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Autoerotic asphyxiation, or AEA, is the practice of self-strangulation, typically by the use of a ligature, while masturbating in order to heighten the sexual pleasure as more endorphines are produced when the body reaches the near state of asphyxia. While highly pleasurable, AEA is also an extremely dangerous practice that results in many accidental deaths each year. A small number of people doing AEA use a plastic bag over their head, but most prefer the strangulation method.
Deaths often occur when the loss of consciousness caused by partial asphyxia leads to loss of control over the means of strangulation, resulting in continued asphyxia and death. Victims are often found to have rigged some sort of "rescue mechanism" which has not worked in the way they anticipated as they lost consciousness.
It has also been speculated that in some cases autoerotic asphyxiation may have triggered the little-known phenomenon of carotid sinus reflex death.
Famous cases
It is a popular subject in tabloids and celebrity gossip magazines, particularly when a celebrity dies as a result of suicide or other mysterious circumstances. Such was reputedly the case with the deaths of Michael Hutchence (in 1997) and Japanese rock-star Hide (in 1998), though no evidence to support the claim was produced in any of those cases.
The artist Vaughn Bodé died from this cause in 1975.
The death in 1994 of Stephen Milligan, the British Conservative MP for Eastleigh, was a case of auto-erotic asphyxiation combined with self-bondage.
AEA claims the lives of between 250 and 1,000 young American men each year . The participants are most often white, middle class males under the age of 30 with no outstanding history of mental illness .
A more recent case is the death in 2004 National Front member Kristian Etchells. **
Recent court cases have come to varied results as to whether the unintentional death resulting from autoerotic asphyxiation falls under the "self-induced injury" clause of standard life insurance policies, which prevents payouts for suicide. In June of 2003, one US court said the intent was not death and therefore the case was an accident *, while another in August 2003 said it does technically fall within the terms since death is the logical result of asphyxiation *.
Cultural references
Autoerotic asphyxiation is key to the plots of many books, movies, and TV shows. Included is an accidental death in the film The Ruling Class (1972), starring Peter O'Toole, as well as the movies Ken Park and Full Frontal, the Thomas Harris novel Hannibal, the P. D. James novel An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, the Erika Barr book Acquisition of Power (ISBN 1591293073), a 2002 episode of the HBO television series Six Feet Under, the US version of Queer as Folk, a 2005 episode of the CBS television series Crime Scene Investigation, an episode of the League of Gentlemen and is mentioned and talked about in the 2005 George Carlin HBO Special Life is Worth Losing. In the movie "Life As A House" the main character Sam (Hayden Christensen) is depicted indulging in autoerotic asphyxiation in the first few scenes. In the X-Files episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" (first aired Friday, October 13, 1995), the psychic Bruckman (played by Peter Boyle, who won an Outstanding Guest Actor Emmy for the part) implies that Special Agent Fox Mulder will die of AEA. In December of 2005, Dane Cook who hosted Saturday Night Live, played a character whose wife told his loved ones that he had died of AEA instead of an embarrassing karaoke accident.
It is also mentioned in the UK Channel 4 TV show "Peep Show", when Jez says "I'm so bored, dangerously bored, I even considered doing that thing that Michael Hutchence and that MP did".
External links
"Autoerotic asphyxiation"