Washington: When it comes to combining drugs with sex (substance-linked sex), gender or sexual orientation doesn’t matter, a recent study suggests. As part of the study, researchers found that alcohol, cannabis, MDMA, and cocaine are the drugs most commonly combined with sex. The findings revealed that Respondents from the United Kingdom were the most likely to combine drugs with sex, compared with the US, other European countries, Australia and Canada.
“While using drugs in combination with and to specifically enhance the sexual experience tends to be associated with gay and bisexual men, we found that in our sample, men and women of all sexual orientations engaged in this behaviour. However, differences between groups did emerge,” said lead author, Will Lawn. “Harm reduction messages relating to substance-linked sex, in general, should therefore not only be targeted towards gay and bisexual men, as they are relevant to all groups,” Lawn explained.
Alcohol, cannabis, MDMA, and cocaine were most commonly used, while GHB/GBL and MDMA were rated most favourably. For instance, MDMA increased emotionality/intimacy’ the most, while GHB/GBL increased ‘sexual desire’ the most. While people of all genders and sexual orientations reported engaging in substance-linked sex, gay and bisexual men were more likely to have done so; homosexual men were 1.6 times as likely as heterosexual men to have used drugs with the specific intent of enhancing the sexual experience in the last year.
Drugs typically considered as ‘chemsex’ drugs —methamphetamine, mephedrone and GHB/GBL — were more commonly used by gay and bisexual men in combination with sex, which the researchers say highlights the continued need for certainly targeted harm reduction messages.
As the survey respondents were self-selecting rather than a representative sample, the researchers say their estimates of prevalence will be substantially larger than the general population. However, relative differences between groups are expected to be reliable. —ANI
