Crack cocaine use and sexual behavior among psychiatric inpatients.

Rises in both crack cocaine use and incidence of sexually transmitted diseases have been recently reported. In this study, we investigated the relationship between crack cocaine abuse and sexual behavior in 50 psychiatric inpatients. The relationship between crack use and sexual behavior is a very complicated one, influenced by many variables such as the dose of crack used, the user's preexisting sexuality, gender, and psychiatric illness. Results indicated that while most of the subjects developed sexual disinterest and dysfunction with prolonged crack cocaine use, some of them became more sexually promiscuous and consequently contracted more sexually transmitted diseases. The implications of these findings regarding transmission of HIV among crack cocaine users are discussed.