We are in a typical college September, when we drown our incoming students in warnings about drink. At freshman orientation, we inundate them with videos, role-plays, and small-group discussions about alcohol abuse. At more than 1,000 institutions, they also have to complete an online course on the subject.
It’s an admirable effort — but it’s not working. Although binge-drinking on campus (defined by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism) as five or more alcoholic drinks in a row for men or four for women) has declined slightly in recent years, alcohol-related hospitalizations at colleges have soared by as much as 70 percent. Alcohol continues to dominate the social lives of American college students, for one obvious reason: They associate it with fun, and with sex. Drink lessens your inhibitions, making it easier to meet potential sexual partners.
But it also reduces sexual pleasure, which most students probably don’t know. So I’ve got a suggestion for a different kind of educational campaign, focused less on the perils of alcohol than on its false promises. Put simply, drink doesn’t deliver where it counts. It might make you feel like having sex, but the sex itself won’t feel as good.
That’s not an opinion; it’s a fact. For more than 50 years, scientists have documented the negative effects of alcohol on sexual response, performance, and pleasure. When men drink, they have a harder time getting and maintaining an erection; women don’t reach orgasm as easily; and both sexes report less overall satisfaction.
And that’s because alcohol is a depressant. It inhibits the parts of the central nervous system that affect sexual arousal. And it dehydrates the body, which increases the difficulty of getting oxygen — and, with it, sensation — to the genitals.
I’ve seen some of this information in online courses and other college anti-alcohol campaigns. But it’s a minor theme. When the campaigns focus on sex, it’s almost always in the context of sexual assault.
Rape and alcohol are connected, of course, and every college student should know that. One out of five female students is the victim of attempted or actual rape. And in most of those episodes, one or both partners had consumed alcohol. Women who drink heavily are twice as likely to experience sexual assault as women who don’t drink at all.
But I’m troubled by the focus on sexual assault and other dangers — accidents, drunk driving, alcohol poisoning — in education campaigns, which seem to concede the larger idea that drinking brings pleasure. That’s what makes it so alluring, our efforts imply, as well as so risky.
Let’s face it: in certain ways, alcohol does make you feel good. You don’t have to be a physiologist to know that drink can release feelings of happiness, even euphoria. And it can relax you, especially if you’re under stress. But it’s precisely those soothing qualities that inhibit sexual feelings, even after you have stopped drinking. In one study by researchers in Spain, heavy drinkers who abstained from alcohol for a month continued to experience low libido and other kinds of sexual dysfunction.
That’s not a message young Americans often encounter. Beer ads and Hollywood movies teach them that alcohol enhances sex. And our campaigns against sexual assault tacitly confirm the same idea, by focusing upon the effect of alcohol on judgment, perception, and self-control — and omitting its effect on pleasure.
Many students will come away from those campaigns believing that drinking is sexy. Why else, they must wonder, would their colleges expend so much effort in trying to reduce it? But the truth is just the opposite. Yes, alcohol skews inhibition and judgment, which helps explain its role in sexual assault. But it also inhibits sex, period.
So I’ve got a modest proposal for next year’s freshman orientation: On top of the usual warnings about alcohol abuse, a campaign called, simply, More Drink, Worse Sex. Or even, “If you think alcohol makes sex better, you haven’t had enough sex.” That would require a bold campus leader, one willing to move the discussion beyond the discourse of sexual danger and into the realm of sexual pleasure. It would remind students that alcohol and sex are, physiologically speaking, like oil and water, despite everything they have been led to believe. And it would be true.
Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education (Princeton University Press, 2015).