The Last Gasp: Erotic Asphyxiation

If you have ever thought about putting your hands around your partner's neck and squeezing, I doubt it was because you wanted to give her a better orgasm.

A reader recently reported that he puts his hands around his partner's neck and squeezes tightly when they are having sex--at her request. She says it makes the experience feel more intense. He is now concerned because she wants him to use a leather belt from one of her coats to get a better grip.

This kind of sex is called breath play or erotic asphyxiation. It's also referred to as scarfing or terminal sex. The side effects include death and brain damage.

There are two groups of people who enjoy their sex this way. One groups is made up of boys and young men who put plastic bags over their heads or tight ropes around their necks while they masturbate. They are known as baggers or gaspers.

Baggers are often white, straight and middle class. They fit in well socially and keep their sexual secrets well hidden. Up to a quarter of them wear women's underwear while they choke their chickens. (Let's see, masturbating while choking yourself and wearing women's panties.... Perhaps it's only because I'm a psychoanalyst that I wonder about this sort of thing.)

It is said that between 250 to 1000 boy baggers die each year in this country. Their deaths are often reported as suicides, but people who are trying to kill themselves don't hang from door knobs and they don't design safety releases into their death devices. Boy baggers fully intend to free themselves after squeezing out their blurry-eyed orgasms.

Horrified parents will often spruce up the death scene before the ambulance arrives. Would you want the world to know that your son suffocated while masturbating with a bag over his head? Instead of being reported as masturbation gone awry, the coroner thinks it's a suicide and none of Johnny's friends can understand why a kid who seemed so well-adjusted would want to off himself.

The other group of people who are into breath play are normal-appearing couples like the one that emailed me. They have no fear of the boy-bagger's fate. They assume that the person who is applying the pressure is like a designated driver who can put the brakes on before it's too late. "Not so!" says Jay Wiseman, the Tiger Woods of BDSM and author of S/M 101:

"As a person with years of medical education and experience, I know of no way whatsoever that either suffocation or strangulation can be done in a way that does not intrinsically put the recipient at risk of cardiac arrest.... If the recipient does arrest, the probability of resuscitating them, even with optimal CPR, is distinctly small."

You could be hooked up to state-of-the-art heart monitors and have a partner who is a board-certified cardiologist--breath play would still be Russian roulette in your birthday suit.

Another thing that has healtcare-providers concerned is the risk of brain damage. Even those like Charles Moser, a physician who is highly respected in the world of kink, worry about the longterm consequences of breath play. There's also the matter of those pesky murder charges. "Honest, your Honor, she asked me to choke her when we were having sex."

So what are the sexual joys of being strangled to within an inch of your life? The couple who wrote to me say that their breath-play orgasms are bigger, better and longer-lasting than orgasms with no strings attached.

It seems that the gasping brain has fewer inhibitions and more euphoria than a brain that's not preparing to die. And some people get a sexual rush out of being in extreme danger and giving up complete control to a partner.

A few weeks after the breath-play couple wrote to me, a blood vessel in the woman's eye ruptured. I hoped the couple's newfound fear would eclipse their sexual thrill, but it didn't. A week later, they were back at it.

Finally, after reading Jay Wiseman's paper on the dangers of breath play, the man said enough. He would never want to cause his partner brain damage. She wasn't so sure. She thought we might be exaggerating the risk.

RESOURCES:

Jay Wiseman's excellent paper on breath play: www.fetishexchange.org/breath2.shtml