Chemsex: Methamphetamine use and Sexual Behavior

"Meth lowers a person's inhibitions because its effect on the brain's dopamine production damages the frontal lobes used to reign in risky impulses," said Dr. Jack Stump, an emergency room doctor at Southwest Washington Medical Center in Vancouver who lectures nationally about the effects of meth.

"Chronic use of methamphetamine often impairs sexual performance in both men and women, but nonetheless may continue to heighten sexual desire and fantasies. The resulting frustration from not being able to achieve sexual satisfaction often drives individuals to engage in increasingly intense and/or unusual sexual behaviors."

"Many stimulant users experience strong aphrodisiac effects from cocaine and methamphetamine use. The combination of increased sex drive and reduced inhibitions often results in compulsive, hypersexual behaviors. This may include: obsessive viewing of pornography, compulsive masturbation, HIV-risky sexual encounters with multiple partners (e.g. prostitutes or other strangers), and paraphilias (e.g. crossdressing, exhibitionism, fetishism)."

"Meth increases sexual dysfunction. Meth reduces inhibitions, but it increases a false sense of confidence, and sends sexual compulsion into overdrive. Meth users turn to darker, rougher, and generally unprotected sexual behavior - placing them at risk - in an attempt to recapture the initial intoxication. The result is persistent sexual dysfunction."

"Many meth users become obsessed with sex."

When compared to other drugs, methamphetamine is set apart by the particular high that users experience. In the context of chemsex, when methamphetamine is combined “…with the neurochemical state of male arousal, and with a particular inhibition a person might have about sex, it creates an overwhelming sexual disinhibition and access to desires and fantasies that might previously have been recessed by religious, cultural, or psychological obstacles”  

"Fantasies can be part of the obsessive cycle as well as the sexual behavior component. Sexual fantasies are used by sex addicts, just like any other sexual behavior, to self-sooth through periods of stress, discomfort or boredom; to numb pain; and to generate feelings of excitement—the all-important dopamine trigger addicts experience when achieving their 'high.'"

"We've compared meth to cocaine, opiates and alcohol, and have found much more of a connection between sex and meth than those other drugs," says Richard Rawson, a researcher and associate director of the Integrated Substance Abuse Program at the University of California-Los Angeles. "It increases sexual pleasure, it increases sexual activity, and it increases the extreme kinds of high-risk behavior that lead to HIV and other STDs. More so than any other drug." 

 "Methamphetamine driven sexual behaviors can cause a combination of disinhibited sexual activities that under normal conditions would have been regarded inappropriate and taboo by individuals and their cultural context."

"Hypersexuality is a clinical term referring to the sexual behavior changes that Meth users commonly undergo. Meth users frequently become hypersexual (extremely active) which results in lower inhibitions, artificial feelings of intimacy, a voracious appetite for pornography, high-risk sex, and the inability to control their sexual behavior."