If, during his serious accident last Friday, Pierre Palmade was positive for cocaine, there is nothing to say that he had just indulged in a session of chemsex, this practice which consists in ingesting chemical drugs to prolong and intensify sexual pleasure.
The comedian, involved in a traffic accident in Seine-et-Marne which caused the death of an unborn child and seriously injured another, was however cited in a chemsex case on February 2 in court. from Paris. According to information from Figaro, in 2021, a dealer is arrested with several customers. Among them, an escort-boy who has Pierre Palmade’s bank card. The latter is then summoned by the police and admits having entrusted his means of payment to the young man so that he can buy drugs and sex toys. The matter remains there. Pierre Palmade, who had already been sentenced for possession of drugs, is not being prosecuted.
Justice is now looking into this 2021 case, and the actor is now the subject of two investigations: one for “drug violation” and the other for “homicide and involuntary injuries” linked to the accident. from last Friday.
Pierre Palmade, whose police custody was extended on Thursday, will probably have to explain himself to the investigators about his drug use, his addiction, the days and hours preceding the accident and his possible practice of chemsex.
What is it about ?
Chemsex consists of taking pleasure, under the influence of synthetic drugs, with one or more people, of the same sex or not, met on a dating application a few hours earlier or whom we already knew. The ingested products then make it possible to intensify the excitement, to increase the performances of the men, to support the contact and to increase the feelings.
In a long file that Le Parisien devoted last winter to the subject, Sébastien, a 37-year-old former “chemsexeur”, confided to us: “There is a need to disinhibit themselves for some who do not always accept their homosexuality. For others, it is the search for performance, or disconnection with a sometimes heavy reality, or to experiment with more extreme practices”.
On dating apps, chemsex users recognize each other with specific emoticons, coded or double-meaning words.
Who practices it?
The phenomenon was born in the 2000s in the homosexual community, first in London (United Kingdom). According to the Journal du sida, it was the activist and gay activist David Stuart, head of the addiction service of a London clinic, who developed the support for users and baptized the practice chemsex, a contraction of “chems”. (chemicals) and “six”.
The practice spread thereafter in the gay communities of the large European cities, then more and more in the heterosexual mediums, urban or not. “We saw chemsex appear in Paris a little over ten years ago in the gay world. It was marginal at first. And this practice mainly concerned HIV-positive men, sometimes because of the impact of the virus on their sex life,” told us Thibaut Jedrzejewski, general practitioner at 190, the sexual health center based in Paris.
“In France, all modes of consumption combined, chemsex could concern 1 to 2 gay men out of 10, and the phenomenon has exploded since the Covid era”, writes the magazine Néon in an article which evokes a “coming epidemic”.
According to the Sea Sex and Chem report, sent to the Ministry of Health in 2022 by a college of psychiatrists and addictologists, “about 20% of MSM”, that is to say “Men who have sex with men are affected by the phenomenon. That is 100,000 to 200,000 people in France. A number still underestimated, add the authors of the study.
“The users are mostly men between 30 and 60 years old, socially integrated and from a good socio-economic environment. 3-MMC is easily disseminated during meetings between partners, through specialized dating sites”, notes the Information, Intelligence and Strategic Analysis Service on Organized Crime, of the DCPJ, in a document we have consulted.
In a letter sent in August 2021, an LGBT liaison officer from the Paris police headquarters alerted his hierarchy: “This phenomenon of chemsex is taking on such proportions that it is now extending to the heterosexual population, especially among young people. »
What drugs are used?
Chemsex is not associated with a specific drug. The list of products that provide sexual ecstasy is long. But the best known are MDMA, 3-MMC, 4-MMC and GBL or GHB, also called the date rape drug because it causes memory loss and annihilation of willpower.
What are the risks ?
First there is the overdose. In 2021, nearly a third of fatal overdoses in the capital and in the inner suburbs, i.e. 9 deaths, were linked to synthetic drugs, these psychoactive products created chemically. Of these 9 overdoses, 7 followed the absorption of 3-MMC, the new product which is all the rage to the point of supplanting “historical” synthetic drugs such as amphetamine, methamphetamine or MDMA.
For experts from Ofast (Anti-Narcotics Office), “the major issue related to synthetic drugs lies in the consumer’s lack of knowledge of both the dosage and the nature of the product. They are consumed mainly in a festive context, which causes phenomena of group intoxication among young populations who obtain their supplies on the Internet”.
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In his letter addressed to the Paris police headquarters, the LGBT liaison officer stresses that in addition to the risk of addiction, contamination with sexually transmitted diseases and death, chemsex “also induces multiple rapes, sexual assaults or violence “.
The police officer cites in particular victims who did not wish to file a complaint, “fearing possible prosecution or not being heard because of this use”, underlining in particular “the impunity” of the perpetrators who could consider these drugs “as a complementary means of committing crimes or misdemeanors”.
To get help, l’association AIDS offers an emergency hotline dedicated to chemsex. Activists can be reached there 24 hours a day, including on WhatsApp at 07.62.93.22.29.