Sex, Drugs and Alcohol

Most people who take drugs and drink alcohol excessively do so for a number of reasons; some do it for a little comfort or to unwind, others do it for the confidence it seems to bring and still others do it just because it makes them feel good. A new study is now pointing to another reason young adults are doing drugs and drinking: to have better sexual relations.

According to findings from a study conducted in Europe, 33% of young males between the ages of 16 and 35 and approximately 25% of young females between those same ages are using alcohol to help jumpstart their sex lives. On the other hand, drugs like ecstasy and cocaine are being used by young adults to enhance those sexual encounters. The project studied over 1300 anonymous young adults who admitted to having an active social nightlife.  Almost every participant in the study had consumed alcohol at some point in their lives and most of the participants admitted that they consumed alcohol for the first time when they were around 15 years old. Around one-third of the participants stated they had experimented with cocaine and/or ecstasy while almost three-fourths stated they had tried cannabis. Results showed that these young adults used alcohol as a way to initiate sexual situations and used drugs in order to enhance those activities.

While many participants admitted to using drugs and alcohol to increase their likelihood of having sex, they also admitted that this was coupled with their taking unnecessary sexual risks (having multiple partners and/or having unprotected sex) and oftentimes feeling remorse about those sexual encounters. Whether the participant had used alcohol or drugs, those same troubling feelings were consistent. According to the lead researcher, Mark Bellis, a professor at Liverpool John Moores University, “Trends in recent decades have resulted in recreational drug use and binge drinking becoming routine features of European nightlife. Millions of young Europeans now take drugs and drink in ways which alter their sexual decisions and increase their chances of unsafe sex or sex that is later regretted. Yet despite the negative consequences, we found many are deliberately taking these substances to achieve quite specific sexual effects.”

Research demonstrates that young adults under the age of 16 who had drunk alcohol or who had used recreational drugs like ecstasy, cocaine or cannabis had an increased chance of having sex before that age. Unfortunately, young females are four times more likely than young males to exhibit this early sexual behavior as a result of drug or alcohol use. Amador Calafat, a co-author in this study, states, “Sexual activity accompanied by substance use is not just incidental, but often sexually motivated. Interventions addressing sexual health are often developed, managed and implemented independently from those addressing substance use, and vice versa. However, young people often see alcohol, drugs and sex all as part of the same social experience and addressing these issues requires an equally joined up approach. ”