The Ultimate High: Sexual Addiction and the Bug Chasing Phenomenon

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This study sought to explain the existence of a controversial subculture of gay men, a group whose main attribute is an active desire to voluntarily contract HIV. The following research reasons “bug chasing” as being symptomatic of sexual addiction. A quasi-randomized survey of personal advertisements of HIV-negative bug chasers and barebackers—gay men who intentionally eschew condom use without the desire to seroconvert—revealed that chasers were: (a) considerably different from their barebacker counterparts regarding paraphiliac activities, and (b) significantly more likely than barebackers to rank higher on behavioral and psychological measures of sexual addiction.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: