Like many parents in their early 40s, Harry and Bella Thomson leapt at the chance to enjoy a long weekend away without their children at the end of last year.

They hoped to reconnect with each other, and rediscover the spark that had gone missing from their marriage while they were stuck in the trenches of domestic life.

Familiar territory for some, no doubt – although the means by which they chose to rekindle their relationship was rather more unusual than a romantic dinner.

For inside the suitcases that the couple slung in the boot of their car before departing to a country house hotel were bags of drugs – MDMA, ketamine and a hallucinogen called 2C-B – sourced from their local dealer.

Having occasionally dabbled in the odd bit of cannabis, their aim was to boost their sex life – a goal that was, initially at least, a success.

‘The first two days were fantastic,’ says Bella, a fashion buyer from the south-east of England. ‘We had the most erotic connection. It was intense.’

But the story changed on day four when, after a day’s break, the couple snorted several ‘bumps’ of ketamine, a horse tranquiliser with hallucinogenic effects.

On the fourth day of Harry and Bella's getaway, the couple snorted ketamine and Bella had to be taken to hospital after slipping in and out of consciousness (picture posed by models)

Bella soon started to feel violently sick. ‘My blood pressure plummeted and when I tried to stand up, I collapsed,’ she says. ‘I don’t remember a great deal after that as I was slipping in and out of consciousness.’

Despite the best efforts of her husband, Harry, an ambulance had to be called, and while paramedics stabilised her blood pressure and administered fluids, she was taken to hospital as a precaution – a horrible and frightening end to their time away.

It is also far more common than you might think. Last month it was revealed that ambulances in London are called out at least once a day to deal with the terrible consequences of ‘chemsex’ – using illegal drugs such as crystal meth and gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) to enhance and prolong sexual encounters.

British paramedics typically stand at the frontline of such hedonism. The practice, previously associated with sections of the gay community, has become increasingly popular with heterosexual couples – with increasingly grim results.

As with any drug use, chemsex comes with substantial risks, from overdose and breathing difficulties to psychosis and death. Earlier this year, the Metropolitan Police revealed that chemsex had claimed the lives of three people every month in London alone during 2023 - although the true death toll is likely to be far higher, given the lack of precise data tracking how many fatalities are linked to the practice.

The official figures for 2024, meanwhile, are expected to be the highest on record. Little wonder, then, that the London Ambulance Service recently labelled chemsex a public health issue.

Jane, a trainee solicitor in her late 20s from the north-west, started indulging in chemsex at the urging of her then boyfriend of two years, Ben. The daughter of a solicitor and a nurse, who attended private school, admits to taking recreational drugs in her early 20s after becoming submerged in the rave scene.

‘I wouldn’t have given it a label at first,’ she tells the Mail of her first experience of chemsex. ‘We’d always been party people – I’d met Ben at a club – and we were not strangers to taking drugs at raves. But it spilled over into our sex life. Then Ben just wanted to do more and more. It was mostly MDMA and GHB.

‘It got to the point where we were sometimes spending whole weekends taking drugs and experimenting sexually. At first it was fun, but over time I realised I felt perpetually wired and anxious and couldn’t sleep. I was holding it together at work, just, but in reality I was a mess.’

Sex expert Tracey Cox says exploring fantasy and role-play and using sex toys is a more reliable and safer way to fix desire or boredom problems in a relationship

Whenever she raised the issue with Ben, however, he refused to engage with her concerns. It was only when Jane’s mum – to whom she was close – told her she was worried about her that Jane finally broke down and plucked up the courage to reveal what had been happening.

‘I realised I’d been going along with it as I was worried about losing Ben, but aside from the fact that what I was doing was impacting me physically, Mum helped me see that a relationship in which I had to be on drugs to be connected to my boyfriend is not a relationship worth having.’

Now single, she feels she had a lucky escape from a relationship she now views as toxic and dangerous.

Jane’s experience is not an unfamiliar scenario for Ignacio Labayen de Inza, chief executive and founder of the charity Controlling Chemsex. ‘Ten years ago, we would say that chemsex is about men who have sex with men,’ he says. ‘Now things are changing. It’s slowly spreading to [straight] communities.’

Ignacio set up his charity in 2020 having lost ‘everything’ due to his own experiences with chemsex. ‘My life got so messy that I ended up losing my job and being homeless for a time,’ he says. Since then, Controlling Chemsex has supported hundreds of people – up to 200 a week – who are trying to address their need for chemical stimulants, used to enhance their sexual experience and forge intimacy. And he says an increasing number of his clients are heterosexual.

‘We were recently supporting a straight woman whose whole sex life had always been nothing special,’ he reveals. ‘Then one day, she found someone who introduced her to crystal meth. It was a whole new world for her.’ Although she did not suffer any serious physical consequences, when the relationship subsequently broke up she found she could no longer enjoy sex without the stimulus of drugs because going back to the ‘boring’ sex life she had before was not an option any more.

It is cases like these – and all the other people the charity helps – that mean Ignacio is anxious that chemsex is not glamorised in any way. ‘People think “I’m going to take drugs, and sex is going to be amazing.” But it is so much more complicated than that.

‘Maybe it feels like the first time, but then in many cases it gets messy, and it can start to become normal. Usually for those who do it regularly it masks other issues like loneliness or lack of self-esteem.’

Ecstasy (otherwise known as MDMA) is a common drug used in chemsex - becoming the equivalent of a drink or two used to loosen inhibitions ten years ago, according to sex expert Tracey Cox

Unlike street junkies or down-and-outs drinking cider on a park bench, the middle-class men and women lured into the world of chemsex can give every appearance of normality.

‘The people we care for following a chemsex incident often lead very conventional lives outside of these “meet-ups” and don’t disclose their engagement in chemsex to anyone, including their GPs,’ a London Ambulance Service spokesman told the Mail. ‘This risks their health conditions going untreated and physical and mental health deteriorating.’

Nor is the problem confined to the capital: in the past couple of years more than 30 police forces nationwide have sought support from the Met for how to respond to rising chemsex cases in their communities.

None of this comes as a surprise to sex expert and Mail columnist Tracey Cox, who believes that changing social norms – be it the pervasiveness of porn and the easy exchange of information on social media, not to mention the availability of drugs themselves - have helped turn what was once a niche experience into one that is attractive to couples across the dating spectrum.

’Boredom with sex is something couples have always struggled with,’ she says. ‘In the old days, you’d have a drink or two to loosen inhibitions. Now it seems having a little MDMA or similar is the equivalent which can help enhance sex.

‘In my experience, the sort of people who are doing this are the kind of couples who also go to dinner parties with friends where they might "microdose" things like magic mushrooms and MDMA. It has become more socially acceptable, but only in certain social circles – educated and affluent.’

So socially acceptable is it, in fact, that in certain areas of the country, particularly the smarter postcodes, there are even chemsex parties for heterosexuals – a drug-fuelled variant of the swingers’ parties of old, where consenting couples can indulge amid condoms and sex toys.

Usually starting like any ‘normal’ party, with music and drinks, those who attend – who typically bring their own drugs – chat until the effects kick in, at which point the sex starts, either one-on-one or in groups.

Cox argues that the liberating effects of drugs can feel transformative for women in particular. ‘It lowers inhibitions, while body image issues can also disappear and help make even the most insecure woman feel beautiful and confident,’ she says.

But this all comes at a cost. ‘Drugs are obviously dangerous,’ she says. ‘Aside from the well-documented and dangerous side effects, they leave you vulnerable and without control, unable to refuse unwanted advances or ask for or give consent.’

Even in fully consenting situations, ‘chemsex’ can have devastating consequences. GHB, often called ‘G’, is a Class B liquid sedative that can make the user feel relaxed, but in some cases it inhibits breathing, while the minute amounts required for stimulus mean it is easy to overdose.

Henry Hendron, left, with his late boyfriend Miguel Jimenez, who died after taking GHB

As many will remember, this tragically happened to the young boyfriend of a then 34-year-old successful London-based barrister called Henry Hendron – who counted the Earl of Cardigan among his clients – who, in 2016, woke next to his 18-year-old boyfriend, Miguel Jimenez, to find him dead after taking GHB.

‘It was a normal Monday afternoon. We had taken our dog to the vet. We had dinner, we had some wine, and my partner had quite a bit of wine, and then at midnight he just said: “Shall we have some drugs?”’ he recalled in a subsequent interview.

‘We went to sleep. I woke up and he was dead, next to me’. Hendron was subsequently sentenced to 140 hours of community service after pleading guilty to two counts of possession with intent to supply. He was suspended from the Bar for three years, and was struck off for good last year after completing a 14-month prison sentence for buying drugs from his clients as a criminal barrister.

Meanwhile, crystal meth, which goes by the street name ‘Tina’, is a Class A methamphetamine which can induce euphoria and arousal, but which can also keep users awake for 72 hours at a time. In extreme cases that can lead to psychosis, but even without such extremes users can feel disengaged from life and struggle to function normally.

Cox says: ‘The danger is that chemsex can mask the real issue rather than solve it. Relying on any drug to fix a problem is precarious because you always need more of it to get a high. Trying new things sexually – exploring fantasy and role-play and using sex toys – is a more reliable and safer way to fix desire or boredom issues.’

That approach has now been adopted by Harry and Bella, who view the latter’s hospital admission as a timely wake-up call. ‘Luckily there was no lasting damage, but it helped us both realise that it wasn’t worth risking our health for fun,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to cast judgment on what others do, but I now think we were incredibly naive.’