Hooking Up Safely

How can you prepare for a hookup if you'll be partying with drugs & alcohol? What protection should you use for different types of sex? How do I talk to my teens about hookups? Jess discuss hookups -- in college and beyond. Check out our sponsor AdamAndEve.com and remember to use my code DRJESS to get 50% OFF almost any single item + FREE gifts and FREE shipping. If you have questions for the podcast, submit them here. And please be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode! You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music & Stitcher! Rough Transcript: This is a computer-generated rough transcript, so please excuse any typos. This podcast is an informational conversation and is not a substitute for medical, health, or other professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the services of an appropriate professional should you have individual questions or concerns. Hooking Up Safely Participant #1: You're listening to the Sex with Dr. Jess podcast sex and relationship advice you can use tonight. Hey, Jess here all on my lonesome to talk about hooking up safely, specifically in the context of college. But I think it applies across the board because I received a question, a lovely question from a lovely listener who I've heard from you before, actually, and she says, my twin daughters are going into senior year, so that's grade twelve for Canadians, so they're not far off from college. I've always talked to them about sex, everything and anything, but now I realize that I haven't talked to them about sex, culture and hooking up and what specifically they can do to be safe and make sure it feels good for them. Can you share some language to help me talk about drugs and drinking and what protection to use for different sex acts? I'm sharing some specific questions below if that helps you to understand what I'm looking for. All right. This is perfect because we were recently talking about the culture of sex on college campuses in the United States and across North America. And I think we need to talk about the specifics of like, how do we plan for this and make sex pleasurable and consensual and amazing and positive. We're just neutral because not every experience is going to be amazing. And I think that talking about drinking and doing drugs is a really important piece. And the first part of this person's question asks, if you're going to be drinking or doing drugs, how do you make sure hookups are safe? And of course, once we introduce substances that impair our judgment and affect our emotional functioning, our cognitive functioning or physical functioning, it can change sex. So I think one of the most important pieces and when I do work with young people, I ask them to consider what do you want to do before you start drinking or using drugs? Because if you plan on doing either or both of these things, of course you can always have the option to stay sober. But if you do plan to do these things, your desires can kind of change over the course of an evening. And you may find seems as though your boundary shift as you get to know a new partner. And so identifying your desires in advance while your mind is clear, while you're sober, can help you to make decisions that feel good in the heat of the moment, right, that you're going to feel good about the next day. So you might find that chatting with a friend helps you to kind of identify your desires and delineate your boundaries. And the conversation, it can be broad, it can be casual, it doesn't have to be explicit or intense. It can even just be about telling yourself, hey, I really want to hook up tonight, or I don't want to hook up tonight, or I want to do this thing but not the other thing. And if you can clearly identify your boundaries and desires, then you can, I think, clearly communicate more clearly communicate those boundaries and desires. So of course,