New Study Finds Link Between Booze, Risky Frisky Business

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​Gut Check nearly fell out of our chair when we came across the headline "Study of the Day: Drinking Alcohol Fuels the Desire for Unsafe Sex." Finally! An explanation why, whenever we mix ourselves up a pitcher of white Russians, we always end up strapped naked to a trapeze hung from an overpass above the River Des Peres.

Then we read the abstract of the study -- published in the journal Addiction with the sexy-time title "Alcohol consumption and the intention to engage in unprotected sex: systematic review and meta-analysis of experimental studies" --and realized these scientists were talking about actual science.

Yes, while it might seem like common sense that the more you drink, the more likely you are to engage in risky sexual activity -- unprotected intercourse, that is, trapeze or no -- the authors of this study politely clear their throats and mutters something about the scientific method, control groups and similar secular-socialist-liberal elite claptrap.

Translation: There's an obvious correlation between alcohol consumption and risky sexual activity, but the authors wanted to find out whether alcohol consumption actually causes an increase in a person's intention to have unsafe sex.

It does.

Of the 12 studies included in the quantitative synthesis, our pooled analysis indicated that an increase in [blood alcohol content] of 0.1 mg/ml resulted in an increase of 5.0% (95% CI: 2.8-7.1%) in the indicated likelihood (indicated by a Likert scale) of engaging in unprotected sex. After adjusting for potential publication bias, this estimate dropped to 2.9% (95% CI: 2.0-3.9%). Thus, the larger the alcohol intake and the subsequent level of BAC, the higher the intentions to engage in unsafe sex.

The authors are now preparing a corollary study to quantify the First Theory of Dirt Cheap Thermodyanmics: "The more she drinks, the better you look."