The Man Diet: One woman’s quest to end bad romance. Zoe Strimpel

of what she’s done the night before.

      So what exactly is the link between drinking and the ensuing horror at what seemed perfectly reasonable the night before? Does getting drunk actually make us prostrate ourselves unwisely on the loins of any available man? Possibly. One study found alcohol use to be a stronger predictor of ‘engaging in hooking up’ for women than men, possibly because women feel pressure not to hook up due to societal constraints, so alcohol makes it easier to lower the barrier (Owen, Fincham & Moore, 2011). But the connection between booze and sex is, predictably, a more complex one for women than men.

      ‘Does getting drunk actually make us prostrate ourselves unwisely on the loins of any available man?’

      Does booze turn you on?

      In one study, published in the academic journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, it appeared that booze does not in itself make women more horny or aroused. It’s just that we think it does. A 2011 survey got 44 men and women to watch erotic/neutral films while consuming either alcohol or juice. After drinking alcohol, more sexual arousal was reported even when watching neutral films than with no alcohol. However, women’s genital response didn’t increase with greater amounts of alcohol consumed. So, it looks like perceived sexual arousal increases even if actual arousal (that is, genital sexual arousal that was measured by a device) doesn’t change. The researchers found that the best predictor of post-drinking sex was the intention to have sex before you went out.

      Another theory of sex and booze linkage sounds more familiar. This is that it’s the effects of booze that causes us to take sexual risks we wouldn’t otherwise take – be it unprotected sex or sex with someone dodgy, or sex that is likely to have a negative emotional impact. This one is about the cues you respond to or ignore when pissed: according to the pleasingly named cognitive theory ‘alcohol myopia’, alcohol has a disinhibiting effect because it makes you less able to process information. Cues that instigate sexual behaviour continue to get processed, while more complex ones that would normally cause you to think twice get sidelined. The drunk brain can’t deal with both and chooses the simpler path.

      Here’s a typical drunken ‘horror’ story from a friend of mine that illustrates this point:

      Chloe, 28, had been sleeping with a man every weekend while single and had been using a dating website too. One night we were at a friend’s house party together and she was getting nice and pissed. There were no good male options there, so she started rifling through the guys on the dating website on her phone, finding one, Mark, who happened to be online at 11.30pm on a Saturday night. She summoned him to the party – he clearly worked out but also pulled his trousers up way too far and fastened them with a pernickety little belt. He was balding. He was loud. He was … not ideal. By now reeling from her numerous vodkas, Chloe and Mark headed out into the back garden where they appeared to be doing a mixture of feeling each other up and arguing. Suddenly they were gone.

      Chloe told me the next day that she’d taken him home with her only to find out, just as she was sobering up, that he was a complete sex fiend (not in a good way) who wanted to re-enact degradation porn scenes and began addressing her as ‘bitch’ as soon as they got near her bedroom. After he pushed her head down for a blow job, she ordered him out. At first he refused – then she got violent with him and he left. She didn’t tell me all those details that day – she was so horrified by the experience that it wasn’t for another two or three weeks that she actually came clean about it. That was the last time she went online drunk – and the last time she went out of her way for sex.

      From sober to sex kitten: drinking till we’re drunk

      ‘On a big night out I always end up going for it in some way or another, even if I secretly want a quiet one. It’s just the format.’ Jane, 31

      We act crazier and more sexually regrettably when we’re drunk because that’s the expectation – that’s the image. A classic study found that post-drinking behaviour is driven by pre-drinking beliefs ‘in the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy’ (Journal of Drug Issues). The idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy hits home. After all, how many times have you headed out on a ‘big night out’ and not at least made a good attempt at acting like someone on a ‘big night out’? When you’re ‘larging’ it, you can’t very well ‘small it’ at the last minute without being a party pooper.

      The expectation to act like you’re drunk is a double-edged sword. Not only do women expect themselves to be more sexually up-for-it, but men expect us to be so when we’ve been drinking. ‘Drinking women are perceived by men as being more sexually available, and coerced sex with a drinking woman is less likely to be viewed as rape,’ said Maria Testa and R. Lorraine Collins in a 1997 survey. These perceptions, say the authors, lead to women being fed more booze by sexually hopeful men. But they also make us feel like we have less of a right to say no to sex because we’re aware of the impression we’ve given by drinking heavily. In short, we’re afraid of appearing to be teases.

      More evidence suggests that boozing makes us seem like wanton sex machines even if, as per the study carried out by Prause, Staley & Finn, we’re not actually more aroused. Other studies have found that when we drink more we’re significantly more aggressive and ready to engage in foreplay. It’s also interesting – though hardly surprising – that perceptions of female sexual disinhibition were significantly enhanced if the man bought her the drinks. Working with Substance Misusers: a guide to theory and practice, a compilation of essays from experts, argues that ‘alcohol does not “make” you behave in a way that is alien. However, it is certainly the case that alcohol is often used as an excuse for inappropriate behaviour.’ In other words, the blame – contrary to what Jamie Foxx and T-Pain say in their anthem ‘Blame It’ – is on us, not the alcohol.

      Beer goggles: fact or fiction?

      Fact. One thing that studies show for certain is that the more you drink, the better looking people of the opposite gender appear, but you don’t need me to tell you that. What is interesting is that despite being studied, ‘the mechanism [that makes us find people more attractive when drunk] remains unclear’. One possibility suggested by other experts is that being trashed makes it hard to assess facial symmetry and other attractiveness cues. Other studies suggest that as the night wears on, people look more frantically to find someone to go home with, thus lowering their standards. The role of ‘beer goggles’ is obvious in the regret-causing antics we get up to when drunk, but whether we fall under their sway because we literally can’t see properly, or because of a more complex cocktail of factors involving suppressed needs and desires for intimacy (my money’s on this), has not been determined yet by our friends in social science.