Education - Alcohol

Alcohol

Shakespeare seems to have had the last word on just about everything, including the effect of alcohol on sex. In Macbeth, a sly porter observes about drinking: " . . . it provokes, and un-provokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance." Although researchers have filled in a lot of the physiological details since Shakespeare's day, that’s still about the size of it.

Free Up Inhibition, Close Down Performance

A sip of spirits-especially champagne, with its ejaculatory pop of the – cork - is probably the best known of all aphrodisiacs. In moderation, it casts a seductive glow over everything at the same time it loosens the buttons of inhibition. One Psychology Today questionnaire showed that 45 percent of male respondents and 68 percent of female respondents reported that alcohol "greatly or somewhat" enhanced their sexual enjoyment.

But the odd fact is that beyond a drink or two, alcohol seems to have precisely the opposite effect. In men, studies have shown that low levels of alcohol mildly enhance sexual arousal, as measured by swelling of the penis in response to erotic stimulation. However, once the guy's blood alcohol concentration (BAC) tops about 0.05, all the physiological measures of sexual arousal begin to droop. (A BAC of 0.05 is roughly the level a 150-pound man would reach after consuming three mixed dinks in the space of 1 to 2 hours.)

In one study, men were asked to consume varying amounts of alcohol before masturbating. Volunteers with a BAC of 0.06 took significantly longer to ejaculate, and at 0.09, many subjects were unable to ejaculate at 0. This less-than- impressive performance is undoubtedly related to the fact that a few stiff drinks are also known to cause a dramatic drop in blood levels of testosterone, the hormone that ignites male libido.

Alcohol seems to affect women similarly. Studies have shown that even at BAC levels as low as 0. 04, women's level of sexual arousal is reduced (as measured by blood circulation to vaginal tissue, which is considered a good general measure of sexual excitation). Other studies have shown that alcohol increases the amount of time it takes women to achieve orgasm by masturbation and also reduces the intensity of their orgasm. So from a strictly physical point of view, anything beyond the third drink is a sexual downer.

The Whoopee Factor

Still, human sexual response is not solely a physical phenomenon; the subjective sensation of arousal – the ghost in the machine – is part of it, too. And that's where it all gets a bit confusing.

Studies have shown that as men get drunker and their sexual responses grow duller, their subjective sense of arousal also diminishes. But women seem to be dancing to a different tune: As they steadily get more drunk causing all the physiological measures of arousal to steadily decline, they just go on feeling more and more aroused. You figure it out; so far, the researchers can't.

Male alcoholics also demonstrate this puzzling contradiction between the feeling of arousal that alcohol causes and the performance - inhibiting physical changes it brings about. In several studies, when male alcoholics were shown erotic films while drinking, they demonstrated the predicted decline in physical arousal. Even so, both before and after the experiment, they predicted that the booze would have either no effect or a positive one on their ability to perform sexually. When it comes to sex, alcohol has a way of telling the mind something different from what it's telling the body.

For Men: Calamity in the Making

When it comes to the long-term effects of chronic, heavy drinking, alcohol's effect on sex is not puzzling at all. It's plain, flat-out disastrous.

Studies of aging alcoholic men have shown that prolonged drinking damages the body's sexual capacities in a whole variety of ways. It destroys the cells in the testes that manufacture testosterone, dampening sexual desire and interfering with all the complicated hormonal chemistry of testosterone metabolism.

At the same time, alcohol also decreases one's ability to have a fun, firm erection. One researcher has estimated that 70 to 80 percent of male alcoholics have decreased sexual desire or potency, or both. Male alcoholics also often report having problems ejaculating. And chronic alcohol abuse also damages the intricate plumbing of the male reproductive system, reducing a man's ability to produce normally formed sperm cells.

At the end of this dreary road lies a tragic irony. Although heavy drinking tends to be associated with swashbuckling masculinity - what's a western with - out a good bar fight? -in practice, it has exactly the opposite effect.

Chronic alcohol abuse disrupts men's hormone levels - increasing the female sex hormones (estrogens) in both the liver and the testicles -so that some hard- core male alcoholics may wind up with estrogen levels similar to those of women. And they may even begin to acquire female sex characteristics. They begin to lose their body hair. Their breasts swell - a strange and uncomfortable transformation called gynecomastia. Their muscle mass begins to shrink. They may even develop something researchers have given the terrifying name alcoholic hypogonadism-shrinkage of the penis and testicles.

For Women: Double Disaster

Alcoholic women have not been studied as intensively as men (perhaps because there aren't nearly as many of them), but heavy drinking is no less harmful to them. It can lead to reduced interest in sex, reduced sexual arousal and less pleasurable orgasm. Alcohol can also move through a woman's reproductive system with all the delicacy of a wrecking ball, disrupting menstruation and ovarian function, decreasing fertility and causing the female version of hypogonadism - shrunken breasts and malformed genitals. And of course, drinking during pregnancy can cause irreparable harm to the developing fetus.

Need any more be said?