Chemsex cultures: Subcultural reproduction and queer survival

“Chemsex” emerged in the 21st century as the gay and bisexual male practice of taking drugs during sexual encounters in order to modulate pleasures, promote endurance, and expand the temporalities of sex. Yet, while the term has come to prominence at a historical juncture when the introduction of antiretroviral drugs, locative dating apps, online pornography, and gentrification all contributed to the popularisation and mediation of the practice, the history of sex on drugs among gay men is longer than that. In this article, I draw from that history, as well as from wider critical histories and anthropologies of drug use in order to explore the subcultural significance of sexualised drug use amongst queer folk. If, as Bourdieu argued, the hegemony of the ruling classes is sustained by forms of economic, social, and cultural capital accumulation and reproduction, I build on scholarship on subcultural and post-subcultural studies to frame chemsex as a practice of subcultural reproduction that connects contemporary gay and bisexual men across generations, ensuring the survival of their cultures and subjectivities. In so doing, I focus on chemsex’s potential as a life-affirming cultural practice, one that can ensure the symbolic and even material survival not only of the men who engage in it, but also of the subcultures and subcultural histories within which they locate themselves every time they decide to “party and play.”