While many may not have been aware that a debate was raging among the scientific community as to whether sex was better when drunk or high, researchers at New York University have finally figured it out.
Through a series of in-depth interviews with 24 heterosexual adults, Joseph Palamar and his team found that having sex while high was better on a number of fronts.
Firstly, “beer goggles” do in fact impact your choice of sexual partner. Not only that, respondents “overwhelmingly”reported their standards were lowered when drinking alcohol, whereas when smoking marijuana, this wasn’t an issue.
“With weed I know who I’m waking up with. With drinking, you don’t know. Once you start drinking, everybody looks good,”one female respondent told researchers.
Drunken sex also generated negative feelings for many respondents, who were left feeling ashamed, embarrassed or just a general sense of regret, something which was “rarely reported” with marijuana users, the study in the July issue of the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour says.
“I want to cook the person something to eat [after sex] when I’m high,” one male respondent said.
“When I’m drunk, it’s like, ‘I’m out of here.’ Or get away from me.”
Those under the influence of alcohol during sex also reported that they would often feel sick or dizzy, as well as being more likely to blackout and forget who they were with.
Similarly, participants said they would often find themselves distracted having sex while high, with one female even telling researchers that “you start thinking sex is weird.”
Palmer also found that being high or drunk during sex can impact how much pleasure you feel. “Alcohol tended to numb sensations and marijuana tended to enhance sensations,” the study says, based on feedback received from respondents.
Sex while high was found to be “involve more sensuality than alcohol,” and both men and women reported “intensified” orgasms during sex with one female respondent claiming hers were “magnified at least by five times.”
Overall, respondents admitted that alcohol led them to be engage in riskier behavior when it comes to sex resulting in poorer judgments being made and whether they used protection.
On the other end of the scale, one participant admitted that “marijuana use decreased his likelihood of engaging in risk behavior because while high he was too paranoid to give in.”
Every day millions of internet users ask Google life’s most difficult questions, big and small. Our writers answer some of the commonest queries
Drinking releases a stream of dopamine into the part of the brain that generates desire, anticipation, and (once you’ve finally brought the glass to your lips) pleasure).
Alcohol is a very simple molecule with incredibly complex effects. Although I already knew a bit about the neurobiology of alcohol, I just spent an afternoon reading a dense journal article that described roughly 50 different neural mechanisms it affects. After which I felt like I needed a drink. It’s widely known that alcohol reduces stress temporarily, and many people use it for just that purpose. It reduces stress by increasing the uptake of aneurotransmitter called GABA, the brain’s primary inhibitory molecule. (And by “inhibitory” I don’t mean that it makes you feel inhibited. Quite the opposite, of course.) By sending more GABA to your brain cells, alcohol works much like common tranquillising drugs such as Valium and Xanax. That’s why you start to stumble and slur if you drink too much. But alcohol acts on many other neurotransmitters too.
So far, you’ve got physical relaxation, which diminishes stress, reduced judgment, allowing you to talk and behave however you want, and stimulation of the brain’s reward system, which makes you feel like something nice is about to happen. But the fourth neurotransmitter tops the bill: opioids. Sometimes called endorphins or internal opiates, they get released by alcohol too. Everyone knows that opiates feel good, but did you know that you can get your opiates legally by downing a stiff drink? The American martini – which consists of three ounces of gin and little else – feels particularly nice for a very simple reason. The faster the alcohol goes in, the more internal opiates get released. Hence the aaaaahhhhh.
Aaaaaahhhh! A dry martini, with its three ounces of gin.
Given all the things that make up an alcohol high, it shouldn’t be surprising that inebriation feels different to different people, feels different from the first to the last drink, and definitely feels different once it becomes hard to stop. People who carry around a lot of stress drink to relax. People who spend a lot of energy controlling their impulses drink in order to let themselves go. The first drink of the night excites you, the last drink of the night sedates, and that isn’t nearly as much fun. College kids indulge in binge-drinking because they’re still bright-eyed novices when it comes to taking chemicals that alter their mood – the more the merrier. Twenty years later, they may drink to feel less, not more, because life has become oppressive, and anxieties seem ready to spring from every train of thought.
