Effectiveness and Risks of using Birth Control with Alcohol

In the U.S, the rate of consuming alcohol by women is 86.3% in a year, wherein 55.3% of adults are reported of drinking alcohol in the past month. So for the women who are using birth control pills to prevent the pregnancy should know that the alcohol does not give a direct impact on birth control, but consuming the alcohol along or after using the birth control pill can increase the failure rate of birth control. As it is said that most of the women in the U.S. use the birth control at least once in their lifetime but there are different types of birth control methods which have a different way of giving the result in which of these some women experience effective results and some resulted in a failure of using birth controls, so for the women who are not getting the effective result for them the main reason is alcohol and also depends on the method they choose to avoid pregnancy, so here is the information for the types of birth control and their effective rates with alcohol.

Types of Birth Control:

There are five different types of birth control which give effective results when you use them as they are prescribed or directed by your experts.

· Hormonal: This method of birth control includes birth control pills, an injection, vaginal ring or the birth control patch.

o Women using birth control pills are resulted in giving 99% of an effective result.

o Using the Depo-Provera the injection to get birth control has resulted in 94% of an effective result after using it.

o Using the vaginal ring has grown as it holds a 91 % success rate.

o And a woman using the birth control patch has 91% of the effective rate.

· Barrier methods: Using the barrier method has included male condoms which are effective 82% of the time, Diaphragms used by women are 79% effective, the female condoms are 79% effective, spermicides gives 72% effective results after using it and sponges are 88% of the time after detecting the pregnancy and 72% if used before planning a child.

· Intrauterine devices (IUD’s): In this, there are two ways copper IUD and hormonal IUD where the copper IUD gives 99.2% effective result and hormonal IUD gives 99.8% of the effective result if it is used properly.

All these methods are effective if you utilise them properly, but still, some women might not get satisfied by the result after using it properly. Also, they might be habitual of drinking the alcohol as it said that it does not give a straight impact on the working of birth control but the alcohol can interfere with birth control in different ways. Women who are consuming the birth control pill, using a natural method or barrier method for them alcohol use can collision to give an effective result and there are more chances of occurring this if the women are taking the birth control pills. There are some other risks of drinking alcohol while using/ taking birth control and they are:

· Ineffective contraception: As it is explained above, the alcohol does not directly affect the birth control but there might be chances of getting ineffective contraception as it is reported that drinking can increase the chances of ineffective contraception up to 1.7 times which means that you have 1.7 times of chances to get pregnant when consuming alcohol on birth control.

· Alcohol tolerance: Drinking alcohol on birth control may involve alcohol tolerance. Usually, this occurs when the liver works to metabolize both the hormones at the same time, which will metabolize alcohol moderately and remains intoxicated for longer.

· Risky sexual behaviour: The risk of sexual behaviour may occur when you may not use condoms or other contraception to get protection against sexually transmitted infection (STI’s) or accidental contraception. Also, the study has resulted that sexual behaviour and alcohol occurs at the age of 26, 32 and 38 had a similar result.