In Ethiopia, different alcoholic drinks are consumed, from the traditionally prepared beer and honey mead wine to industrially produced beer, wine, distilled spirits etc. Drinking alcohol is very much part of the Ethiopian culture. Apart from it being a way to unwind and socialize with friends, it is usually a big part of wedding celebrations, social gatherings, holidays and other festivities.
When alcoholic drinks are abused, apart from having both short and long term direct negative health effects, it can also affect behavior negatively and expose drinkers to unwanted sexual risk taking.
In the urban and metropolitan cities of Ethiopia, a wide range of both modern and traditional bars are available selling from low-priced drinks with unknown alcoholic content to high end wine and distilled alcoholic beverages. In the absence of effective implementation of alcohol prohibitory laws for minors in the country, both under age youths and adults can go into any bar of their choice and drink as much as they desire, as long as they can pay for it. This puts underage adolescents in a vulnerable position exposing them to risky sexual encounters and other undesirable consequences.
In Ethiopia, youths, after their 12th grade matriculation which is usually around the age of 18, join different universities and stay at campus dormitories or in nearby rented houses for the duration of their studies. During this time, because there is minimal or no parental oversight, there is a chance for them to be engaged in drinking bouts and binges from time to time.
Eskinder and Nahom, who are currently in their first year of postgraduate education, started to binge drink while they were in their sophomore year. Eskinder, a social studies postgraduate student who came from Awassa to join Addis Ababa University five years ago, recalls that when he first joined, he didn’t have friends and was new to many things. He was, thus, very much focused on his studies and spent much of his freshman year studying.
However, in sophomore year, everything changed, Eskinder said. “We started hanging out with senior students around the basketball court. And they would tell us about their nights, and how fun they were. They would then invite us to hang out with them in the evening. Although we did not like it the first time, we slowly got used to the lifestyle and got sucked in.”
College youths at this age are eager to experience all kinds of things with a great desire to belong and conform to popular campus culture. Unless strengthened to resist peer pressure, there is a real danger for them to be exposed to risky sexual behavior from alcohol intoxication. This, not only, can derail them from their goals, but it can also expose them to unwanted pregnancies, HIV infection and other STIs.
Eskinder said “sometimes I would be asleep in my dorm and would get a phone call from friends at around 10:00 pm, asking me to join them for drinks; I would get up from bed to join them.” They sometimes would be partying until over midnight, by which time campus gates would close, forcing them to jump in through the fence. Nahom said he once had an accident trying to jump in through the fence.
He said, as university students, they almost never drank moderately, they drank to get intoxicated. “Think about it, why would you drink something so bitter if you’re not going to get drunk” was what Nahom said.
When talking about how often they drank, Nahom said “it’s like a wave coming to take you away, a group of friends find you, may be walking on the road, and just take you to go out and have drinks with them, without any prior plans.”
They would go out for drinks whenever they had the money. Nahom said “we always went out with girls to drink”. One of the things they regret about drinking was that drinking caused them to lose their inhibitions when it comes to sexual encounters, sometimes making them lose control, even if it’s with their girlfriends. Nahom said although he always uses condoms, he has had sex without protection on few occasions, because his girl friend didn’t want to use condoms and because it was harder to negotiate for safer sex while intoxicated. “It’s difficult to negotiate for safer sex and use condoms in the heat of the moment while intoxicated” said Nahom.
Although there is evidence that alcohol has physiological suppressive effects on sexual arousal for both men and women, there is also co-occurring evidence that acute alcohol consumption depresses one’s ability to make quick and proper judgments and causes loss of inhibition. According to a study “when men consciously intend to suppress arousal in the face of erotic stimulation, alcohol reduces their effectiveness in doing so” (George W, 2000). Especially when faced with a counter prompt not to engage in risky sexual behavior or use condoms, persons under the influence find it difficult to inhibit risky sexual behavior and make proper judgments. This is because alcohol makes drinkers lose the proper sense of evaluating risk and negative consequences causing them to concentrate more on immediate events than distant ones. Such an effect is called alcohol myopia. This makes acute alcohol drinkers shortsighted during intoxication and likely to engage in unsafe or unwise sexual practices due to loss of ability to appraise distant effects.
Both, Eskinder and Nahom, regret having had to drink so much to the extent of losing their focus in their studies and being exposed to risky sexual encounters.
Since excessive drinking exposes the youth to serious health risks and undesired consequences, it’s crucial to increase youths’ self-efficacy to control their drinking from early on. Furthermore, it could be useful for responsible bodies to come up with effective ways of enforcing alcohol prohibiting laws for minors, while employing other means to curtail excessive drinking by the youth.
