The Link Between Sexual Encounters & Alcohol Abuse

I didn’t know what I wanted, so I drank to a point where I didn’t have to decide.

“Do you want to fuck?” I asked my high school boyfriend the first time we were going to have sex.

I was sixteen and drunk at my friend’s house party. We were sitting on the couch, passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth, and I leaned against his shoulder and whispered those words.

I was excited for sex. I’d thought about it for so long. I was intrigued by it. And I told myself I was ready to do it.

He was older than me. I wanted to be sexy for him, mature. Maybe I was ready to do it, or maybe I thought being ready was the kind of girl a guy like him would want to be with. Either way, I didn’t wait to have a conversation about it with my boyfriend, I let alcohol make the decision for me.

Recently, I read this article by Christopher Kokoski called “I’ve Never Had a One-Night Stand (and I’m Not Sure How I Feel About It).” The article got me thinking: the only “true” one-night stands I’d had were in my heavy drinking days.

I’d had casual sex unrelated to drinking before, but usually, they were with friends or people I intentionally got into bed with. But the few times that I brought home a stranger whose name I didn’t know and booted them out of my house the next day, or stumbled out their door still wearing my clubbing dress from the night before and never getting their number, always coincided with nights I was black-out drunk.

My sexual promiscuity and alcohol abuse were undeniably closely tied.

In her book, Blackout, Sarah Hepola writes about how sex was made complicated by drinking. For her, it was both exciting and dangerous. It was a constant push-pull of “want tos” and “shouldn’ts.” She writes:

“I drank to drown those voices, because I wanted the bravado of a sexually liberated woman. I wanted the same freedom from internal conflict my male friends seemed to enjoy. So I drank myself to a place where I didn’t care, but I woke up a person who cared enormously. Many yeses on Friday nights would have been nos on a Saturday morning.”

This was my experience as well. I wanted to be a sexually empowered woman but was confused by what I was actually comfortable with and who I wanted to sleep with.

I equated wanting to have sex with wanting to be desired. Sleeping with men validated that I was attractive and worthy of (what I thought was) their love.

So often, I’d start an evening off with no sexual interest in my date or someone I met at the bar, and by the end of the night, we’d be sloppily kissing in a dark corner of the room.

Alcohol certainly didn’t help me understand this conflict better— it only momentarily erased the fact that there was any conflict at all. I didn’t know what I wanted, so I drank to a point where I didn’t have to decide.

What I’ve realized now is that my alcohol abuse was a Band-Aid. It acted as a release valve when I spent so much of my time trying to be in control. I was constantly berated by self-deprecating thoughts and feelings of unworthiness, and drinking numbed those feelings.

When I felt insecure, white wine gave me confidence.

When I was tired, a shot of tequila made me the life of the party.

When I felt unattractive, a whiskey on the rocks got me a lover.

I also felt so much shame around my own sexuality and sexual desires. It felt like the only way I had the freedom to explore my sexuality was when I was drinking.

For a long time, I buried my attraction towards women for fear of what admitting that would mean. Doing so only led to unsafe sexual encounters with women and men that, most of the time, I didn’t even remember.

In the later part of her book, Hepola talks about the discomfort of dating and sex in early sobriety:

“I knew such joy could exist between two people, but I had no clue how to get it anymore. My only directions involved taking a glass of wine to my lips and letting the sweet release show me the way. Clearly, I needed a new map.”

And that’s exactly what I knew I had to do. A new map. A new way to actually get the things I was seeking.

When I went to therapy and quit drinking for a period of time (I’m not alcohol-free now, but when I do drink, I practice “mindful drinking”), I started spending time getting to know the person beneath the booze.

I got to know my desires. And I began to learn how to ask for what I wanted without the help of alcohol.

The more I allowed myself to have these experiences in a safe environment with partners I trusted, the less I depended on drinking to make those decisions for me.

Surprisingly—or maybe unsurprisingly—I’ve never had the kind of intimacy drunk as I have when I’m sober. We think of booze as a lubricant (pun intended), but it actually has the opposite effect.

In fact, alcohol reduces our experience of pleasure and can have real long-term effects on our sex drive.

I thought alcohol would make me liberated and empowered. I thought it was a way to get what I wanted, be who I wanted, a way to receive love and affection, but all it ever gave me was a hangover and a person in my bed whose name I barely remembered.

I think back to that night I first had sex with my boyfriend, and I don’t think I would have asked, “Do you want to fuck?” if I hadn’t been drunk.

I was more focused on being the kind of person I thought he wanted me to be rather caring about what was best for me.

Part of me wishes we’d waited. Part of me wishes it didn’t take me 13 years to know what I wanted without a drink in hand.

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