In her testimonial Célibatrip, Anne Berland, 30, recounts her long period of celibacy, to which she attributes the development of many risky behaviors. However, should we see in it the expression of a real societal trend? Investigation.
“It’s the infernal circle of alcohol and celibacy. You are alone, you drink to fuck, you fuck badly, you are alone. (…) The consumption of narcotics is also becoming a banal act. Not just the joints that you smoke before bed to relax. Hard drugs, coke, MDMA, heroes, speedball, poppers, ketamine, GHB “. When you read, in a hurry by all her thirty-something girlfriends, Anne Berland’s excellent testimonial book (Celibatrip, edition Michel Lafon), a question arises: have single people become a population more at risk than others?
“Become”, because in half a century, celibacy has gone from a marginal state to a true social category. Since the 1950s, the share of women married at 25 has increased from 78 to 10%. Ditto for men, where only 5% are employed at the same age, against 63% previously. Beyond marital status, only 1 in 5 French people under 24 are in a relationship, Paris even having 44% single. “Studies show that single people are in poorer health than people in a relationship, mainly because the break-up is a weakening factor in life, confirms Jean-Victor Blanc, psychiatrist specializing in the care given to generations Y and Z (Saint Antoine hospital , Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris). The rupture is a first destabilizing element, to which is added loneliness, if celibacy sets in over time. There are then less human protective factors, especially in adults who no longer live with their parents. “
“The majority of singles I see are heavy users of addictive substances”
Without boyfriend, no one to tell us that we smoke too much, that we drink too much or that we take drugs too much, especially since close social circles are often in the same dynamic. “Single friends, you frequent them in priority, because they are like you, in distress. (…) And then there is… Others, your friends as a couple, those who have gone to the other side and whose life is unbearable to you, ”describes Anne Berland. Patrick harris, seduction coach (www.coach-seduction.com), sends most of his clients to his hypno-therapist partner, specializing in addictions. He adds: “it often happens that singles that I see are heavy users of addictive substances, be it alcohol, tobacco or cannabis, sometimes all three at the same time.”
However, these are very dangerous products for health, in the long term as well as in the short term. In 2015, tobacco and alcohol consumption cost the world’s population the loss of more than 250 million years of life. One cigarette a day is enough to increase the risk of heart disease ; getting drunk, even once a week (“binge drinking”), weakens memory and disrupts sleep cycles. When to hard drugs, wrongly called “party drugs” by the media, you can die of it every time you take it.
“All that, we know it, but at the time, we don’t care”
“All that, we know it, but at the time, we do not care”, says Salie *, 31 years old, lawyer. “By dint of stringing together romantic failures, I no longer had any confidence in myself. It had become pathological. Alcohol uninhibits, but it makes you sick and it makes you sleep. Cocaine, you have it. feeling like Beyonce, without the effects of alcohol. Every time I took it, I got caught. I ended up taking it at all my big parties, so every Saturday night “. The young woman has more and more weekends without sleep. Her first trace consumed around 10 p.m., she stays awake until 10 a.m. the next day. At 28, her new sexual partner for a few months, met on the site Adopteunmec.com, tells him he’s not in love, like his five previous crushes. Two suicide attempts followed. Panicked, her mother signs, against Salie’s wishes, a psychiatric internment that will last several weeks. One year of severe depression will complete the episode.
Beyond addictive substances, it is often the breakdown of everyday life that leads to the most serious road trips. “It had been a while since I felt well at all, testifies Julia, 32, a French teacher. I kept crying, fainting and vomiting. I ended up going to my doctor. general practitioner, who automatically arrested me for one month. My medical examinations showed that I was suffering from severe anemia “. The young woman weighs 54 kilos for 1m72. Single for three years, she is too lazy to cook for herself. Vegetables and fruits are no longer part of her taste universe, and the only dishes she consumes are ready-made meals, bought in single portions at the supermarket. Obsessed by the desire to keep the figure to please, she feeds almost exclusively on sachets of quinoa warmed in the microwave and mozzarella.
Serious medical problems
Just like Salie, Julia knows thateven a slight imbalance in food can cause serious medical problems. She also read in the press that most ready-made meals are stuffed withtrans fatty acids, responsible for more than 500,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease each year worldwide, but the pursuit of love has pushed his health into the background.
Badly lived, celibacy can also develop pathological relationships with sex. “I crossed the bar of 200 sexual partners this year”, summarizes Hugo, 27, designer. Impossible to interview him without being interrupted by his phone, which he literally never takes his eyes off. Homosexual, he evolves on Grindr.com For years. Desperate not to succeed in settling into a lasting relationship, “I sleep because it is my only source of affection”, he sums up, fitting in full in the symptom of a sex addiction.
Is the painting too dark?
The world also recently reported on chemsex, a new trend among singles in the gay community, which consists of having sex under psychotropic drugs. The exercise can last for several hours or even several days. When consumed under such conditions, GHB, methamphetamine, cathinones and cocaine help maintain the dynamics of the HIV epidemic and increase infections by the hepatitis C virus (Source: Inserm).
Is the painting too dark? Without a doubt, because everyone goes through their celibacy differently. Where some sink, others flourish. We can also live it neither particularly well, nor particularly badly. “I often compare this state to a period of unemployment. People who go through the shock of being fired and looking for another job in quick succession at a time when they are psychologically strong will get away with no particular damage. who are confronted with it when they are more fragile may on the other hand leave a few feathers there “, concludes, very nicely, Doctor Jean-Victor Blanc. When it’s not the whole body.
* All names have been changed. On the other hand, the professions and the ages of each one are true.
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