There are some pretty wild rumors floating around about what counts as birth control. Below is a list of seven of them. Don’t feel badly if you’ve believed any of these…it can be hard to sort out fact from fiction when it comes to sex. Do, however, take the time to double check your knowledge, and if you hear your friends perpetuating any of these, set them straight:
- Douching with Coke will kill sperm. I mean, gargling with Coke will probably rot your teeth…but aside from your oral hygiene, Coke isn’t actually capable of killing anything else. (Neither is Mountain Dew or any other soft drink—there is nothing you can douche with after sex that will actually kill sperm.)
- Using plastic wrap or a baggie is just as good in a pinch. Yes, the term “wrap it up” can be used to describe using a condom—but that doesn’t actually mean you can wrap it up in just anything. It’s not like we’re talking about leftovers here (“Sure, throw it in some Tupperware, put some tin foil over the top, or dump it into a Ziplock…either way.”) A condom is the only thing that can be put on a penis to help protect you from an unplanned pregnancy or potential sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
- A guy can be TOO big to fit into a condom. I’ve seen a guy stretch a condom over his head. Aside from this act proving the guy was an idiot, it also proved that NO ONE is too big for a condom.
- Using two condoms is better than one. Double bagging works in the grocery store, not in the bedroom. Using two condoms at once actually makes them more likely to slip off or rip. The logic behind this makes sense (two is better than one right?), but when it comes to condoms, one is actually MUCH safer than two.
- A guy can run out of sperm (if he masturbates a bunch of times before sex). Bodily fluids are amazingly self-sustaining—so this is (unfortunately) completely false. Think of it this way, you could make yourself spit every five minutes all day long—and at the end of the day, there would still be plenty of saliva in your mouth.
- You can’t buy condoms if you’re under 18. Nope. You can buy condoms at any age.
- You can’t get pregnant your first time. Okay, this is like saying you can’t get hurt the first time you jump off a building. It’s just not true…you can get pregnant any time you have sex, particularly if you’re having unprotected sex. In fact, couples who regularly have unprotected sex have an 85% chance of getting pregnant within a year…those are not good odds.
If you are thinking about having sex (or any of your friends are for that matter) take the time to look into a reliable form of birth control. There are no short cuts here: if you hear about a birth control method that’s not condoms, the pill, the patch, the ring, the implant, the IUD, or anything else you could get at a doctors office…then it’s not birth control, it’s a birth control myth.
