Canadian psychology students watched a film concerning safe sex and were presented with a bracelet to wear as a reminder (Dal Cin et al., 2006). They were asked to think of the film over the subsequent weeks when they looked at the bracelet and to report on how frequently they wore condoms during subsequent casual sex activities. Wearing the bracelet increased condom use, whether or not sex was associated with taking alcohol. Interestingly, the combination of alcohol and wearing the bracelet appeared to be particularly effective in promoting condom use. The authors suggested that alcohol makes information retrieval more difficult and a person is more likely to attend only to salient cues present in the environment. In such terms, the bracelet becomes such a salient cue to safe sex.
Do sexual arousal and alcohol interact in influencing the decision concerning condom use (Ebel-Lam et al. 2009)? Suppose that a person is highly aroused sexually. This would constitute a salient cue. What effect would alcohol have here? The researchers suggested that the combination of sexual arousal and intoxication would lead to an increased tendency to have the intention to engage in unprotected sex. This was indeed the case. When tested sober, even sexual arousal did not favour the thought of having unprotected sex. Neither did alcohol when the participants were not sexually aroused. However, participants tested when both sexually aroused and intoxicated tended to report the ‘impelling thought’ to engage in unprotected sex.
One experiment simulated a sexual encounter. It found a relationship between, on the one hand, so-called ‘cognitive reserve’ and ‘executive cognitive functioning’ and, on the other, the ability to resist unprotected sex while intoxicated (Abbey et al., 2006). These cognitive terms refer to the ability, for example, to plan ahead, devise new strategies in response to a challenge and to switch strategy in the light of changing circu-mstances.
In a test of the intention to employ condoms in a simulated situation, people high on these cognitive measures prior to intoxication were more likely to resist the temptation of unprotected sex when intoxicated. The term ‘reserve capacity’ points again to the notion of strength or resource within a competition for the control of behaviour. By implication, such capacity might be used up by stress or competing demands. When intoxicated, people of relatively low cognitive reserve seem to find the processing demands of weighing up conflicting goals to be over-taxing and opt for the path of least resistance.
Knowledge of the effects of drugs on sexual behaviour played a role in a biblical example of incest that was spared moral condemnation. Lot’s daughters were keen to preserve the bloodline, but the only available male was their own father. So, aided by alcohol, the seduction was portrayed in terms similar to that associated with a contemporary date-rape drug:
Come let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.
And they made their father drink wine that night: and the first-born went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
(Genesis 20:32–3)
I find it hard to believe that a seemingly comatose Lot would have been able to perform the task of insemination. An alternative interpretation is that the alcohol lifted Lot’s inhibitions.
Marijuana
From at least as far back as ancient Rome, through Arabian Nights, and up to the present, marijuana has been used to increase sexual desire and pleasure (Abel, 1981) and to lift inhibitions (Symonds, 1971). However, intentions associated with its use also play a role in its effects. People who use marijuana tend to have a relatively high number of sex partners. This could indicate an underlying effect of sensation-seeking (Abel, 1981, p. 3): ‘Those who are most willing to experiment with drugs also seem the most willing to experiment with sex.’ In the balmy pre-AIDS days of the 1960s–1970s, the San Francisco region of Haight-Ashbury became a Mecca for free-thinking young hippies. Drugs and sex mixed freely. It also formed something of a natural laboratory for researchers. An investigation into the effect that different drugs had on sexual desire found that marijuana came out top in increasing it (Gay et al., 1975).
It is reported that some ascetics have used marijuana to lower sexual desire (Hollister, 1975). Doubtless context and intentions lock into its action. Also, a number of drugs might well have opposite immediate (to excite desire) and long-term (to lower desire) effects, the latter reflecting suppression of the secretion of sex hormones.
