‘I’ve been meaning to tell you, I’ve tested positive for chlamydia.’ Receiving that text was certainly one way to dampen the last day of my post-lockdown freedom holiday. As I sat in blissful peace, sipping cocktails with an ocean view, the conversation with my best friend – which involved reminiscing fondly over the week’s sexual antics – took a sour turn. (And let’s not even get into the ‘I’ve been meaning to’.)
I felt sick to my stomach. Tears prickled at the corners of my eyes and panic began to rise in my throat, but not so much from the actual contracting of it. The well of anxiety was stirred by the realisation that I was going to have to send a similar text of my own. The issuer of Whatsapp-based bad news was a brief dalliance from home and, since then, I’d had another condom-less sexual encounter with a man I’d met this week on holiday. A guy whose last message included asking me out for a drink when we get back to London. A guy I was sure would want nothing to do with me once I revealed that I had given him the clap. I felt dirty and foolish. At nearly 27-years-old you’d think I wouldn’t be so careless.
I’d been entirely inebriated on both occasions and if I’m completely honest, the thought of using a condom didn’t cross my mind once. We’ve all been there, right? In the heat of the moment, with pheromones mingling and hands wandering, there are so many more exciting things to focus on. And if you’re on other forms of contraception, it’s easy to forget that condoms are there to protect you from more than just unwanted pregnancies. I’d had a negative STI (sexually transmitted infection) test result the same week of the unfortunate encounter and he was a smart-looking 30-year-old with a fancy job. In my mind, there was nothing to worry about. It’s not like I’d met him at a full moon party in Thailand or booze cruise in Magaluf.
Clearly, the people I've been having sex with weren’t worried either. The only mention of contraception was pregnancy related, and took place the next day. A quick straw poll back home reveals that among all of my flatmates, we can count on one hand the number of boys we’ve slept with who have suggested using a condom. Among my social circle, unless you’ve been burned before, STIs don’t seem to register as a legitimate concern, they feel more like a scaremongering myth.
In 2020, 64% of men and 73% of women in the UK perceived themselves as not at all at risk of catching an STI. Yet over 70% of men and over 85% of women said they’d had unprotected sex in the past year. It seems like, in the UK, we're now all buying into the assumption that it will never happen to us.
Perhaps it’s because, for my generation, sex education can be a little lacklustre. Unlike for previous generations, during which some STIs reared their heads for the first time, and the threat of things like HIV or 'super-gonorrhea' were terribly frightening, for us, it's all old hat. Nothing we haven't heard before. Nothing that a quickie round of antibiotics can't fix. So where the generation above were double-bagging, douching and visiting clinics after every run-in with the opposite sex, now we're shelving condom warnings along with lectures about not taking drugs or drinking more than 14 units a week. Yeah yeah, sure, heard it all before, I'll have a double vodka and coke thanks.
We’re also the 'Instant Gratification Generation.' We know the consequences of smoking, yet we do it anyway. We know we should be saving money and opening ISAs with a view to one day getting on the property ladder, but we’d rather blow it on Instagram-worthy meals. When it comes to sex, our view is a ‘do now, think later’ process too. And this compulsion is more intense than ever, given that so many of us have had to delay so many forms of gratification, for over a year and half, because of lockdown.
This summer, the lifting of restrictions engendered something of a 'sexplosion.' A 1960s-eque period of extreme blow-out hedonism. For 20-something impulse-fuelled party people, eighteen months of thumb-twiddling was just about impossible; a pressure cooker for hormones and spontaneity. And as soon as the government proclaimed Freedom Day, we were out of the gates like a shot, bolting to get naked and eat cake. No wonder the headlines dubbed it the 'Summer of STIs' - with so much sexual activity and an evidentially widespread laissez-faire attitude towards protection, it was only a matter of time until rates of chlamydia and gonorrhoea soared.
So there I was, riddled with an STI I’d long forgot existed and cursing my apathy towards sexual self-care. Thankfully, my own awkward text ended up being received better than I expected, with him accepting his share of the condom responsibility. Next, I set about frantically Googling how to 'get clean.'
For anyone who needs a refresher: one call to your local clinic gets you an appointment for a full sexual health MOT, but I also discovered you can pay for even quicker testing and next day medication via online pharmacies like Superdrug and Lloyds. It's an incredibly simple process.
LloydsPharmacy Online Doctor reported that as we eased out of lockdown in April there was a 1000% increase in internet searches for ‘STI tests’. When restrictions eased further in May, they saw a 167% increase in male STI test kit sales, and a 42% increase in female STI kit sales from one week to the next.
Even the next date I went on revealed that four of his friends had chlamydia at that very moment and he was waiting for his own results after an ex-fling had contacted him. We were lucky we’d got the dreaded text at all. In the past year, experts say the number of people visiting sexual health clinics dropped by 85%, meaning a worrying number of STI cases could have gone undiagnosed. This has caused spreading to spiral, but if left untreated, some STIs can lead to serious health consequences, such as infertility in women.
In a twisted way, I’m glad I got chlamydia. I’m glad because it knocked me down a free-wheeling peg or two and reminded me that being so blasé with condoms – which are 98% effective at protecting you from most STIs – has big consequences. I'm fortunate that a seven-day course of antibiotics put paid to what I had contracted, but there are plenty of things I could have caught which wouldn't have been so easily treatable.
Though HIV/AIDS is certainly no longer a death sentence, there are lifelong repercussions, from daily medication to having to keep future partners safe. It’s estimated that there are currently 6,600 HIV positive people in the UK who are unaware they have it.
Experts have also been trying to warn us for years about the aforementioned 'super-gonorrhoea' - a strain that has become resistant to antibiotics. The more we contract and spread things like gonorrhoea, the more chance it has to build medication-resistance. Should you contract an untreatable strain, complications – predominantly affecting women, of course – include infertility, pelvic inflammatory disease, and ectopic pregnancy. Data from the State of the Nation report from the Terrence Higgins Trust and BASHH, revealed that in February last year, cases of gonorrhoea had risen by 249% in the last decade.
STIs happen to normal people. We shouldn’t be embarrassed to talk about them or get treated for them, especially not for any reasons of perceived sluttiness or dirtiness. But we need to be less carefree about condoms. Lamenting the momentary pause in antics isn't worth the fall out of catching something with serious consequences.
You might be hyper aware about catching Covid, but don’t let your double jab fool you into thinking you’re immune from everything out there. The fact is that any sexual contact – including oral – puts you at risk, that’s just science. We’re all used to regular lateral flow tests for Covid, so why not add the NHS’ free at-home STI test to your repertoire? If I've learned one thing from my own experience of the 'Summer of STIs' it's this: there’s nothing sexier than a negative test.
For information about sexual health week in the UK, click here.
For more information about STIs and their treatment, head to the NHS website.
