Drinking and Safe Sex

Drinking too much alcohol can lead to having sex with someone you hardly know and even if you do know that person you may have done more than you wanted to.

Research shows that one in five girls (and one in ten boys) aged 14 to 15 go further than they wanted to in a sexual experience after drinking alcohol.

In the most serious cases, alcohol could lead to somebody becoming the victim of a sexual assault. Almost one in ten boys and around one in eight girls aged 15 to 16 have unsafe sex after drinking alcohol. This puts them at risk of sexually transmitted infections, such as chlamydia, syphilis, HIV, hepatitis B and gonorrhoea, as well as unwanted pregnancies.

In fact, research shows that a girl who drinks alcohol is more than twice as likely to have an unwanted pregnancy as a girl who doesn’t drink. This is because you're more likely to take the risk of not using a condom, or forget to take your pill, when you're drunk.

It is always best not to drink if you think you might be at risk of engaging with somebody sexually, and in any case, it is illegal to have sex under the age of 16.