Stimulants
For centuries, the coca leaf has been used in Aztec culture as an energizer and aphrodisiac (Cohen, 2010). Stimulants boost dopaminergic activity. An American cocaine user, let us call him Charlie, reported (Washton and Zweben, 2009, p. 56):
For me, cocaine and sex are one and the same. Every time I feel sexually aroused, my brain immediately thinks cocaine. Last time I tried to give up cocaine, I thought I could do it without giving up the escorts and the wild sex scenes. But I was dead wrong. Every time I got turned on sexually, all I could think of was cocaine. The cravings got so bad that I had to stop everything and call my drug dealer. Sex without cocaine just seemed unexciting to me, even downright boring. I guess I’ll have to learn all over again how to enjoy sex without the hookers and the drugs. It wont [sic] be easy, but unless I can break the connection between cocaine use and sex once and for all, I don’t see how I can remain drug-free for very long. I don’t want to remain stuck in this vicious cycle of cocaine and sex any longer. I feel like a dog chasing its tail.
Typically, a person tries to meet several goals that co-exist, sometimes in coalescence, as with Charlie’s drug and sexual highs. The type of drugs that sensitize sexual desire, most obviously cocaine and methamphetamine, act on dopamine. Interactions between drugs and sex are now better understood in terms of such processes (Pitchers et al. 2010). Charlie is seeking to elevate his level of arousal with the help of sex and drugs and he exemplifies escalation, whereby a person chases sexual ‘highs’ as much as drug ‘highs’. The perfectionist search for a ‘super-high’ can make coming down undesirable. It can be distressing to ponder the prospect of drug-free, and thereby suboptimal, future sexual ‘highs’.
Cocaine was ranked high in the Haight-Ashbury study in terms of desire and energizing of sexual behaviour. But for its limited availability and high price in those days, it might have been the drug of choice as an aphrodisiac (Gay et al., 1975).
Up to 70 per cent of people who enter treatment for cocaine addiction are simultaneously addicted to sex (Washton, 1989) (Chapter 17). Cocaine can have a strong effect on sexual motivation as indexed by thoughts and fantasies. It also lowers sexual inhibitions, providing a trigger to combined sexual and cocaine binging (Washton, 1989).
Amongst some of his patients, Freud observed ‘violent sexual excitement’ that was associated with taking coca (Byck, 1974). In spite of being seen almost universally as a guru of sexual liberation, one hardly gets the impression that sexual desire featured high on Freud’s personal list of behavioural priorities. However, cocaine seemed to have enhanced his desire, as suggested by a letter to his fiancée in 1884 (cited by Torrey, 1992, p. 11):
Woe to you, my Princess, when I come. I will kiss you quite red and feed you until you are plump. If you are froward3 you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who doesn’t eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.
Amongst a sample of patients with bipolar disorder and associated drug use, those using particularly cocaine, rather than alcohol or marijuana, showed a drug-related amplification of sexual risk-taking (Meade et al., 2008).
In a survey of users of alcohol, opiates, cocaine or methamphetamine, methamphetamine came out clearly as the most sexually charged drug (Rawson et al., 2002). More than any other substance, male and female users reported that it interacted with their sexuality in terms of enhanced pleasure, experiencing ‘sexual obsession’ and engaging in ‘sexual experimentation’.
Taking cocaine or methamphetamine increases libido and decreases inhibition, leading to unsafe sex practi
ces (Washton and Zweben, 2009). A primary site of action of methamphetamine is on dopaminergic systems (Holder et al., 2010). Indeed, evidence suggests that methamphetamine and sexual incentives act on the same population of dopaminergic neurons.4
In a sexual context, methamphetamine triggers three closely related effects (Schilder et al., 2005), corresponding to three effects of high dopaminergic activity. Users experience increases in:
sexual desire
arousal, activation and ‘stamina’
risk-taking, that is a focus on the immediate situation, with some disregard to the future.
As a gay male reported (Schilder et al., 2005, p. 342):
I had sex with about eight men in three days. Crystal5 fuelled marathon sessions. Completely unprotected and not even thinking about it.
