Hello beautiful,

It’s been a while since I’ve shared something heavy with you, but today I want to. This one’s about autoerotic asphyxiation—breath play. I started getting into it a couple of months ago, drawn in by videos of hot guys blacking out from sleeper holds. Johnny even tried it on me a couple of times, and I loved the sensation of waking up. It felt a bit like poppers, but dialed up to eleven.

When I tried it alone with a belt, though, it left me with chest pains, and deep down it felt like a form of self-harm, so I stopped for a while. Recently I picked it back up, but with a rope tied to beams or door handles instead of using my hands. It got dangerous—there were moments I was probably seconds away from blacking out for good. Something in me always pulled back, but it shook me enough that I started watching dark web videos of people strangling themselves. It was surreal—watching someone alive one moment and gone the next—and for a while, I imagined myself in their place. It was fucked up, but I couldn’t stop.

Then I stumbled across a Twitter account of a Japanese man who takes requests to sleeper hold people until they pass out. What struck me was that when his partners twitched and blacked out, he would hold them—give them aftercare until they woke up. There was a strange kind of tenderness in it, like he was saying: “I’m here, even as you come back from the edge.” And I realized how much I wanted that—the trust it takes to give someone your life for a moment, and the safety of being cared for when you come back.

That reflection helped me see something else too: most of the darker videos I’d been watching weren’t even real. The convulsions weren’t there, the details didn’t line up. They were staged. Somehow, that took the edge off the obsession.

I won’t lie, buddy: I still find it hot. But I’ve stepped away from hurting myself with it. What I want instead is a partner who can safely give me that experience with care, with boundaries, with trust. Maybe it’s not good for my brain cells in the long run, but there’s something powerful in that surrender and intimacy.

If all of this sounds fucked up, it is—but it’s also real. And I needed to tell you.

Hope you’re doing alright. Chat soon xx