alcohol use

In gay/bi men living with HIV, very heavy drinking increases the risk for engaging in behavior that can transmit HIV

In gay/bi men living with HIV, very heavy drinking increases the risk for engaging in behavior that can transmit HIV

Some might say, "No, duh!" But, we conducted one of the first studies to explore whether specific levels of drinking on a given day increased the odds of engaging in behavior that can transmit HIV in gay/bi men who are living with HIV. In this paper, published in the journal AIDS & Behavior, we showed that drinking more than 5 drinks on a given day increased the odds of engaging in sex that could transmit HIV that same day more than two-fold, and having more than 12 drinks increased those odds over 6-fold. These findings are in stark contrast to similar studies of straight men and women, which don't show such pronounced increases. 

Drinking and sex may go together for straight men and women, but not necessarily sex that involves risk

Drinking and sex may go together for straight men and women, but not necessarily sex that involves risk

It's been widely accepted that drinking heavily increases the risk for sexually-transmitted infections, in part because it's assumed that intoxication leads to making riskier decisions about sex. But, in a paper we recently published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, we showed that there is little evidence that heavy drinking specifically increases risky decisions about sex, but this is specific to straight men and women who drink a lot.