Dopamine is involved in forming a cost–benefit analysis of a given situation, that is acting on those brain processes that weigh up the potential benefits as set against any disadvantages (Assadi et al., 2009). Methamphetamine biases decision-making in terms of persistence with the immediate hedonic activity, while disregarding potential future costs.
Methamphetamine use illustrates several further features of sexuality. Users sometimes report such an elevation in the intensity of the experience that it is later hard to come down to pre-drug levels. As one described drug-free sex (Green and Halkitis, 2006, p. 317): ‘This isn’t very interesting; it’s not very developed.’ Furthermore, some users seek ever more daring and novel experiences in a form of spiral upwards in intensity of the experience. It would seem that the intensity of a sexual experience can be such as to create such instability. Methamphetamine does not invariably create enhanced lust on first experience (Green and Halkitis, 2006). Rather, it seems to require a learning effect involving the combination of drug and sexual opportunity. Methamphetamine tends to increase the attraction value of potential partners (Green and Halkitis, 2006).
If the findings on rats can be generalized to humans, taking d-amphetamine causes durable changes in the brain (‘incentive sensitization’) such that subsequently sexual motivation is also increased (Pitchers et al., 2010). Reciprocally, sexual experience sensitizes the brain to drug use. This again points to a common incentive process.
Heroin
Heroin and morphine usually lower sexual desire (Ford and Beach, 1951). For its aphrodisiac properties, heroin was given a positive ranking by some in the Haight-Ashbury study but not as high as cocaine or marijuana (Gay et al., 1975). Although not ranked highly in terms of sexual desire (some reported a lowering), it did better when it concerned the effects of touching and being touched. The general opinion amongst people addicted to heroin is that it has little effect on sexual desire or even lowers it (De Leon and Wexler, 1973; Hollister, 1975; Rawson et al., 2002). Another study, also done in Haight-Ashbury, and of people using shared needles to inject predominantly heroin, found that the act of social-injecting took on sexual connotations for some (Howard and Borges, 1970). For example, they would try to find a sexually attractive other to inject them. The comment was received that injecting was a ‘sexual substitute’.
Mathias (1970) studied sexual desire in heroin addicts, finding it to be of minimal intensity. Whereas a group of non-addicted young men thrown into each other’s company would frequently engage in ‘sex talk’, this was not the case for incarcerated heroin-addicted young men. Mathias reported that the drug knocks out their sexual desire and that (p. 98) ‘Heroin replaces sex as the prime interest in their lives.’ One prisoner described the substitute nature of heroin-taking: the searching for the drug, the gain of drug, the act of inserting the needle, the immediate orgasmic high and then a post-high phase of relaxation and serenity.
Comparing drugs
Drugs with a primary dopaminergic effect, most obviously cocaine and methamphetamine, amplify sexual desire and energize behaviour. By contrast, heroin primarily targets liking and either lowers sexual desire or gives a sexual connotation to the act of injection. Heroin mimics natural opioids and taps one of the consequences of engaging in hedonic activity. The effects of these drugs on sexual desire mirror their effects taken outside a sexual context. Klein (1987) reports that stimulants create the repeated desire for more drug until the drug runs out, comparable to the desire (‘positive feedback’) phase of sexuality. By contrast, opiates trigger satiation and sedation (‘negative feedback’), comparable to orgasm and post-orgasmic satiety.
Part of the biological basis of orgasm and the subsequent satiety effect appears to be a sudden rush of endorphins, natural substances similar to opiates (Pfaus, 2009). Heroin floods the brain with endorphin-like substances that appear to substitute for sexual reward or to trigger something like sexual satiety. Thereby, it appears to act as a substitute for conventional sexual behaviour (De Leon and Wexler, 1973; Kellett, 2000).
Ecstasy primarily targets serotonin rather than dopamine. Like methamphetamine, it is also popular in the club circuit and also lowers inhibitions (Schilder et al., 2005). However, its effect is one of promoting emotional intimacy rather than sexual desire.
