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SAFER 2 PACK 2025
About Safer 2
Welcome to the Safer 2 pack, a no nonsense guide to safer chems produced by gay men with lived experience. Inside, you will find the following booklets and leaflets. Click the links for a PDF:
- 0. WELCOME TO SAFER 2 (A5, 12 pages)
Welcomes readers to the resources, explains background, themes and, for the first time, includes an index for all eight resources. - 1. SAFER CHEMS (A5, 36 pages)
In the 11th edition, a guide to safer chems use, harm reduction including ‘T’, ‘G’ and ‘M’, slamming, come downs, and overdoses (calling 999). - 2. HOOK-UP SAFER (A5, 23 pages)
Sixteen no-nonsense tips to help you remain safer, and providing a spring board to get the best out hooking up. - 3. HEALTH AND WELLBEING (A5, 16 pages)
An overview of health and wellbeing with a focus on the need for connection, ways to boost motivation, and getting out and active. - 4. NAVIGATING SUPPORT (A5 28, pages)
A guide to better understand how NHS, statutory and local authority services work and navigating the support you may need. - 5. HIV/ STI/ HCV ‘RISK-O-METER’ (A5, 4 pages)
An innovative, if irreverent, tool to gauge risks and harms associated with 16 practices relating to sex, chems and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). - 6. USING 'G' (A5, 12 pages)
A response to rising ‘G’ related emergency service (A&E) admissions and the most requested harm reduction information topic. - 7. OVERDOSES AND CALLING 999 (A5, 4 pages)
A flow diagram indicating potential outcomes for calling, or not calling for an ambulance, and if the police turn up first. - 8. YOUR RIGHTS AND THE LAW (A5, 12 pages)
Your essential guide to your rights when stopped, questioned searched, and/ or arrested by the police. - 9. SELF CARE (A5, 16 pages)
A guide to understanding triggers and cravings (knowing the difference), sober sex, loss and grief, grounding and survival kit tools.
Background
The successor to Safer 1*, the Safer 2 pack has been produced to help you stay safer and signpost to the support you may need, when you need it. The pack has been updated, while ‘Using G’, ‘Support Pathways’, ‘Self Care’, and ‘Health and Wellbeing’ are new, following feedback and suggestions. While there’s a focus on chems, many health issues addressed here affect us all. We’re not health professionals, rather gay men passionate about our health and wellbeing—some with direct experience of chems, problematic drug use, and recovery. This pack has been edited, tweaked and proofed by peers, shags, allies, organisations and services, who have given their time generously at every turn.**
There is no escaping it, we continue to live in tough times and the health support we need may be difficult to find and access. However, we hope the information here will point you in the right direction. Safer 2 is our take on being gay and queer today, joining up the dots of our health and well-being. It’s not perfect, it’s sometimes messy, but it’s ours.
Hope
We continue to see unhelpful reporting on chemsex in the media, and bleak narratives by some organisations. Yes, navigating support can be challenging [shit] but over the past year, harm reduction and support has been revitalised in London with services and commissioning bodies working better together—with many LGBT+ staff and volunteers (some in recovery) at the forefront of this change. Safer 2 is part of this. Though our LGBT+ paths and life experiences may differ, many of us face shared challenges: from phobias and heteronormativity to discrimination, stigma, hate crimes, a lack of dedicated support, and long waits for treatment. While this pack was produced by gay men, we hope there is something useful for everyone.
Words of caution
Not all gay men use drugs, or do so for sex, or in problematic ways. The needs of gay men are not best served by suggesting chemsex is universal. In fact, suggesting it’s universal runs the risk of giving the impression that it is both inevitable
and impossible to escape.***
LGBTQIA+
This stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual. It’s an umbrella term used to refer to the community as a whole though are variations. A plus sign ‘+’ stands for identities not encompassed by the letters. Through out Safer 2, the term ‘gay men’ includes queer, bisexual, men who have sex with men, and those who don’t like labels. We love you all.
The small print
Safer 2 pack information is provided for educational and harm reduction purposes only. It is not medical advice and does not encourage or condone drug use. Any reliance you place on the information supplied here is at your own risk.