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There's nothing like a few beers to give you the courage to walk up to the beautiful blonde sitting at the bar and ask her to dance. If she says yes, a few more drinks for each of you could lead to a bit of a smooch and a fumble on the dance floor. A couple of tequilas later and you pluck up enough courage to invite her back to your place and low and behold she says yes, you're quids in for the best night of your life, or so you think. It's as you leave the club and the fresh air hits you that you realise how much you've actually drank and a sudden worry comes over you, and you stop and pray to the heavens that the dreaded brewers droop doesn't rear its ugly head, at least not tonight.

But are this, and other sexual problems that are supposedly caused by alcohol just myths, stories invented by health professionals to scare us and protect us from the other more obvious problems that drinking can cause.

There have been many medical studies on the effects of alcohol on sexual performance, but the idea that these effects are negative certainly isn't a new one. Shakespeare once famously said that heavy drinking "provokes the desire but takes away the performance" but why is this so?

There are thousands maybe even millions of people around the world who can't even think about having sex without first knocking back a few wines believing that it will improve their sensation or make them better lovers. It is the feeling that alcohol use lowers all tensions and gives us a more laid back attitude making us more talkative, less shy and more inclined to try things that we otherwise wouldn't even contemplate. In some it will even facilitate their sexual desires by expanding their social skills. But the problem is that these effects, which are seen as the positive side to drinking, will only occur in the early stages of intoxication and drinking more will not only make you a lot less charming but it may cause many other problems as well.

Both men and women over the years have reported that even a few drinks can cause difficulty in becoming aroused and in reaching orgasm. But it was the scientific research team of William Masters and Virginia E Johnson whose study in the mid 1950s that led to the first solid link between alcohol and sexual inadequacies. They found that in the short term alcohol dilates small blood vessels all over the body so that there is less engorgement of the sexual organs, meaning less of an erection making intercourse or reaching orgasm near impossible.

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