The Real Cost of Liquid Courage: How Alcohol Sabotages Sex & Intimacy
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Scene: date night.
Babysitter booked. Reservations made. A moment carved out of the chaos—just the two of you again, finally.
You slide into a dimly lit booth, shoulders relaxing for the first time all week. The server appears, pen poised, and without thinking, you both give the same familiar answer:
“We’ll start with drinks.”
Two glasses arrive—cold, glistening, promising ease.
Promising laughter.
Promising that spark you’ve been missing.
And for a moment, it works. Maybe even for the first hour.
First, the slow warmth in your chest, the loosening of the tight coil of tension in your chest, the way you suddenly feel a bit more like yourself.
Then you you reach for a second glass at dinner — and room begins to soften. Your shoulders drop. Suddenly, the world feels more forgiving, your words lighter, your laughter freer. You lean in, make eye contact with your partner, and for a moment, your confidence feels unshakable. The world shrinks to just the two of you—like it used to be.
Alcohol becomes the centerpiece of connection.
The ritual.
The gateway.
The shortcut back to lovers.
But beneath the clink of glasses, something else is happening.
You’re not actually dropping into each other—you’re dropping into the buzz.
You’re not feeling more desire—you’re numbing the exhaustion, the resentment, the unspoken needs sitting quietly under the surface.
And when the glasses empty, you’re left with the same distance … sometimes even a little more.
We drink to feel close—but often end up further away.
You think you’re more in your body.
But you mistake numbness for relaxation, detachment for ease.
True connection requires presence, curiosity, vulnerability.
Alcohol can soften the walls—but it can also make sure we never take them down.
You used the liquid courage to open the door, but it closed it to the very connection you were longing for.
Alcohol is often marketed as the shortcut to intimacy—especially on date nights. But while it can make us feel relaxed or uninhibited, research shows alcohol actually dulls physical sensation, decreases arousal, reduces emotional attunement, and weakens relationship connection.
I explore how alcohol affects sex, desire, and intimacy — and what to do instead — in this article.
Why “Liquid Courage” Feels So Powerful (At First)
The first drink brought a warm hum to your body, like someone loosened the strings that keep you wound tight. The second turned down the volume on your stress, your hesitation, your need to control. You feel more like yourself.
This is liquid courage at play.
This happens because alcohol is a central nervous system depressant. In small doses, it depresses or reduces social anxiety and self-consciousness, making you feel more confident, relaxed, and emotionally available.
This disinhibition is seductive: suddenly touching feels less risky, flirting is easier, and more seems possible … in our minds.
Somewhere between glass one and glass two, however, the mind and the body start to diverge. The lessening of inhibitions makes us think that more is possible, creating mental arousal — at the same time as the alcohol suppresses physical arousal, dulling our senses, stalling arousal, and slowing down blood flow to the genitals. We start to disconnect from ourselves and each other and the reality between us.
We might feel more aroused — even if our bodies are not cooperating.
When Things Turn: The Physiological Ways Alcohol Undermines Sex
Here’s how that initial “freeing” feeling can quietly sabotage physical performance and pleasure. Even after one glass.
Central Nervous System Depression
It’s worth repeating that alcohol slows down the entire system, including the pathways responsible for sexual arousal. It works against the kind of arousal you wish you create in a sexual encounter, not to mention the kind of emotional one, which we’ll get to later.
At first, it this kind of slowing down can feel relaxing. It dampens the sympathetic nervous system, which typically causes mobilization to stress and instead turns on a parasympathetic relaxation response. With a couple more sips, the parasympathetic gains momentum, triggering more dulling and shutting down.
What started as relaxing starts to shut things down.
The Dulling of the Senses
Because it is a depressant, alcohol also has analgesic (pain-dampening) effects. It dampens what otherwise might feel intense or painful in the body and make it bearable or even pleasant (at first). The same dampening mechanism that can make it feel “relaxing”, also blunts tactile nuance and dulls the senses: less sensation, less movement of energy, less blood flow.
As taste heavily plays into kissing, oral sex, and the general savoring of a partner’s skin or breath, drinking can blunt those pleasures and subtle taste cues.
If you like your partner, it might mean a much duller experience. You might experiencing being there, but not really feeling it.
And if you don’t like your partner, it allows you to bypass the disgust reflex and engage with them regardless. It helps you avoid having to confront your own turn-off and avoid conflict with your partner. It literally lubricates an experience that you might otherwise be compelled to walk away from. As I will address this shortly, this kind of self-betrayal comes with a price, both mental and psychological.
Why Alcohol Affects Arousal
Impaired Blood Flow & Erectile Function — in both Men and Women
Alcohol works against the intended desire of increasing arousal.
