Sex, Drugs and Care for All
Queers & peers together for safer use
ABOUT
Sex, Drugs and Care 4 All (SDC4ALL) is a collaborative programme between The Love Tank and Antidote, developed in direct response to insights from programmes of research conducted by our research and community knowledge generation team.
This work has identified significant gaps in drugs and alcohol support for queer people who attend chillouts or engage with what is often referred to as ‘chemsex’* – especially people from underserved communities (including queer migrants and queer people of colour). Existing services were often considered inaccessible to underserved communities, overly clinical in their approach, and limited by a binary framing of abstinence versus use. There was a clear call for alternative forms of support, ones that are community-based, tailored for a diverse array of communities and people, rooted in care, and free from stigma.
SDC4ALL was specifically designed to meet these needs, offering peer-led harm reduction in non-traditional settings, outside the walls of brick-and-mortar services. Such services often require people to feel motivated enough to self-identify as having a problem in order to access care and support. SDC4ALL builds on a tested and trusted model, Ask Me About PrEP (AMAP), which places trained community members at the heart of public health engagement. By providing peer training and access to harm reduction tools and resources (physical and digital), the programme empowers queer people to look after one another in spaces where support has often been missing or spotty. The programme also has the capacity to improve support, trust, and signposting to brick-and-mortar services—positioning itself not as a replacement, but as a complement.
Antidote, a specialist LGBTQ+ chemsex support service, is a core delivery partner. The programme has established a priority referral pathway with Antidote, ensuring that any individual signposted by a peer mobiliser receives fast-tracked and affirming support.
*Note: Chemsex is typically defined as the sexualised use, most often by gay and bisexual men, of crystal methamphetamine, GHB/GBL, and mephedrone. It is part of a broader umbrella of sexualised drug use. We know, from our research and engagement with communities, that chemsex is far from a perfect term: lots of people don't see themselves reflected in it or find the term to be judgemental or medicalising. Chemsex as a term, therefore, can exclude people using drugs in and around sex who we might be trying to provide support to. That’s why we prefer to use terms like ‘chillout’, which are broader and less specifying but closer to the way people on the scene talk about using drugs and having sex.
WHY SDC4ALL MATTERS
Research and community knowledge tells us that chillouts - or the ‘chemsex’ scene - can be associated with risks and harms, including overdose, addiction and dependence, loss of quality of life, consent violations, and, in some cases, HIV/STI transmission. We also know that people on the margins - of these scenes, of their communities, or of society more broadly – are, for a number of reasons, more likely to be vulnerable to these risks and harms. All of these risks and harms might otherwise be preventable with access to the right knowledge, tools, and support.
It’s clear, then, that, between the binaries of sobriety and addiction lies a wide spectrum of need, a space that mainstream (brick-and-mortar) services can't always reach. Current support structures rarely speak to, or adequately serve, the queer people navigating this middle ground. SDC4ALL responds directly to that gap by offering harm reduction – practical work that seeks to minimise the risks associated with drug use, rather than asking people to stop using altogether - that is holistic, non-judgemental, and rooted in lived and living experience.
SDC4ALL is deliberately inclusive and intersectional, meaning that diversity is not an afterthought but a driving force in the recruitment of peer mobilisers. It recognises how layered forms of marginalisation, racism, transphobia, and xenophobia shape people’s ability to access care, as well as their vulnerabilities to harm. That’s why SDC4ALL recruitment centres queer migrants, people of colour, trans people, and others often left behind by traditional service models. The content of the programme carefully considers the particular needs, vulnerabilities and barriers faced by underserved cohorts.
Rather than approaching support through a lens of pathology or crisis, SDC4ALL embraces a model of care that is flexible, peer-led, and co-produced. It brings community members and stakeholders together to collectively define what harm reduction can look like. By embedding the programme within the communities it serves, and delivering it through trusted peers rather than clinical professionals alone, SDC4ALL reimagines what accessible, affirming support can look like in chillout and party spaces.
Through its partnership with Antidote, the programme also strengthens links between communities and formal services—creating faster, safer, and more trusting referral pathways that help overcome common access barriers such as stigma, fear, or previous negative experiences.
WANT TO TAKE PART?
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How can I become a mobiliser?
We’re recruiting groups of queer people to join this exciting new initiative as peer mobilisers—a queer care team supporting in harm reduction, sexual health, and wellbeing in Hackney.
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Who is eligible?
Queer people who:
Live, work, study, or socialise in Hackney
Have lived or living experience of chillouts
Want to support their peers and communities
Are reliable, open-minded, and committed to reducing harm
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What’s involved?
Training: 3 sessions across 3 Tuesdays — the first and third in person, the second online
Support: Ongoing check-ins throughout the programme
Tools: Access to harm reduction resources and information
Perks: Exclusive merch from the SDC4ALL programme, t-shirt / badges / stickers
If you have any questions, or want to know more about this programme, please contact Leo at
RESOURCES
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Antidote: Drugs & Alcohol Support
Antidote is the UK’s only LGBTQ+ run and targeted drug and alcohol support service. Set up in 2002, they work with both drug and alcohol users and healthcare professionals.
Antidote gives non-judgemental free advice and support delivered by highly trained staff and volunteers – all of whom identify as LGBTQ+ and who have a good understanding of the pressures and problems that come with recreational drug or alcohol use.
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Homerton sexual health services
A partnership between London Friend, Turning Point and NHS to help people struggling with chemsex.
It includes clinic service and support (triage, assessment, advice, and treatment within the Sexual Health Service), Safer Injecting packs, and Naloxone provision and advice on appropriate use.
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LITTLE BACKPOCKET GUIDE TO Safer Chillouts
This guide is for people who have either been to a chillout, have wanted to go to one, or maybe you have been invited to use chems with someone and are thinking about it.
It’s something you can read before you go and refer to (if you need to) while you’re there. It contains advice about how to look after yourself – how to do things safely – and how to look after other people – how to treat people with care, compassion, and kindness (the way you deserve to be treated too).
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Release
Release is the UK’s centre of expertise on drugs and drug laws. They provide legal support, representation and drugs advice to people with a history of drug use or who are impacted by drug laws.
Release also campaign for evidence-based drug policies founded on principles of public health and human rights, seeking to reduce the harms faced by people who use drugs.
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Safer States
Safer States is an information handbook about drugs and nightlife brought to you by Good Night Out Campaign, Release, The Love Tank, and Safe Only.
Safer States is for anyone who uses drugs now, may do so in the future, or cares about those in their community who do. They bring you the most accurate information, informed by science, evidence and a commitment to respect, autonomy and care.