Having Sex and Being Drunk Are Officially the Two Most Fun Things

Let’s get wasted and have an orgy because science’s word is bond! Well, more like the word of a psych postgrad in sort-of kind-of bond-ish? Whatever, I’ll now break this study down so we can all get back to drinking and fucking.

So, University of Canterbury postgraduate psychology researcher Carsten Grimms texted (uhh?) with his test subjects to figure out what routine activities brought the most and least amounts of happiness into their daily lives. He found that sex ranked first in all three survey categories: Pleasure, meaning and engagement. Drinking alcohol or partying came second in terms of pleasure but only 10th in terms of meaning, which just goes to show that our pleasure priorities are wack.

“One of the areas I’m researching – orientations to happiness – looks at whether there are different ways of going about seeking happiness. Psychologists have proposed that individuals may seek to increase their well-being through three main behavioural orientations; via pleasure, via engagement, and via meaning.

“Endorsing pleasure as a way to happiness means you enjoy `eating dessert first’ or you focus on feeling good and enjoying sensory pleasures. Engagement is what you experience when you’re totally absorbed in what you’re doing; either skiing down a hill or being immersed in your work. People call this experience a state of `flow’ and this may be a dominant orientation to happiness for some people.”

Having meaning in a person’s life was a way to pursue happiness; being part of something bigger and contributing to the greater good.

While I think this study holds about as much water as a Taco Bell soft shell taco, I’ll also say that sex and drinking make me very happy and so, survey says, this is 100 percent right on the money! It’s interesting to note that sex and drinking make people happier than having babies, religion, and music. But then, we need to know more about the group studied to see age, gender, what other factors might inform these findings. If they’re all college students then yeah, sex and partying is gonna rank pretty damn high. Along with not going to class and being hella high always. Oh, look, “going to lectures, or studying, is low on pleasure and happiness, but ranks relatively high on meaning (7th out of 30 behaviour categories).”

So, yeah, there you have it. I guess. You get naked, I’ll go get the Zima. (Also, I apologize.)