Studies show that alcohol reduces blood flow to the penis, making it harder to achieve or sustain an erection. High blood alcohol concentrations (BAC) have been shown to especially attenuate penile response in physiological studies, especially when men are trying to maximize arousal.
There is also hormonal disruption at play. Alcohol interferes with the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis. It can suppress the release of gonadotropins (LH/FSH), which in turn reduces testosterone production.
It also affects other messengers involved in sexual arousal and reward, which can make orgasm more difficult or delayed.
Similar effects are noted in women. While even low doses of alcohol may feel subjectively arousing by lowering inhibitions, they physiologically reduce genital arousal by reducing and maintaining slower blood flow to the genitals and delaying orgasm.
While for men, alcohol might reduce his ability to stay hard during a sexual encounter, for women it might reduce her ability to get aroused at all. And this has deep consequences on her ability to genuinely want sex and full consent to it.
That is because about 70-80% of all women have what is called responsive sexual desire, which means that the desire to engage in sex follows a positive sensual and connecting physical experience that leaves their body aroused. Her desire shows up in response to feeling pleasure in her body. As arousal comes before desire, the reduced ability to get aroused means that there will be no genuine, full-body felt desire for sex. This often leads women to say ‘yes’ to sex that she might not actually enjoy in her body “just to get it over with” or do it “for connection.”
For women, a review of scientific literature showed that alcohol consumption is associated with a 74% increased risk of sexual problems including low arousal, lubrication problems, and orgasm issues.
In the end, alcohol that relaxed her actually impeded her having a sexual experience that worked for her body and her system. It literally works against women’s bodies.
But there is a more dangerous way that alcohol affects women.
3. The Danger Factor
How Alcohol Impedes Women’s Ability to See and Respond to Danger
The bar hums on a Friday night — warm lights, music pulsing low, the loose chatter of bodies shaking off the week. She walks in with her friends, coat still on, perfume still crisp, senses sharp from the cold night air. Everything feels vivid, alive. She scans the room without meaning to.
That’s when she sees him.
He’s leaning against the bar, smiling—wide, eager, almost too eager. Something in the way his eyes dart, how quickly he closes the distance with his body even before his feet move. On the surface, he’s charming. But her chest tightens, her belly clenches. His smile doesn’t match the energy. Her body knows this before her mind registers it.
Not this one.
Something’s off.
She turns to her friends, shakes it off, laughs. The first drink lands in her hand—cold glass, citrus, bubbles. She takes a sip. Warmth floods quickly, softening the edges. The noise feels friendlier, the crowd less sharp. She exhales for the first time all day.
He appears again—closer now, like he drifted toward her on instinct. This time she feels herself soften.
He’s not so bad, she thinks, though the thought feels like it came through a muffled hallway, not her center.
They talk. She responds with a guarded half-smile, shoulders slightly angled away even as her words move toward him. Her body sends another signal—a tightening in her throat, a subtle lean back, a flash of irritation she can’t quite place.
But the first drink has already begun its quiet work, smoothing tension, quieting sensation, blurring instinct into something negotiable.
He touches her arm—light, casual. Something in her recoils almost imperceptibly.
Don’t be dramatic, she tells herself, reaching for the second drink.
This one goes down easier. A slower warmth spreads through her limbs, loosening her posture, dropping her guard. The details of him—his pacing, his intensity, the slightly forced interest—fade into the background. What remains is the comfort of being seen, desired, wanted. The soft hum of alcohol fills the space where instinct once spoke.
Now she leans in. Laughs louder. Flirts fully. The instincts that whispered no dissolve into the syrupy glow of why not?
Later, his hand finds hers.
Later still, a cab door closes.
Later, her clothes are on the floor of his bedroom.
Morning comes dissonant and dry.
She wakes beside his unfamiliar breathing, warmth already replaced by a hollow ache.
Memory trickles back in fragments—the bar, the smile, the moment she ignored that sharp little signal in her chest. The version of her from last night feels distant, as though she borrowed someone else's desire.
And the truth lands heavy:
It wasn’t that she suddenly wanted him.
It was that she stopped feeling enough to notice that she didn't.
The thing is that alcohol disables the fire alarm on the fire we should be paying attention to. It relaxes us after a busy day at the same time as it relaxes our ability to judge the situation and protect ourselves.
Whether you’re like the single woman in the description or a married woman who engages in obligation sex, alcohol will make it easier to betray yourself. It literally supports it. Alcohol allows you to disregard the warning signs. It makes it easier to dismiss your own instinctive body movements that try to help you move away from the danger. It makes it easier to justify your alarms as “don’t be so difficult, you’re not fun at all” and go right in.
Alcohol allows you to disable the fire alarm to avoid having to confront the difficult situation — at a high cost.