But once people become addicted to alcohol, as many do, the fun of the high is eclipsed by two opposing fears. The fear of going without, versus the fear of being unable to stop. That clash of concerns comes from several sources. First there are the unpleasant bodily effects that plague big drinkers when they stop for a few hours or, worse, a few days. Add to that the emotional emptiness, depression, and increased stress responsiveness that overcome the drinker’s mood at the same time. Taken together, these effects make up what George F Koob calls the dark side of addiction. But I think the real bogeyman, the unbeatable Catch-22 when it comes to alcohol and other drugs, is the realisation that the thing you rely on to relax is the very thing that stresses you out the most. It’s hard to find a way out of the recurrent cycle of anxiety and temporary relief, over and over, and that’s the epitome of a losing battle.
People like to get drunk because alcohol smacks your brain around in a number of ways that feel pleasant, or at least different, or at the very least better than going without. And that’s really how all mood-altering drugs work. Which is generally OK, because recreational drug use, including drinking, doesn’t lead to addiction for most people. But for those who get caught, the fun soon disappears.
Drugs, including alcohol, fashion neural habits: get it, take it, lose it, then get it again. And those habits narrow the brain’s focus to a very singular goal, at the expense of everything else. The striatum – the brain’s reward system – is responsible, not just for pleasure, but more seriously, for feelings of desire. And desire isn’t fun, unless you’re just about to get whatever it is you want. Then, the more you get it, the more your striatum gets tuned by that surge of dopamine, modifying its synaptic wiring a little bit at a time until other goals just don’t count for much.
But alcohol has one advantage over drugs like heroin and cocaine. It’s legal, and socially sanctioned. In fact drinking has become deeply enmeshed with themes of social engagement, joyful celebrations and all the rest of it.
Drinking doesn’t make you a bad person – in fact it seems to put you in good company and thereby make you a good person – if you can resist its addictive lure. The problem is that people who start to drink too much get pulled by two conflicting emotional beacons: feelings of connecting with those around them and feelings of shame that toxify those relationships. That’s a conflict of interest that gets increasingly difficult to resolve. So, just as they say in the fine print on the back of the bottle: “know your limits”.
There’s a gene that makes some people more embarrassing when drunk
SCIENTISTS have discovered a gene that makes people more prone to doing things they regret when they’re drunk.
The breakthrough could explain why some people are more likely to start a fight or are sexually uninhibited when they’ve had a few.
It could also lead to screening for the mutation so carriers can be advised to drink less or receive psychiatric treatment, researchers say.
The gene is believed to block a chemical from a certain part of the brain – which then kills self-restraint and stops people having foresight into the consequences of actions.
Scientists say this could be a huge breakthrough
Scientists say this could be a huge breakthrough AP
Translational Psychiatry published the discovery, which follows a study five years ago that linked the mutation with violent outbursts.
Psychiatrist Dr Roope Tikkanen, of the University of Helsinki, said: “The results also indicate that persons with this mutation are more impulsive by nature even when sober, and they are more likely to struggle with self-control or mood disorders.”
He said most of us know someone who can’t “hold their liquor” and behaves strangely and erratically when drunk – and these new findings show it’s in the genes.
Carriers are more prone to impulsive behaviour, especially when drunk, and more than 100,000 people were found to carry it in Finland alone.
The findings could explain why some people like to have a fight after a few
The findings could explain why some people like to have a fight after a few Getty Images
The findings could also be groundbreaking in understanding how a relatively unknown part of the brain works, and how it affects health.
It could also lead to new drugs, as none have yet been made targeting “serotonin 2B”, the mutation in question, which could lead to a potential breakthrough in mental health treatment.
An earlier study found serotonin 2B was three times as common in Finnish men convicted of arson and violence than the general population.
Of 228 inmates serving sentences who were screened, 17 carried the mutation compared with just seven of 295 healthy controls.
As soon as that drink hits your system, ethanol gets to work…
The festive season is approaching, and the lure of mulled wine and egg nog might be too hard to resist… Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
As the “party season” approaches, you’re going to have to pay some attention to weighty matters like what you’re going to wear to the office bash, whom you must avoid at all costs once you’re there, and trying not to inadvertently poke co-workers in the eye with a sprig of plastic mistletoe.
However, amongst the hubbub, it’s unlikely that you’ll give much thought to the chemical composition of the drinks that you are pouring down your neck. There’s cold, rational science behind your decision to bust out your robot dance moves to impress the CEO, and if you take a minute to understand what’s going on inside you, it may give you cause to reflect and maybe intersperse your alcohols intake with a few glasses of water.
