What You Should Know About Mixing Sex and Alcohol

If you’ve ever had sex under someone’s bright overhead light, you can probably understand the appeal of having sex by candlelight, or with a nice warm lamp light instead. Even when you’re very attracted to the person you’re sleeping with, too much clarity isn’t always sexy. That’s why bars and nightclubs usually use low light — it retains a little air of mystery. A somewhat similar principle applies for many people when it comes to being sober: given the option, lots of people prefer to have sex under the influence of something, and alcohol is the top option for most people. RELATED: People Like Mixing These Drugs With Sex, Says Study It’s legal to purchase as an adult almost everywhere in the world, it comes in a variety of different potencies and flavors, it’s fairly easy to estimate how much to take in order to achieve a desired effect, and it can produce a simultaneous relaxing and energizing effect that helps things like socializing, flirting, kissing, and having sex just feel great. However, as with all things, booze has its downsides, and in the case of mixing it with sex, there are more than just a few. In order to get a better sense of the positives and negatives of mixing alcohol with sex, AskMen spoke to a number of experts. Here’s what they had to say: Why People Mix Alcohol & Sex Having sex and drinking alcohol are both human activities with many thousands of years of history, so it’s likely that people have been mixing them for much longer than the existence of recorded history — likely as of the discovery of alcohol, frankly. But why do they so often go together? “The reason some people like to mix alcohol and sex is that it can reduce their inhibitions,” says Zachary Zane, sex & relationship expert for #LubeLife. “Often, people feel nervous about sex and can overthink during intimacy. Alcohol helps you feel less shame and can make you less self-conscious.” “Alcohol often acts as a shortcut to disinhibition — it quiets self-consciousness and helps people relax,” says sex educator and counselor Inka Winter, director at ForPlay Films. But while it may make it easier to “get in the mood,” she notes, it does have drawbacks, too. Drawbacks of Mixing Alcohol & Sex 1. Consent Becomes Less Clear By far the most important thing to keep in mind about mixing alcohol and sex is that excessive consumption seriously impacts your awareness and decision-making abilities, which are crucial components when it comes to navigating consent. “Be very careful about combining alcohol and sex,” says Zane. “Sure, having one or two drinks might be OK — a little liquid courage — but getting very drunk before sex puts you in risky situations. It’s harder, and sometimes impossible, to give proper consent when you're intoxicated, and you might end up doing things you regret or get taken advantage of.” Too much alcohol can mean you lose your own ability to consent, and it can also mean you lose your ability to determine if someone else is consenting. “It also becomes more difficult to read your partner's social cues and nonverbal signals, including what they like or dislike,” says Zane. “You might accidentally cross a boundary.” RELATED: The Different Things That Do & Don’t Look Like Consent Either way, excessive alcohol consumption before sex significantly ups the chances that something bad will happen, which could have lasting consequences for one or all parties involved. 2. It Can Dull Sensation Even if neither you nor a sexual partner crosses anyone’s boundaries, too much booze can also make sex less pleasurable in its own right by dulling the physical sensation and your emotional awareness, Winter notes. “From a mindful perspective, this means alcohol disconnects us from the very body wisdom that allows for authentic intimacy,” she says. “Research supports this nuance. A review published in the Journal of Sex Research found that moderate alcohol consumption can increase sexual desire for some individuals, but higher levels of intoxication significantly impair sexual arousal, physical pleasure, and consent clarity.” “In other words,” Winter continues, “alcohol may lower the brakes temporarily, but it also weakens the body’s ability to feel fully and respond authentically.” For some people, that sense of remove may be part of the appeal, but at a certain point, robbing yourself of the ability to genuinely enjoy sex can make the whole experience a waste of time. It would be like eating a delicious meal that you can’t taste at all. 3. It Can Impact Your Erection Thanks to its properties as a depressant, certain quantities of alcohol can also negatively impact erectile function in people who have penises, causing what’s colloquially known as “whiskey dick” — which Zane notes means penetrative sex will be difficult to have. However, if you’re struggling to achieve or maintain an erection, blowjobs and handjobs may be similarly impacted. It’s true that you can engage in lots of pleasurable sexual activities without an erection, but the feeling of realizing that your drinking has made it hard to get hard can be a real disappointment that can negatively impact the mood in a big way. As with so many other things in life, moderation is key. Having a few drinks, enough to genuinely feel a buzz from the alcohol, may make sex a bit more fun, but pushing past that and getting seriously drunk is unlikely to be a good move for anyone involved. What to Do If Your Drinking Is Affecting Your Sex Life Lots of people start having sex around the time they start drinking alcohol — between their mid- to late-teens and early 20s. As such, the two can become significantly intertwined for some people, and some will essentially only ever have sex if they’ve also been drinking. In America, college hookup culture may encourage or normalize getting wasted as part of everyday socializing, and it may feel weird or unusual for some people to have sober sex at all. Sex with excessive drinking may just feel like the way everyone does it — but it isn’t. For starters, if your alcohol consumption is impacting other aspects of your life besides your sex life, there’s a good chance that it might be alcoholism. RELATED: What Men Should Know About Addiction & Recovery Like many other drugs, alcohol can create both physiological and psychological dependences, and this addiction can lead to devastating consequences, up to and including death, if it’s not addressed. But even if your overall alcohol consumption is relatively limited, if you’re seriously drunk a lot of the time you have sex, negative consequences are going to appear at some point. In that case, you should seriously consider trying therapy in order to “tackle the root of your sexual fears,” says Zane. “Why do you feel the need to be inebriated to have sex? How can you reach a place of security and safety where you don’t need to get drunk to have sex?” “If someone needs alcohol to feel sexual, it’s worth asking what that drink is compensating for,” says Winter. “Often, it’s soothing performance anxiety, shame, or fear of vulnerability.” “Building somatic safety — through breathwork, body awareness, and slow touch — can help recreate that sense of freedom without substances,” she adds. “True erotic confidence comes from being able to stay present with one’s sensations and emotions, not from numbing them.” Further research might also be helpful, Zane says. He recommends Dry Humping: A Guide to Dating, Relating, and Hooking Up Without the Booze by Tawny Lara, aka the Sober Sexpert, as well as his own memoir, Boyslut, which explores overcoming sexual shame and not relying on substances in order to have sex. RELATED: How to Kick Sexual Shame For some people, numbing or dulling things a little bit is part of the appeal. They may feel vulnerable and anxious in a sexual context and prefer to experience it at a remove. Which, if you go back to the analogy of lighting from the beginning of the article, may make sense — but having sex in low light is one thing, and having sex in pure, pitch-black darkness that’s so dark you can’t see a single thing is another. That not only robs you of the fun of actually seeing what’s going on, it also means the participants are more likely to do something they didn’t mean to or accidentally hurt the other person. In order to have good, safe, healthy sex, you need to know what’s going on — which means you need to be relatively sober. You Might Also Dig: How to Start Drinking Less AlcoholThe Benefits of Embracing VulnerabilitySex Myths It's Time We Stopped Believing