In summary
Sexual desire commonly locks into interaction with romantic love.
Dominance, anger and aggression can form an interaction with sexual desire.
Various drugs, such as alcohol, can amplify sexual desire. Drugs that target dopamine such as cocaine and amphetamine are particularly effective in this regard.
Sixteen Representations of sex
I found everything that the most voluptuous pens have written about pleasure: seductive books whose incendiary style forces the reader to seek in reality what they depict in imagination.
(Casanova, 1798/1958, p. 94)
Basics
The use of representations of aspects of life is part of what it is to be human (Byrne and Osland, 2000). Representations exist outside the brain on film and paper and in its inner workings of fantasy. Our early ancestors left us cave paintings depicting hunting scenes and wild animals. In the period up to 600 BC, Etruscan art was already explicit in its depiction of heterosexual and homosexual activity (Byrne and Osland, 2000). These days we have films, the Internet, television, photographs, novels and paintings to convey other worlds to our imaginations, including those of sexuality and its possibilities.
Representations of sexuality can trigger arousal in the present as well as plans for the future and reflections upon the past. In the absence of a partner, as in masturbation, or even in their presence during sexual activity, people commonly employ ‘virtual’ means of boosting sexual excitation: erotic visual images, stories and the use of pure fantasy in the imagination (Byrne and Osland, 2000).
It appears that representations of emotionally loaded events trigger a similar set of brain regions as are triggered by the corresponding real events, though with less intensity (Lang and Bradley, 2008). Knowing that they are not real, erotic images might create a preparation (‘disposition’) to action in the absence of overt action, which could be inhibited by the context. The startle reflex is inhibited by attractive erotic images and some internal physiological changes (heart rate, sweating) occur.
Erotic and pornographic images
General principles
There is commonly overlap between the terms ‘erotic’ and ‘pornographic’, the distinction sometimes appearing to be in the eye of the beholder. However, some use ‘erotic’ to denote the depiction of consensual and egalitarian sexual activities, whereas ‘pornographic’ is reserved for degrading and non-consensual activities, such as sexual violence and where exploitation is suspected (Byrne and Osland, 2000; Steinem, 1980).
Both men and women show a strong genital arousal to viewing explicit erotic depictions, as in films (Laan and Both, 2008). Whether women feel subjective arousal depends upon an interpretation of the images (Chapter 9). Much research on the brain’s reaction to sexual stimuli comes from presenting erotic images, still or moving, to participants and observing changes in the activity of the brain (Stark et al.,
2005). During the viewing of images that are judged to be sexually attractive, particular brain regions are excited.1 From this and other evidence, for example on the reaction to food or drugs, these regions are thought to be associated with incentive motivation. In one study, erotic stimulation was triggered by asking participants to relate a highly arousing sexual experience (Rauch et al., 1999). The story was then recorded and later played back to them. Some brain regions implicated in motivation were activated in this way.2
Areas of the brain associated with the planning of actions3 are also triggered into activity by watching erotic scenes, suggesting that the viewer is in some sense simulating the action (Stoléru and Mouras, 2006). Mirror neurons (Chapter 2) might well be implicated here (Mouras et al., 2008), their activity providing a measure of the desire to perform it. Of course, sitting with the head in a scanning device somewhat limits the potential for sexual action, and activity is also observed in brain regions that inhibit the translation of planning into action.4
One might suppose that watching such material in the absence of a partner would lead only to frustration, so a paradox associated with pornography as with strip-tease and live sex shows is as follows (Zillmann, 1984, p. 170): ‘The enormous popularity of erotic fare has, of course, always been at variance with such a frustration argument. Are people seeking exposure time and time again in order to frustrate themselves?’ Evidence suggests that such experience brings pleasure, but exactly why this is remains something of a puzzle.
How Sexual Desire Works- The Enigmatic Urge Page 34