Mixing alcohol and drugs poses bigger unsafe sex risk for women

(Reuters Health) – Drinking alcohol and smoking pot at the same time is more likely to increase the odds of unsafe sex for young women than for men, a small U.S. study suggests.

“This is important because women could be especially vulnerable to the negative consequences of unprotected sex (e.g., unwanted pregnancy, STIs) when under the influence of alcohol and/or marijuana,” said lead study author Jumi Hayaki, a psychology researcher at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

“Our results seem to indicate that men’s sexual behavior, at least with respect to condomless vaginal sex with an opposite-sex partner, becomes disinhibited at a higher threshold than for women,” Hayaki said by email.

When women ages 18 to 25 drink and smoke pot on the same day, they’re more than three times more likely to have unprotected sex than on days when they don’t use either substance, the study found.

Just smoking pot was associated with an 89 percent higher risk of unsafe sex for women, while drinking alone was tied to more than double the risk.

Men this age didn’t appear much more likely to have unprotected sex when they used either alcohol or marijuana…