Sexual Pressure: Alcohol and Drugs Make It Harder
Most individuals have their first sexual experience before they are twenty years of age. Sex is supposed to be a pleasurable and wondrous experience between two people. Unfortunately, sex does not always turn out to be this. There is so much peer pressure on teenagers today to have sex. Sexuality is everywhere especially on television, the internet and popular advertisements. One only has to turn their head to see a billboard of a bikini-clad woman or turn on the television to see two people in bed together. There are so many sexual influences that are applying pressure to teenagers today. Some teens feel that they must keep up with their friends, that they have to have sex in order to be popular or that sex will make their boyfriend or girlfriend happy. The truth is that no one should have sex until they are ready.
Drug and alcohol use has been linked to risky sexual behavior. This risky behavior can have potential life-threatening consequences. While under the influence a person’s judgment is seriously hindered. After a few drinks a person may feel laid back, they may lose control of what they are doing or agree to things they wouldn’t normal agree to. Drugs have the same affect, especially such party drugs as ecstasy or cocaine. Ecstasy is known as a sexual drug, a drug that releases serotonin in the brain, causing a person to feel euphoric. This fake sense of euphoria greatly impairs the way a person thinks. The abuse of drugs or alcohol can cause an adolescent to use poor judgment about sex and contraception. This places them at risk for a sexual assault, unplanned pregnancy or contracting a sexually transmitted disease.
Sexually transmitted diseases include syphilis, herpes, genital warts, gonorrhea, HIV/AIDS and more. Some sexually transmitted diseases are treatable but others, such as AIDS, lead to death. It is unknown what dangerous role alcohol and drugs play in the acquiring of HIV/AIDS but it is known that alcohol and drugs weaken a person’s immune system causing an increased rate of susceptibility to disease or infection. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that over eighteen thousand adolescents aged thirteen to twenty-four contracted HIV/AIDS. This only represents the number of reported cases. It is hard enough, with a clear head, to make the right decision especially when under peer pressure. An adolescent feels as if they are being pulled in every direction. Their parents influence them, their friends influence them and the media influences them. Deciding to have sex is one of the biggest decisions a person makes. Drugs and alcohol should not be an influence.
Twenty-percent of adolescents have had sex with four different partners by their senior year of high school. Studies have proven that adolescents are more likely to have sex after drinking alcohol and less likely to use condoms when they are under the influence. A horrifying eighteen-percent of girls and thirty-nine percent of boys thought it was acceptable for a boy to force a girl into sexual intercourse while drunk or stoned. Sex should not be about what substance you are on but how you feel. Alcohol and drug use cause for poor decision making and some of these decisions have irreversible, regrettable consequences.
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