The Intimacy Fallout: What’s Lost Beyond Physical Performance
Sex is not just about how you perform — it’s about the quality of connection.
By slowing down your brain activity and dulling the ability to ‘read the room’ so to speak, alcohol creates misattunement.
You know because you feel it.
It’s when connection falters in the subtle spaces between touch and intention. The hand lingers too long where it should move, or skims too quickly where your body is asking for presence. Fingers and lips perform the motions, but they don’t land—they pass through you without resonance.
It’s the sense that your partner is almost there, yet not fully meeting you. Your bodies move together, but not completely in sync. Like an instrument played slightly out of tune, the notes are recognizable, but they clash, leaving a faint dissonance that tugs at your nervous system.
Words, too, can be misattuned: phrases meant to connect skim the surface, failing to penetrate, failing to land in the parts of you that hunger to be seen. There’s effort, intention, even desire—but something vital is missing. Presence. Synchrony. The delicate resonance that transforms contact into intimacy. A deep sense that your partner sees you exactly as you area in this moment.
Misattunement is not complete absence; it’s an almost, but not quite. A friction that registers in every nerve ending, reminding you that the music is playing—but it’s playing offbeat.
The fallout comes in many forms:
Energetic Presence
When alcohol dulls sensation, you may be in physical proximity to each other, but emotionally detached. It might feel like you’re not there, but at a distance.Emotional Connection
Alcohol dulls the ability to accurately read emotions and respond to them. There can be a holding back of emotions or overwhelming a partner with unprocessed emotional wounds. The absence of vulnerability can also undermine real connection. Either case, the emotional connection feels under- or over-whelming to the situation and partner.Authentic Pleasure
Rather than being fully embodied, your experience may feel muted or robotic. You might be feeling pleasure on the surface but it’s not going deeply in.Mutual Trust
Certain behaviors under the influence of alcohol might seem appealing, but you realize when sober that they are eroding trust. to have sex can become a pattern. This dependency may hide deeper relational issues: fear of vulnerability, communication challenges, or unprocessed emotional wounds.
Alcohol-induced moments may feel fun or “looser,” but they don’t necessarily build the kinds of shared memories, trust, or emotional intimacy that bring long-term fulfillment.
Sober sex often becomes a sexless marriage
For many couples, when they stop drinking, sex doesn’t suddenly get better—it often becomes nearly impossible. They feel exposed, awkward, hesitant. The desire that felt so natural after “just one more drink” now feels distant, fragile, easily interrupted.
Without alcohol, they suddenly feel everything they’ve been drinking to avoid: anxiety, pressure, self-consciousness, numbness, resentment.
Instead of loosening up, they tighten. Instead of reaching for each other, they pull away. Or stay numbly frozen.
They don’t know what to do with the discomfort.
They don’t have the courage to ask for what they want.
They become hyper-aware of their words, their movements, their bodies—evaluating rather than experiencing.
And so desire falters. For both partners.
It is not uncommon for couples to stop drinking and suddenly find themselves in a sexless marriage—not because they don’t want each other, but because they don’t yet know how to want each other sober.
Because alcohol didn’t just “loosen them up.”
It stood in for skills they never learned:
Asking for touch instead of assuming it
Staying present in their bodies without numbing
Navigating desire with nuance instead of urgency
Feeling their emotions without buffering them
Opening up to be seen, rather than performing
Alcohol lubricated the moment, replacing vulnerability with buzz, presence with pleasure shortcuts.
When the alcohol leaves, the relationship suddenly requires something deeper: to see each other, to communicate, to ask, to attune, to soften without external help, to be fully in your body and with another.
Stopping drinking exposes the truth:
Alcohol wasn’t just a social lubricant—it was a bridge, a bandaid, a mask, a translator, masking deeper disconnection, resentment, or misalignment now made visible.
Alcohol allowed performance despite of the disconnect.
Sober sex requires raw presence.
Sober sex isn’t just sex without drinks—it’s sex without armor.
It’s sex that is rooted in connection.
And for many couples, that’s a new skill altogether.
Coming next week:
If you’re connecting to your desire to experience sex without the influence of alcohol and wonder what that looks like, imagine this for a moment …
You don’t have to swear off drinks forever or leap into perfectly sober sex overnight, but you slowly find new ways to connect that don’t depend on that warm buzz to get things going. Imagine easing into a moment with your partner—curious, present, a little nervous maybe—but able to feel them more clearly, hear them more deeply, and stay connected without needing alcohol to loosen the edges.
It’s not about perfection or forcing intimacy; it’s about discovering what connection feels like when more of you is in the room.
Next week, I’ll share gentle, practical ways to transition toward sex without alcohol—at your own pace, one step at a time.
