Pilot Study on Practice of "Chemical Sex" by Men Having Sex With Men Living With HIV Followed at Reunion Island University Hospital Center

The term "CHEMSEX", short for "chemicals" and "sex", is used to define the consumption, regardless of the route of administration, of drugs or substances for recreational use, in a sexual context.

Although the use of drugs and narcotics is not a novelty in sexual practice, however, there is a change in behavior. Indeed, the advent of synthetic products such as cathinones, easily obtained via the internet and at affordable prices has attracted a wider audience and has allowed in less than ten years, the amplification of this worrying phenomenon.

The described effects of cathinones are just as powerful as the classic drugs that were quickly supplanted: intellectual stimulation, exacerbation of the senses, euphoria, disinhibition, sexual arousal, relaxation.

These initially ingested or inhaled products are quickly injected for a greater rapidity of their hallucinogenic and psychostimulant effects. SLAM ("slap"), is the Anglo-Saxon term commonly used to describe the intravenous use of drugs in the context of sexual practices. The subjects are gradually led to modify and increase their consumption, for ever more effect.

The consequences of this practice are multiple and serious: addiction with all the risks incurred, psychiatric and infectious complications related to the sharing of contaminated material (endocarditis, hepatitis ...) and unprotected sex ratios favoring the transmission of STIs.