There are, in fact, many kinds of alcohol in the chemical world but the one that dominates our drinks is ethanol. Just like you had in big brown jars on the shelf of your school science classroom. The specific shape of an ethanol molecule is precision engineered by nature to affect your brain when swept into your bloodstream on the waves of your favourite tipple.
The particular shape of an ethanol molecule makes it ideally suited to getting humans drunk. Slight differences in the charge at each end of the molecule make it both water and fat soluble. Red atom = Oxygen – White atoms = Hydrogen – Black atoms = Carbon
The ethanol molecule is very tiny, made of two carbon atoms, six hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Ethanol is also water-soluble, which allows it fast-track access to your bloodstream and therefore your brain. It’s also fat-soluble which means it can pass through all manner of cell membranes and other biological nooks and crannies unimpeded. In other words, once ethanol gets into your stomach, it’s going everywhere. And once ethanol arrives on the scene it causes havoc.
Research has not conclusively determined exactly how ethanol accomplishes all of its various effects on the brain, but there are some well-supported theories. The slowing of your reactions, the slurring of your speech, the loss of memory, are probably caused by the ethanol attaching to glutamate receptors in your brain’s neural circuitry. These receptors normally receive chemical signals from other parts of the brain, but instead of a normal sober response, the brain receives a big hit of ethanol sending it into confusion and slowing down its normal processes.
Imagine phoning to book a taxi but instead of the operator at the taxi company taking down your details and despatching a cab they start talking to you about modernist poetry in a language that you don’t understand. That’s what’s happening to your brains’ usual chemical processes once ethanol is present.
Ethanol also binds to GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) receptors, which normally serve to slow down brain activity. Unlike glutamate receptors, ethanol actually makes GABA receptors more receptive, causing the brain to slow down even more.
But as we know, alcohol isn’t simply a depressant, because it also stimulates the production of dopamine and endorphins, chemicals that produce feelings of immense pleasure. Again, science hasn’t quite worked out what exactly what’s happening here but it may be similar to the way ethanol stimulates the GABA receptors.
Once ethanol gets into your stomach, it’s going everywhere
So the ethanol careering around your blood stream is slowing you down whilst simultaneously speeding you up in an oxymoronic frenzy of biological contradictions that result in you committing an unforgivable act of karaoke.
So you might want to ease back a little or you’ll find yourself becoming an expert in a whole other area of biological process: the hangover.
You know when you’re out with your friends at a bar, and you’ve all had the same amount to drink, yet one friend is giggling uncontrollably, another is telling a hilarious story to a group of strangers, a third is picking a fight with the bouncer, and the last is talking to the bartender as if those four Jägerbombs never happened? You might have wondered, well, what’s up with that?
Science to the rescue. Psychology researchers from the University of Missouri at Columbia have published a study in Addiction Research & Theory attempting to bring the conventional wisdom that there are many distinct ways to be drunk to its logical, scientifically-based conclusion. Their study, which involved 374 undergraduates at a large Midwestern university, drew from literature and pop culture in order to conclude that there are four types of drinkers: the Mary Poppins, the Ernest Hemingway, the Nutty Professor and the Mr. Hyde.
The first and largest group — about 40% — was the Ernest Hemingways. Named for the writer who famously boasted that he could “drink hells any amount of whiskey without getting drunk,” Hemingways do not exhibit any major changes in personality when they transition from sober to drunk, the study contends.
In contrast, Mary Poppins drinkers follow the “practically perfect in every way” description Poppins bestows on herself in the 1964 movie: they are already outgoing types who somehow get sweeter and happier with alcohol.
After that come the Nutty Professors, named for the chemically-altered academic with a second personality immortalized by Eddie Murphy. They, the study says, are natural introverts who shed their inhibitions with special vigor when they drink, showing a flashier and more social side.
And, lastly, there are the Mr. Hydes: the evil-twin drinkers who are, according to the study, “particularly less responsible, less intellectual, and more hostile when under the influence of alcohol.”
The study authors hope to use these categories to tailor future alcoholism interventions to particular personality types. Meanwhile, you can use them to take bets on how many beers in your Nutty Professor friend will have had enough to start flirting with that brunette by the jukebox.
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