ID: HR19-436

Presenting author: Andrés Lekanger

Presenting author biography:

Andrés Lekanger is 32 years old. He has a bachelors degree as a Social Educator and works as an outreach worker in Norwegian Sex Workers rights organization (PION).

Chemfriendly: using humour and dragshow to inform queers about safest possible ways of doing recreational drugs.

Andrés Lekanger, Christer Nicolai Wergeland, Aksel Skorm Mena Refsdal

Chemfriendly is an peer-to-peer activist group representing different organizations working for the rights of people living with HIV, sex workers´rights, LGBT health issues and drug- and harm reduction policy.
The main aims of our interventions is to prevent drug related overdoses and infections among men who have sex with men (MSM).

Setting:
Chemfriendly is situated in Oslo and our interventions take place at gay bars and clubs. In addition we use both social and traditional media to reach out to our target group and to lobby for harm reduction work. Our target population is MSM who participate in chemsex – subcultures were MSM combine sex with recreational drug use. “Chem” is short for chemicals, or recreational drugs.

Project:
In cooperation with drag artists Chemfriendly use gay bars and clubs to reach out to our target population, but also other queers we meet in the gay bars. At these “infotainment” events we combine drag shows with demonstrations of test kits, distribution of information about the safest possible ways of recreational drug use, how to prevent overdoses and what to do in an overdose situation. Chemfriendly is also present at gay clubs together with drag artists, not doing shows, but handing out user equipment and talking to our target population about harm reduction.

Outcome:
We are working on how we can engage our target group more efficiently with our presentations. By engaging gay bars and drag artists, and combining humour and show with delivery of information about drug use and harmreduction we are reaching our target group were they are. Many people coming up to our stand after shows are quite open about their own drug habits. Calling our self “Chemfriendly” is an effective way of getting the attention of our target group, and the term signals that we are non-judgemental.