Chemsex trajectories among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men with Nikolay Lunchenkov

In this episode, Dr Elle Wadsworth talks to Dr Nikolay Lunchenkov, medical doctor, a global health specialist, and a doctoral candidate in Global Health at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. The interview covers Nikolay’s research article analysing chemsex trajectories among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

• What is chemsex? [01:00]
• The wider context of drug use in Kazakhstan [01:58]
• The trajectories of chemsex [03:16]
• The methods used, and the use of a life course framework [05:36]
• The five trajectory stages developed: initiation, maintenance, escalation, dependence, and disengagement [07:30]
• The realistic and idealistic implications of the findings for treatment in Kazakhstan [17:00]
• The take-home messages [19:09]

About Elle Wadsworth: Elle is an academic fellow with the Society for the Study of Addiction. She is based at the University of Bath with the Addiction and Mental Health Group and her research interests include drug policy, cannabis legalisation, and public health. Elle holds a voluntary role at The Loop, a non-profit service provider of drug checking in the UK.

About Nikolay Lunchenkov: Nikolay, MD, MSc is a doctoral candidate in Global Health at the Technical University of Munich (TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology). His research focuses on HIV prevention, PrEP implementation, chemsex and harm reduction among key populations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. His fieldwork focuses on Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, combining qualitative and epidemiological methods to understand how marginalised communities navigate health systems under restrictive political conditions. He also teaches graduate seminars on authoritarian regimes and global health, as well as cross-cultural qualitative research methods, at TUM.

Declarations of interest: None

Original article: ‘Emptiness filled with love’: A reflexive thematic analysis of chemsex trajectories among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men in Almaty, Kazakhstan, using a life course framework https://doi.org/10.1111/add.70454

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