proud,” says health worker David Stuart of 56 Dean Street, the NHS’s only substance use and sexual health clinic for gay men. This voiceover warning accompanies red lit images of an all-male sauna where drug use is “strictly not tolerated” yet still rife. One sign reads “Do you really want your friends and family to know you died in a gay sauna?” ironically conjuring up the spectre of the worry and shame that comes with internalised homophobia that many are trying to escape through the highs of chemsex.
Though some participants in the documentary had their first introduction to the chemsex scene through druggings and rapes, or as a temporary euphoric escape from “waiting to die” from HIV, some, such as Enrique, an accomplished Spanish banker with a masters degree, lost everything simply through the compulsive behaviour of more and more sex and drugs.
Chemsex offers the explanation that no individual trauma is necessary to fall into this trap. A gay/bisexual boy growing up in a happy, accepting home may still have to contend with homophobia and victim blaming, not only from a heteronormative society, but within the gay community itself, in which ‘good,’ respectable gay men get married and settle down, while ‘bad gays’ are promiscuous, take drugs and are responsible for any abuse, disease or hardship they suffer.
It is easy to see how facets of the gay community, emerging from the trauma of AIDS – which was never sociologically or psychologically dealt with – could turn to new technology and new drugs to create a false sense of communion and euphoria. With days and weeks lost to drug-fuelled pleasure, chemsex may seem like an exciting, if unhealthy and potentially dangerous, queer alternative to heteronormative time and lifecycles.
The visual logic of Chemsex takes traditional documentarian form, and while not exciting in itself, the talking heads of those describing their often harrowing experiences and footage of subjects shooting up or suffering psychosis is poignant enough alone.
Chemsex’s soundscape, however, leaves something to be desired. The soundtrack repeatedly uses low, aural rumblings as if to not so subtly remind the audience this underground epidemic is a time bomb waiting to explode, but it’s the reoccurring sonic motif of a bleeping heart monitor which may take spectators out of the moment and lead one to think of Casualty.
Despite these minor quibbles, Chemsex is a must see ‘issues’ film – interesting on its own terms, a definite watch which will hopefully serve to increase awareness about those who suffer with the dark side of this sociological phenomenon.