For those who rely on alcohol to loosen up, getting intimate without it can be tricky.
The first time Steve Bennet-Martin was sober while having sex with his husband, the couple had already been together for eight years.
“It’s not that every time I was wasted, or every time I was stoned out of my mind,” Mr. Bennet-Martin, 38, said. “But there was always a little bit of something to help ease the insecurities, the fear, the shame that I had associated with sex.”
After years of trying and failing to moderate his drinking, he began attending 12-step meetings in 2021 and has been sober since.
But in those early days of recovery, sex felt “awkward and uncomfortable,” Mr. Bennet-Martin said — even with his trusted, longtime partner. “It was very much like I was a virgin again.”
As researchers and health officials sound the alarm about the negative health effects of even moderate drinking, many people are dabbling in sober curiosity or abstaining from alcohol altogether. Cutting back affects not only traditional markers of health like blood pressure or cancer risk. Experts say it can alter people’s sex lives, leading to changes that may take some time to get used to — even for moderate drinkers.
“When you’re not numbing out with substances and suddenly you’re face to face with somebody you want to be sexual with, that can be really scary at first,” said Laura Rademacher, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Minneapolis who offers a class on sober sex in her practice.