We need, urgently, a Campaign for Real Life.
And fewer academics.

Wow! Do people this self obsessed and utterly divorced from the natural world really exist?

It’s a form of intellectual yoga, involving fantastic contortions in search of light that can never be found. “If I stick my head far enough up my own backside will I eventually see a glimmer of light shining down my throat?”

No.

I read unherd specifically not to read bullshit like this! Even AA is grabbed by those those intent on spreading their selfish pseudo intellectual disease to every quarter. Give the poor addicts and alkies a break, they need support not psychobabble, if indeed there are any alcoholics left in AA rather than just those who “identify” as such.

I’m sorry, but I just didn’t really understand the nuances of this article. Certainly, I get the general premise, ‘chemsex’, but beyond that ……..?
The whole idea behind language, surely, is to convey ideas and information to others, in a manner that not only can it be understood, but more importantly, not misunderstood (hell, I learn’t that much as a humble private soldier in the army). Maybe it’s simply a question of my lack of intelligence, or higher education (I know my intellectual limits), but if a journalist/academic is going to write an article, for a general audience, by most accounts, I’m sure, it has to be intelligible, to a wider audience and not just other ‘intellectuals/academics ?
It seems there is a trend, recent or otherwise, of disguising potentially controversial ideas behind ‘intellectual’ speech, a miasma of ideas and words, used to obscure, and bully.
My general understanding, of the article, is ‘should we just accept chemsex as a thing, and not only that, but extend and disseminate it, without judgement, as far and as wide as humanly ( I don’t doubt animals will cum into it at some point) possibly ? As with a lot of these narcissistic ‘pleasure’ tendencies though (like fat acceptance for example), little thought is given to ‘tomorrow’ and the day after, who else it might effect, what damage it might do to them, and just as importantly, who pays for picking up the ‘damaged’ pieces afterwards.
I suspect any ‘wider’ acceptance of chemsex will not be to the benefit of women !

“Critical Chemsex Studies” This is a joke, surely? I tell you what gay men want; its to be left alone and not have every aspect of their lives commoditised and sanitised by bored dilettantes that cant find meaning in some aspect of their own subjective reality.

Yawn- taking drugs and having sex is practiced by most people on a regular basis. It’s called alcohol.

I’m not sure that we do need to talk about chemsex, and, if perchance we do, it’s now done. This all I need to hear on the subject.

“Traditional sobriety paradigms”. Pseuds’ Corner beckons!

Have we not just spent decades arguing why sex and drugs or sex and alcohol were a bad idea?
Have we not said that having sex with someone that is drunk or high is rape? How many college kids have gotten tossed out of school for having sex with someone that is drunk? But now high on meth is now just an enhancer?
Now, I have never been a fan of the idea of accusing some college guy that is drunk and has sex with a drunk college girl of “rape” but this Chemsex thing would seem to almost encourage abuse.
I can see SO many ways this could go wrong, never mind the damage it does even when it does not go wrong.

Academics are always the bores who want to sap whatever bit of fun a few people have stumbled on by analysing it to death,

Just get sh** faced and f***, for goodness sake

This article is lost. This is ‘Unherd’.

Go out of the door, turn left and left again at the lights. ‘Vice’ is the third building on the left, just along from ‘The Cobbler’s Arms’.

This is an essay not an article. Teach academics to write for publication or don’t use them.

“transmisogyny” isn’t a thing

I tried hard, but I couldn’t get past ‘…the sub-intentional zone…’ without a guffaw or two and the realisation that I hadn’t spotted this as a truly wonderful spoof. 10/10, keep them coming – could you do one on Nicola Sturgeon next?

“What was remarkable was the diversity of not just age, gender, and racial identities in the room, but the breadth of psychoactive experiences across the sober-using spectrum.”

Really? Diversity? Sounded to me like a homogenous bunch of self-absorbed sleazeballs.

I agree with other comments that there really is too much academic babble on display here. It’s a shame though as I at least think that there is a lot to discuss in the phenomena. I especially could do without this sentence: “Gay men and straight women alike spoke of letting go of body dysmorphia and shame while in the disinhibited state of chemically-enhanced euphoria, of exploring desires that the cultures of toxic masculinity and transmisogyny have impinged their abilities to see”

You really can’t just appeal to ideas like toxic masculinity’ or, worse ‘transmisogyny’ without defining them. Toxic masculinity, is that just men getting drunk and violent or just ‘masculinity’? ”….impinged their ability to see’ – does that mean gay men fancying men with fit bodies and not fat ones (though some do!) or people who are in fact biological women?

But there is some sort of point here: the typical chemsex drugs do lower inhibitions and can in many cases make people feel very sensual, good about their bodies, which they may have hangups about, and eager to touch others as well.

Here’s an idea: people choose to take drugs of all kinds because they like the effects on them. You can get psychically dependent (not usually physically addictive) on these effects, but don’t have to. I’ve taken a range of drugs though not on a regular basis. I’m not going to proselytise that they proffer fantastic new insights or ways of being. But neither in many cases are they as harmful as much of the anti propaganda suggests. You can obviously do far too much of anything, including food. (It’s true that there is no quality control on what is in illegal drugs). Don’t spend days binging on drink or drugs (I’m tempted even to add exercise to this list, as that can get pretty obsessive as well). Do something else most of the time.

I’m sure we’re all reassured to know there are now opportunities in academia for those wishing to pursue a career in Critical Chemsex Studies.

‘We need to talk about ch*****’. No we don’t.

Headline ‘We need to talk about chemsex’. Memo to author and editor: no we don’t. This did not appear for ages. Who programmed the bot?

As of 2020, 93.6% of the UK population identified as heterosexual or straight. Presumably that statistic applies to readers of Unherd. So why are you pushing articles of no interest to most of your readers? While we acknowledge and accept the other 6.4%, we do not need or want to know what they do or how they do it.

“to dissolve the culturally-conditioned sexual anxieties that can be so tricky to shake off while sober.” In other words, to abandon common sense!

Contrary to several of these comments, I find the opportunity to come across and if curious get to know something about behavior, experience and thought I’d very likely never hear of quite liberating. I guess that’s half the reason why I keep returning to Unherd.

I am torn between “chemsex is not my thing and seems, erm, …problematic…”, and “evidently we are under an obligation to dissect desire until there’s no more pleasure in it.” Merci, M. Foucault. In any case its clear now that I should not have chosen a scholarly vocation, but an academic career instead. (Monthly meetings in #NYC amirite?!)

Sounds like an interesting way to widen the circle of your friends.

“We need to talk about chemsex”. Do we? Why? Ever increasing preoccupation to find new “ problems “ and contort them into incomprehensible, meaningless essays

[I doubled a comment – deleted the double. Sorry about that.]