Gareth Thomas Wants the Queer Community to Talk About Chemsex — Before It Kills More People
The former Wales rugby captain has teamed up with Grindr and UK charity You Are Loved to launch a chemsex awareness series. The numbers behind the campaign are worse than most people realize.
Gareth Thomas is used to breaking silence. The former Wales rugby captain came out publicly in 2009, disclosed his HIV-positive status in 2019, and has spent the years since turning his own story into one of the UK’s most effective anti-stigma campaigns. His latest project tackles a subject the queer community has been circling around for a decade without really looking at directly: chemsex.
The new campaign, launched this week with the LGBTQ+ non-profit You Are Loved and the dating app Grindr, is the first installment of Grindr for Equality’s Out in the Open content series. It is part podcast, part documentary, part service journalism. Thomas says the goal is simple. “Silence is costing lives.”
What chemsex actually is
Chemsex is the use of specific drugs — most commonly crystal meth, mephedrone, and GHB/GBL — to enable longer, more intense sexual encounters, usually between men who have sex with men. It tends to happen in private settings, often arranged through hookup apps, and sessions can stretch across days.
It is not the same as casual drug use at a party. The pharmacology is different, the sexual risk profile is different, and the social isolation that tends to come with it is different. GHB in particular has a narrow therapeutic window — the difference between a dose that intensifies sex and a dose that stops breathing is smaller than most users realize.
The numbers
Grindr’s data, cited in the launch of the series, lands hard. More than a quarter of LGBTQ+ users surveyed — 28% — said they had had sex while using drugs. One in five — 19% — said they had lost someone to a drug-related death.
Let that second number sit for a second. Among LGBTQ+ adults who use Grindr, nearly one in five has buried someone. That is not a niche harm-reduction question. That is a community bereavement pattern.
UK public health data has been pointing in the same direction for years. A London-focused study published in The Lancet HIV found chemsex was associated with roughly a four-fold increase in HIV incidence and significantly higher rates of hepatitis C, other STIs, and mental health crisis presentations. Studies from Barcelona, Berlin, and Amsterdam have documented similar patterns across European “gay destination” cities — precisely the cities many queer travelers, including a lot of our readers, rotate through.
Why Thomas is the right messenger
Thomas is not claiming to be a chemsex expert. What he brings is a version of queer masculinity that the community trusts: former elite athlete, long-term HIV advocate, someone who has publicly processed addiction issues in his own life. He is not lecturing. In the first episode of Out in the Open, he sits with people who have used, people who have lost friends and partners, and clinicians who work in the space.
“We must break the silence around LGBTQ+ drug use,” Thomas said at the launch. “The shame is what’s killing people — not the conversation.”
That framing matters because the dominant chemsex narrative for years has been either moralizing (drugs are bad, gays who use them are worse) or romantically fatalistic (this is what modern gay life looks like, take it or leave it). Neither approach has moved the needle. Harm reduction, peer support, and actually useful clinical pathways have — where they exist.
What the campaign is actually offering
The Out in the Open series is available on Grindr Presents, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Grindr has updated its in-app resources to direct users to You Are Loved and Switchboard, the UK’s LGBTQ+ helpline. That last piece is the most practically significant. Hookup apps are where a lot of chemsex sessions get arranged. Putting harm reduction information and crisis resources one tap away from the same interface is, frankly, the kind of thing public health advocates have been asking Grindr to do for years.
The campaign is UK-focused in its initial launch, but the resources translate. You Are Loved’s materials cover overdose recognition (including naloxone and GHB-specific signs), safer-use guidance, and pathways into treatment. For readers outside the UK, the equivalents worth bookmarking include Antidote (London), mainliners harm reduction networks across Europe, and — in the US — the LGBT National Help Center.
For our readers
If you are traveling this summer — Amsterdam for WorldPride, Barcelona, Berlin, Madrid, any city with a big circuit scene — it’s worth knowing the basics before you go. Carry your own drinks. Don’t mix GHB with alcohol, ever. Know that cross-tolerance doesn’t work the way you’d expect with meth. If you’re going to a chill, bring a sober friend or at least tell someone where you are.
None of that is new advice. It is, apparently, advice a lot of people still need to hear. The fact that Gareth Thomas had to launch a campaign to get people to say the word out loud is the point.
If you or someone you know is struggling, You Are Loved (UK) and Switchboard (0800 0119 100) are good first calls. In the US, SAMHSA’s helpline is 1-800-662-4357. None of them will judge you. All of them would rather talk to you than read about you.
