During confinement, "people who were already doing chemsex have greatly worsened their practices in a context of anxiety, loneliness, closure. People who perhaps weren't doing it have discovered it: it doesn't there were more than private meeting places", explains to AFP Hélène Donnadieu, head of the addictology department of the Montpellier University Hospital.

Since then, "there are a lot of needs, and it has increased in recent months", warns the Nantes psychiatrist Benoît Schreck, who has seen since "half of the year 2020" an increase in requests for care at the Nantes University Hospital.

Or “between one and three” news per week, indicates the addictologist to AFP.

Chemsex "has spread widely" outside Paris, where it appeared at the end of the 2000s, explained in November Dorian Cessa, main coordinator of a study in which around 1,200 practitioners participated, of which "a quarter does not live in the metropolises".

"For five years, it has only been increasing. That this phenomenon is spreading outside the big cities, it is obvious", abounds Dr. Donnadieu, for whom a "spot effect in the use of drugs is ultra classic when a new drug arrives".

Internet and Covid

These are synthetic cathinones, in particular the most popular of them, 3MMC, whose "much greater distribution also contributes to this explosion in the practice of chemsex" among men having sex with other men. men (MSM), says Dr. Schreck.

Health professionals also underline the impact of applications like Grindr, which by replacing meetings in gay bars, have removed social ties and promoted isolation, such as the health crisis, which has "created a seesaw", estimates the Dr. Donnadieu.

Containment has not stopped traffic, with products increasingly easy to acquire on the internet.

"The vast majority of patients have always received their substances by parcel", emphasizes Dr. Schreck.

Since then, the improvement in the health situation has not resulted in a lull in this phenomenon with potentially dramatic psycho-social and health consequences: in Montpellier, Dr. Donnadieu thus identifies in 18 months at least six cases of suicides of men engaged in "extremely problematic chemsex".

“The associations are always challenged in the same way”, says Anne Souyris, the health assistant (EELV) of the town hall of Paris who is implementing a plan so that centers for addiction, sexual health, LGBT associations , hospitals and police talk to each other better on the subject.

For his colleague Jean-Luc Romero-Michel, human rights assistant whose husband died in a chemsex session, the "police are powerless" in the face of the phenomenon and practitioners "do not call the police for fear of finding themselves in front of courts".

Need for trained staff

In Occitania, Dr. Donnadieu wants to "form a network" of caregivers, in connection with community associations, so that they "are comfortable" on the subject.

At the Nantes University Hospital, even if a partnership between the Aides association and the infectious disease and addictology departments has been established, the coordination "is a bit sinful for the moment", judges Dr Schreck who says he lacks psychologists and trained nurses.

The 190, Parisian sexual health center, remains for him a "model".

“Things are in the process of being put in place”, estimates Anne Batisse, pharmacist at the addictovigilance center of Paris, for whom chemsex has made it possible to “bring together” the sexual health networks and those of addictology.

In addition to the "better overall knowledge of the problem", there is now "better care and earlier identification", she says positively.

Delayed by the health crisis, a mission commissioned by the Minister of Health Olivier Véran from Pr Amine Benyamina, and to which Drs Donnadieu and Schreck contributed, must deliver its results soon.

© 2022 AFP