Impotence and Drugs / Alcohol

Alcohol induced impotence

If you have an unhealthy lifestyle it is likely to affect your ability to achieve an erection in response to sexual stimulation. It can also cause you to lose your erection before ejaculation to prevent you from completing satisfactory sexual intercourse. If you consume large amounts of alcohol you are more at risk of experiencing male impotence.

Most men will be familiar with the term ‘brewers droop’ after drinking a too much alcohol, but impotence only becomes a problem if you experience the inability to achieve an erection frequently.

How does alcohol cause impotence?

If you consume too much alcohol on a regular basis, it can lead to an eventual damaging of your nervous system. It does this by impairing the impulses between your brains pituitary gland and your penis.

Your nervous system is responsible for triggering the signals that dilate and relax the blood vessels in your penis which leads to an erection. This means that if you are a heavy drinker you will cause damage to your nervous system and could experience impotence even when you are sober.

If you continue to abuse your body with alcohol over a prolonged period, clinical studies have shown that this can cause irreversible damage to the nerves in your penis. This condition is called alcohol impotence.

Drug induced impotence

If you are taking prescription medication for a medical condition, it is possible that it may cause you to experience impotence as a side effect. It’s common to experience impotence if you are taking:

• Anti-depressants or other psychiatric medication
• Antihistamine medications
• High blood pressure medication
• Diuretics
• Medications to treat Parkinson’s disease
• Chemotherapy and hormonal medications
• Prescription pain killers

If you believe your medication is causing you to experience impotence, it is very important to seek professional medical advice from a doctor. You should not stop taking prescription medication without following your doctor’s advice as this may cause potentially very harmful side effects. For this reason, it is very important to stop taking your prescription medication the way your doctor instructs you to. Alternatively, your doctor may be able prescribe an alternative medication, or lower the dosage of your current medication to treat your condition, instead of alleviating your impotence problem.

Recreational drugs

Over a prolonged time, recreational drugs can increase your chance of experiencing the problem of impotence. Recreational drugs such as:

• Amphetamines
• Barbiturates
• Cocaine
• Cannabis
• Methadone
• Nicotine
• Heroin and oxcontin

These all cause a substantial amount of damage to your blood vessels and inhibit your nervous system, which can cause you to become impotent. Once you have damaged your nervous system, your brain is unable to send signals to your penis to allow an erection to occur.

Smoking and impotence

A recent study has concluded that men who smoke or regularly smoke 20 cigarettes per day were 15% more likely to become impotent compared to non-smokers. This is because smoking can restrict blood flow to your penis by blocking the penile arteries which prevents you from achieving an erection. The study also revealed that men who smoke or smoked 20 cigarettes a day for 20 years have a 72% increased risk of becoming impotent when compared to non-smokers.