Health effects
Drugs and Libido: The Short- and Long-Term Effects
Some drugs seem to fuel sex; others quietly kill the drive for it. Here is what alcohol, opioids, cocaine, and marijuana actually do to your libido — and what recovery gets back.
About this guide
Drugs and libido
Some drugs increase sex drive in the moment, while others suppress it — harming relationships and health alike. In most cases a normal sex drive returns with sobriety, but not always quickly, and one drug in particular can affect your libido long after you quit.
Substance abuse is often associated with diminished libido, and prescription medications — antidepressants and hormone-related drugs among them — can affect sex drive too, which is why health professionals sometimes adjust the timing of doses to manage those side effects. This guide focuses on the substances people most often abuse, and what each one does to sexual health in the short and long term.
Ambrosia's addiction treatment programs in Florida address the whole picture — including the physical and relationship damage that substance use leaves behind.
Alcohol
Alcohol is marketed as romantic, but its relationship with your libido is dose dependent — the more you drink, the bigger the impact. Researchers once thought drinkers simply experienced whatever they expected to experience; newer studies suggest alcohol genuinely interferes with satisfying sex.
In the short term, alcohol lowers inhibitions — you might have sex with people, or take risks like going without protection, that your sober self would avoid. It also slows the nervous system, so your body may participate without release, and heavy drinking can cause impotence in men and vaginal dryness in women.
Stop drinking and some of these problems fade. But researchers report that some persist: in a study that followed more than 900 men, difficulties with impotence and performance continued weeks into sobriety.
Opioids
Drugs like Vicodin, OxyContin, and heroin slow the nervous system and boost pleasure chemicals in the brain — a combination you might expect to help. It often does the opposite. The research is complicated: many people take opioids for pain that makes intimacy unappealing, and others experience depression connected to the drug.
There is no definitive study on opioids and sex, but smaller studies link opioid use with low desire, erectile dysfunction, and reduced enjoyment of sex. The encouraging part: quitting opioids can, and often will, help the brain heal and the libido return. No studies suggest opioid damage is a permanent sex killer.
Cocaine
Cocaine has long been associated with sex — it lowers inhibitions, boosts confidence, heightens sensation, and raises pain thresholds. But of the drugs profiled here, it is the most dangerous to a healthy sex life. The same disinhibition leads to risky sex with strangers and sexually transmitted infections, including ones that never go away.
Heavy, long-term cocaine use is also linked to brain cell damage that blunts the ability to feel pleasure or joy while the tissue heals — and with it, the desire for or enjoyment of sex. That low mood takes time to lift, and counseling can help ease the distress while the brain recovers. This is the drug whose effects on libido can linger for months or longer after quitting.
Marijuana
Marijuana is one of the oldest drugs of abuse, yet studies on how it affects sex drive are few and contradictory — researchers have called it an unpredictable factor in sex. Some people experience a rush of blood flow and connectedness that makes the experience more pleasurable; others cannot achieve arousal at all.
If marijuana is hurting your sex life, things should improve when you quit — the body heals and responses return. But withdrawal can bring a period of low mood, so it may take time before intimacy appeals again.
How to get your sex drive back
When you are dealing with addiction, sex is usually the last thing on your mind. But if lost drive and performance are damaging your relationships, that can be exactly the prompt you need to enter treatment.
Treatment eases the transition from intoxication to sobriety, then gives you the counseling, group work, and skills to protect it. In time, your sex drive can return — and sober intimacy can reach a level you never experienced while intoxicated. It is worth fighting for.
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