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United Kingdom 2015
Directed by
William Fairman / Max Gogarty
83 minutes
Rated R

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
3 stars

Chemsex

Synopsis:  A look at a burgeoning and very risky underground phenomenon in London’s gay community.

Chemsex is a salutary warning to young gay men of the potentially deadly consequences of partaking of the delights on offer in London’s anything-goes gay scene. For those interested in such things however It does have food for thought in what it reveals of untramelled male sexual desire and its powerful disruption of reasoned behaviour.  As Robin Williams put it: “God gave us a brain and a penis but only enough blood to run one at a time”.

The title refers the practice of gay men looking for the ne plus ultra of sexual  ecstasy by combining promiscuous sex and the intravenous injection of  drugs such as GBL/GHB, crystal meth and Mephedrone either in one-on-one liaisons or pre-arranged weekend sex parties where the participants have no-questions asked sex with anywhere from 5 to 15 partners

Facilitated by social media apps such as Grindr, not only are they sharing private parts they are sharing needles.  Needless to say AIDS is an ongoing threat but the widespread response amongst participants is that even if one becomes HIV+ there are now effective drugs against it so that it doesn’t matter. Indeed some people actually believe that one should contract the virus, or in the typically euphemistic parlance of the scene, "get pozzed up", so as to be able to partake of random intercourse and not to have to worry about it any longer.  Whether intended or not, some of the young men who have contracted it clearly regret their actions.

The main focus of the documentary is on a gay health clinic, 56 Dean Street, its manager, David Stuart, and his efforts to educate gay men and help them break their addiction to “chemsex”.  Some of them talk candidly to the camera recounting their experiences and thoughts on the subject while somewhat oddly the film  intermittently cuts to illustrative sequences of them shooting up (aka "slamming") and engaging in sex, whether for real or as simulations I’m not sure.  

The documentary would have benefitted from a more consistent engagement with the interviewees – some appear once or twice then evaporate. Fairman and Gogarty focus on one of them, a cocksure young man who espouses the view to Stuart  that HIV is a myth created by doctors and drug companies in order to peddle their goods and services. Stuart, who has lived with HIV for 23 years judiciously keeps his opinions to himself. 

Gradually Stuart and the work of the clinic assumes the role of main structuring device with one of the patients becoming a volunteer counsellor and this is where it tends to cross the boundary between documentary and community education video.  Nothwithstanding, Chemsex  is a commendably frank and revealing film.

 

 

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