It feels jarring to admit, but during the first five to 10 years of my sexually active life, I’m pretty sure I only had sober sex a small handful of times. I don’t remember this being a strange or unusual thing. It’s how a lot of my friends approached sex in their teens and early 20s—unless they were in relationships. You’d go out, get completely trashed, and then go home with someone. Or you’d message that one person after a night out that you always messaged. Sex wasn’t an intimate act, nor was it an act that required me to be fully present. I wasn’t enjoying it, exactly, but I wasn’t not enjoying it, either. It was mostly a neutral experience, like consuming a snack.
It’s hard to pinpoint why I only had drunk sex—it wasn’t for any dark or overly deep reason. I think it probably had something to do with not yet knowing how to tell the difference between what made me feel good and what made me feel like a certain type of person, which in turn made me feel a different type of good. I liked the idea that I was a laissez-faire girl about town who felt empowered enough to be free with her body. But I wasn’t necessarily in touch with the physical or emotional aspects of sexual intimacy. In other words: I liked the concept of liking sex, but didn’t know how to get there in reality. So it didn’t matter if I was drunk during the act, because it wasn’t about the act itself.
I also think I tended to only have drunk sex for the same reason I drank a lot more generally: Because I had social anxiety and found it hard to loosen up without it. It can feel daunting to even lean in for a kiss, let alone get completely naked with another person. So drinking was a way to sidestep that anxiety and skip to the part that was supposed to be intimate, without realizing that by sidestepping the anxiety I was also sidestepping the intimacy. But hey, what are your teens and early 20s for if not figuring all that stuff out? Every day, we learn more as we go, filing each experience away like a human database until we know what we didn’t know before: that sober sex is infinitely hotter than drunk sex.
I didn’t come to this realization overnight, nor did I discover it on purpose. I just cut down on drinking and it was an unintended side effect. When people get sober or cut down, we often hear about the benefits. The improved sleep, the clear skin, the better relationships, and such. But we hear less about the impact it can have on your sex life. Yes, it’s harder to get laid, especially if you’re single, which I’m not (Moya Lothian-Mclean recently wrote about how being sober has interrupted an integral part of the mating process, which for her has led to less sex). And it’s harder to be free-wheeling and experimental with the same sort of abandon. But the sex you do have is vastly more satisfying—not just physically, but mentally too. (Is there anything more sexy than suddenly remembering what somebody did in bed? More sexy than flat-out not remembering, anyway.)
When I started having more sober sex, it actually reminded me a bit of being a teenager in the years before I started going out and partying. Back when being physically intimate was new and exciting. Making out behind Tesco. Snogging in the back row of the cinema. Sticking your hand in the waistband of someone’s jeans, but nothing else. There was a physical aspect of sex that I had to sort of rediscover, an excitement that alcohol tends to numb or blur. I think, especially as a woman, you’re raised with this idea of what sex is supposed to look like, and then you have to deprogram yourself in order to enjoy it. TV and film taught me that sex was with a man and that women should orgasm almost instantly. That ended up not being my reality, but I had to figure that out for myself—soberly.
I don’t really have drunk sex these days, not for any reason other than I drink less and also I’m more likely to want to go to sleep after a couple of pints. There’s nothing wrong with drunk sex—especially if you’re tipsy rather than, like, slurring your words. I am not claiming to be immune to flirting over a sparkling Picante beneath some dim lights. But if I could choose one over the other, I’d choose sober sex every time. There wouldn’t even be a question. If only I’d known this sooner.
