Ask Beastly: Can I Still Enjoy Sex Without Getting High?

Yes—but it takes practice, patience, and the right playmates.

Beastly,

I like getting high and having sex. I know I like Coke, G, Ex, and Molly. I like how they all get me aroused. I like how when on these substances, I don’t cum nearly as quickly. Without these substances, I can’t control premature ejaculation. Could I enjoy sex without being high?

Hey,

Of course you can, but you won't learn how to do that without practice.

The brain and body can adjust to anything. People go through cancer, injuries, trauma—things that profoundly change their bodies, desires, and abilities—and they adjust, relearn, and keep on fucking. You can too.

People have great sex lives after life-altering experiences because humans are highly adaptable creatures, perhaps the most adaptable animals our planet has ever seen. We learn. We grow. We adjust to new environments and conditions. This is what we do.

If a guy with penile cancer can recover to become a total sex beast, you can go through a drug-free period in which you relearn sex—how to not cum too fast, how to feel pleasure and intensity—sober. The problem is, you're conditioned to sex as it is now—cumming too soon when sober, lasting longer when high—and your mind and body need reconditioning. That means a lot of practice. (And, probably, some therapy.)

To get that practice, you need to have sober sex over a long enough period that your body and brain can adapt to these new conditions. That's the hard part. You just have to stay sober long enough and try lots of sex while sober until you gradually get better at it. I fully acknowledge how hard that is and sounds, but I promise it’s possible, and if you seek out the sober and sober-adjacent MSM community, you will find many men who have done it. And you must: these guys are your future fuck buddies.

Drugs are a shortcut, and sober sex is often too easy to give up when drugs are so available. Drugs are a fast way to get into the headspace of sex, bypass feelings of fear and shame, and play wild. It’s no question: drugs make sex easier.

All too often, gay men learn how to have sex while on drugs—they learn sex high—so everything they know about their bodies and desires is murky and unreliable, because drugs change everything. They change how we experience sex, what we want in it, what we learn from it, and how we feel about it afterwards.

Drugs and sex often become so linked in the minds of MSM that many struggle to ever experience or even imagine one without the other. And far too few of us take the time to work on our relationship with drugs. But that relationship is something we all share: everyone has a relationship with drugs, one way or another. Your relationship with them is keeping you from enjoying sex sober, which means it's a relationship you need to work on. That doesn't mean you need to stop all drugs forever, but you might need a long enough break that your body learns how to fuck without them. How great would it be to at least have the option of good sober sex when you want it?

We have many relationships in life: with drugs, food, friends, the people we know, and, most importantly, with our bodies and selves. For gay and queer men, the self-relationship is often the least healthy and needs the most work. We can probably thank our hetero families and lifelong bullying and loneliness for that.

But here's the great thing: once that self-relationship is good, the rest is good. The rest gets easier. Everything starts with the self—everything starts with how you relate to you. It begins there and expands outward, like sunlight. Get good with you, and the drugs will get easier. Sex will get easier. Promise.

I needed many things to help me fix my relationship with drugs: good friends, good support, therapy, years of meditation, and several powerful psychedelic trips. Above all else, I needed practice having sober sex so I could learn how to do it again. My relationship with drugs is healthier now. I'm not sober, but I don't need drugs to have good sex. You don't either.

But until you get that practice, sex will stay tricky. You need to learn (or relearn) how to fuck sober, how to draw out your orgasms, and how to pace yourself so you don't cum too soon. You might need to talk to a doctor about "premature ejaculation," a very common problem, and how to work on it.

It seems to me that more and more men are finding a thriving, slutty scene on the sober and sober-adjacent side of life. I think this is because many of us are exhausted by a culture filled with overuse and abuse. We're tired of seeing our friends die or leave town to work on themselves. Many of us are seeking an alternative way to live, so we're creating it.

If you forego drugs long enough to relearn sex, you will find many playmates in soberland (and sober-adjacent land). They're out there waiting for you, because they need practice too.

Love, Beastly