Alcohol and Sex

It’s hard to talk about alcohol without talking about sex, and you can’t talk about sex these days without talking about alcohol. One of the most remarkable developments in the last twenty years has been the rapid rise of binge drinking not among college-age men, but among college-age women, 40 percent of whom have had more than 4 drinks in a row in the last week. I have a theory about this. I believe that drinking for college-age women is largely a way to make sex easier—to ease the pain of hooking up, the pain of anonymous sex. Sex with someone you’ve made no promises to, for whom you haven’t changed your name, is indeed anonymous, without-a-name sex. It’s also story-less sex, with no history and no future. When it stops feeling good, it hurts, because sex is made to change our names, to change our stories. And when it doesn’t change us, it leaves us empty and lost, stranded outside the story we were made to live in. It’s a shame—and because it’s a shame, it doesn’t just affect the individuals who choose it. It leaves all of us…stranded outside the best story.

-Andy Crouch

(HT: Joe Carter)