Ways Alcohol and Substance Abuse Negatively Affect Your Sex Life
Struggling with addiction can have a major impact on many areas of your life. It can hurt your relationships, ruin your finances, decimate your health, and hurt your ability to perform at school or your job.
However, one impact of alcohol or drugs on your life that you may not have thought about is how it can change your sex life. “There are many aspects of one’s life that are affected when you suffer from addiction”, says Gatehouse Drug Rehab, “sexual health is often one of the first to suffer.”
This article is going to take a closer look at the ways alcohol and substance abuse can negatively impact your sex life and the science behind it.
Substance Abuse Can Lower Sex Drive
The first way that substance abuse can negatively impact your sex life is by lowering your sex drive. While some people believe that certain substances can increase sex drive, this is often only momentary and long-term addiction will hurt your libido much more than it will help it.
Drug or alcohol use can often lead to a person losing their passion for things they used to enjoy, such as sex. The stress and distress that often go hand-in-hand with substance abuse can also make it difficult to maintain a high sex drive.
Also, if someone is constantly looking for or worrying about their next fix, or finding ways to support their habit, their mind is often focused on that and not on a desire to have sex.
It Can Decrease Sexual Function/Performance
In addition to lowering drive, substance abuse can actually decrease a person’s ability to perform sexually at the same time. There is a link between drugs and erectile dysfunction, both in recreational drugs and over-the-counter drugs.
Many drugs will actually constrict the blood vessels in your body, which leads to a lack of blood flow that can cause erectile dysfunction. Some can also impact the nerves in the body, and others can reduce or block testosterone.
So even if someone may mentally want to engage in sex, drugs or alcohol may not allow for that to happen. In addition to that, substance abuse can make it harder to reach orgasm, and the longer you abuse drugs or alcohol, the worse the problem will generally get.
Addiction Can Ruin Romantic Relationships
So while substance abuse can impact sexual health directly, it can also hurt your sex life in an indirect way. Because addiction can harm your relationship, it can naturally lead to a reduction in sexual desire.
If a couple is always fighting about substance use or experiencing a variety of other issues, the last thing they generally want to do is have sex with one another. It is hard to want to be intimate with someone you cannot trust, or who is incredibly unpredictable.
If these romantic relationships become strained or ruined, it is reasonable to also expect for sex to stop or at least occur much less frequently.
In conclusion, we hope that this guide has helped you become aware of the ways that alcohol and substance abuse can negatively impact your sex life.
