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The Folk Forum Mythology of Stimfapping

Isaac Tenzing
1 hour ago
4 min read

DEGENERATE GUIDES & ALTERED STATES COLUMN | ISSUE ELEVEN | MAHIMAHI / SEX

Written by Isaac Tenzing | Drugs Columnist Illustrated by Tashi Donnelly (she/her) | @tashi_rd | Editor-in-Chief


Holstered within his work belt: 4 Asahi Super Dry cans and a singular joint. My friend tottered into the living room of this particular North Shore house party and proclaimed, “I DON'T WANT TO DIE TILL I'VE HAD SEX ON METH.” He might not have been a wise man, but at this moment, to me, he was the closest thing to Socrates.


Shockingly, this dude was not the first to think of such a novel, debauched, amphetamine-fuelled concept (although he might have been the first to be waterboarded with absinthe), but in fact this idea has already been coined as a thing called chemsex. Chemsex is what it sounds like. Chemicals that enhance sex. With the rise of nitrates, GHB and meth in the gay nightclub scene, chemsex took root, and by the early 2010s had a name and a place in public health and scientific literature. “Parking the boots under the bed” while high is nothing new. But what’s left if you take the partner out of the equation? Then you reach a word that nobody with glasses and a pocket protector has bothered to name. A word that the world of Reddit got to name first and coined as “stimfapping”.


Stimfapping, similar to chemsex, is Reddit-speak for using stimulant drugs to increase or enhance sexual intensity during masturbation. Seemingly originating from r/Stims, stimfappers on Reddit often describe seemingly otherworldly animalistic pleasures. Due to the long half-life and dopamine-intensive effects, depictions of prolonged hedonism sound like it’s straight from The Box in Claire Denis’s High Life (2018). This might sound like an endorsement to engage, but it isn’t. Although I’m not intrinsically against substance-assisted hand-to-gland combat, I was led down a small Reddit death spiral, learning that stimfapping has an almost mythological status down there. Searching stimfapping results in hundreds of unique OPs (original posters), many in large anonymous discussions on some of the biggest drug forum threads on the site. Amped up on ADHD stimulants, posts run on the subject, sometimes over a thousand words, structured like university essays, rigorous and often bizarre. Formally structured depictions of masturbation on drugs, simultaneously interwoven with colloquialisms, meme references and slang, such as “copium”, “tweak”, and “fap.” It’s undeniable that some of these writers are deep in it. Shitposting formatted like clinical documents. A millipede fused with a horse. A product that only exists in internet subcultures.


These posts can be found in droves; many read like scary windows into severe pornography addiction and stimulant dependency. Some describe consequences at work or with their families. In some cases, sleep deprivation and extreme paranoia are stretched over week-long masturbation binges, and in rare cases, result in genital mutilation. These users talk in depth about stimfapping’s consequences, resulting in real-time trading of information and harm reduction, with some even going as far as to check in on other users.


Look, I’m not Harold the Giraffe or even Darren Aronofsky. I want to avoid unfairly categorising stimulant users as hedonistic, hypersexual addicts, but in rare circumstances addictions to stimfapping can form. Users end up scattered and dispersed around corners of the internet, and I suspect stigma and shame sometimes force one’s hand. Whether it be drug programs that don’t have good infrastructure for masturbation addictions, or sex addiction groups who don’t know what meth actually does. Which is how these subcommunities come to be: A side effect of drug stigmatisation and prohibition forcing people who feel shamed into ill-suited channels for recovery, with Reddit posts about stimfapping being an unexpected byproduct of all of those things.


On the left-hand side of the harm reduction Venn diagram we have sex; on the right we have drugs. Both require unique safety precautions. In the overlap sits stimfapping, which requires the work of both. It’s not that the danger doubles; it’s that the margin for error gets smaller, and the people involved are forced to seek cobbled-together harm reduction from small online communities.


Chemsex, for all its taboo, already has a scaffolding through years of HIV and AIDS activism, sexual health discussions and institutionalised infrastructure. But with no transmission risk or additional partners, there is little research or literature to aid support. Solo stimulant-fuelled sexual behaviour doesn’t map neatly onto the public health frameworks that developed around chemsex. There isn’t even a formal name. Stimfapping, to Reddit, more or less is their own medical term.


Half a dozen beers deep, my mate takes a seat after drunkenly shouting his philosophy. Although he might not remember that night, his meth on sex idea stuck with me. Most people who type some version of that declaration into Reddit don’t get that same living room of friends. They’re left with Reddit, learning from strangers’ mistakes, and whatever comfort that shared, uncredited word offers instead.


Alcohol Drug Helpline: 0800 787 797, free, confidential, 24/7.


References

Addiction support | healthify. (2025, February 3). Healthify. https://healthify.nz/support/a/addiction-support

Chemsex: Definition, risks, safety tips, & culture. (2021, July 1). Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/substance-use/chemsex

EnkiduT. (2024, January 30). Stimfapping. PsychonautWiki. https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Stimfapping

Reddit. (2005). Reddit. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/


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