SEXUALITY OF HEROIN ADDICTS: APPLIED ASPECTS OF STUDIES

Fig.2. Decreasing rhythm of sexual activity is related to increasing intensity of heroin use. Patient A.V.P., aged 25. (Publication on patients consent. The patient used intranasal heroin from the age of 16 till 21; changed from nasal to intravenous administration from the age of 21.5 till 25).

We failed to reveal said dependence in women while comparing their sexual rhythms and intensity of heroin use. When women used heroin in small amounts, they had numerous casual sexual relations; nor did they change the rhythm of their sexual behavior when the dose increased, because the women exercised prostitution. Fourteen female patients (41%, 34 = 100%) confessed to prostitution. Disorders in the menstrual function (amenorrhea included) developed during the periods of the most intensive heroin use. On suspension of drug injections, normal menstrual function restored within two to four months.

Sexual experience of 17 male patients, i.e., 36% (47 = 100%), included a period of important (subjectively) relations before they started using heroin. As a rule, partnership formed during this period. Sometimes this partnership was a sort of ⌠test■ marriage, including cohabitation. Sexual life was regular and intensive (daily intercourse, excesses). Partnership normally broke with development of addiction to the drug. Sexual life of male patients became promiscuous; orgasm was mostly achieved through fellatio. Men had sexual intercourse after injecting drugs together with women. Orgasmic excitement weakened or became unattainable at all because coitus often ended in the absence of ejaculation. Sometimes the patients imitated orgasm. As the dose and frequency of drug injections increased (two and more times a day), ejaculation rhythm decreased, and sexual life discontinued.

Fourteen (30%) male patients had no pre-addiction experience of permanent sexual partnership. Their sexual life was within the ambit of promiscuity. It began during the period of marijuana smoking, which preceded heroin addiction. As physical dependence developed, sexuality reduced: libido decreased, platonic affection was absent. These patients demonstrated erotic behavior in the presence of other young people, their addict-mates. After drug injection, the patients usually had no sexual intercourse.

Nine (19%) male patients had minimal sexual experience √ virtually single sex intercourse with a casual female partner; 7 (15%) patients never experienced sexual intercourse. In the absence of drugs, they practiced self-abuse, 1 to 4 episodes a month; masturbation discontinued when the drug was available.

It is interesting to note markedly different subjective estimations given by heroin addicts to their feelings during sexual intercourse following drug injection, and to the negative sexual phenomena suggesting destruction of their sexuality, such as breakdown of partnership with a woman whom they cared much formerly, decreased rhythm of sexual activity and promiscuity, long periods of total abstinence, disordered menstrual cycle. Patients estimations of sexual relations in the state of heroin intoxication were exaggeratedly superb, while the attitude to the negative symptoms of their intimate life was indifferent.

In 25 unmarried couples, both men and women used heroin. Both wife and husband were drug addicts in only one of seven married couples. In three families, it was only wife who used the drug, and in the other three families it was the husband. Behavior of addicted men and women was characterized by the absence of emotional affection, which is otherwise characteristic of ⌠free love■ couples. Relations between addicted men and women cannot be described as love because of absence of erotic behavior, low rhythm of sexual intercourse, and absence of reproductive motives.