I've been ordering a lot of food from a food delivery app lately, and on two occasions I received drinks that were unsealed, meaning my delivery driver could literally open up the lid and spit in it if he wanted to. 

This has made me increasingly anxious over the potential risk of getting a disease. Could you please alleviate my concerns on the following questions? 

1) If my delivery driver decided to spit in my food or drink, am I at any risk for any diseases? 

2) Let's say he somehow contaminated my drink with a LOT of spit, blood, or even feces. Does this put me at any risk of infection?

I will likely never order food from delivery ever again because of these concerns. I greatly appreciate your service and I am looking forward to your response! Thank you!

STIs are not merely infections that predominantly affect the genital or anal area; the causative bacteria and viruses evolved to require sex itself (i.e. very intimate contact, like penis inside a partner's vagina, rectum or mouth) for transmission to occur. That's why they are not transmitted by handshake (even if genital fluids are on the hands), kissing, or other kinds of nonsexual contact. Further, they rarely are present in saliva -- in fact, saliva kills most of them, preventing transmission. As another example of the zero risk, household contacts of infected persons never are infected even after years of sharing kitchens, eating utensils, drinking glasses, toilets, towels, and clothing. They simply are not transmitted except by sex. And if STI germs reached your mouth anyway, infection would not take hold; there would be little or no risk.

Those comments should pretty well resolve your concerns. Exposure to drinks, cups or glasses that have been used by others, or even if someone had spit into them, carry absolutely no risk of any STI. I also have to comment on your basic thinking processes:  people do not behave in the manner your question implies. The possibility that anyone had spit, dripped blood, or contaminated your drink with feces or other body substances is ridiculous on the face of it. But even if those things happened, you would be at no risk for any STI -- only (maybe) for colds, influenza, or intestinal infections. 

It would be silly to avoid food delivery on account of such concerns. I wonder if you are germaphobic:  do you also find yourself worrying about environmental contamination, e.g. from public toilets, doorknobs, faucets, etc? Germophobia can be an early sign of very serious mental health disabilities -- if such thoughts are prominent in your life, please consider professional counseling. (For a good example of where germophobia can lead, watch The Aviator, the film biography of the industrialist Howard Hughes. It's a great movie, by the way -- with Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett.) Comments in your previous thread about your early life sexual traumas and later sexual lifestyle also suggest that professional counseling might be something to consider. 

I hope these comments are helpful. Let me know if anything isn't clear.

HHH, MD

I appreciate your quick response to my question. Your explanation has brought me immense relief and I am excited to continue living my life again without any worries. 

The thought of contamination crosses my mind quite frequently. I worry about catching diseases from nearly every shared physical object in public, from the trash, to door handles, public restrooms, restaurant dinnerware and silverware, and even chairs and tables. 

It doesn't bother me as much as it used to, but the thought of it always lingers in the back of my mind when I am in a public setting. I tend to get over it pretty quickly, fortunately, until I am met with what I perceive to be a high risk scenario, such as the possibility of encountering an unhinged, psychopathic delivery driver.

I am currently in therapy for these intrusive thoughts, but I am mostly met with what I perceive as thought replacement therapy, which replaces my irrational thoughts with rational thoughts. It helps in truly irrational cases like the ones I've listed above, but for more tricky situations, such as trying to decipher if the intentions of other people are harmful or pure, I'm usually sent into a spiral for long periods of time. My longest "irrational" thought has been going on for more than 3 years due to my current living situation (a new family member moved in that I don't trust) and relationship paranoia (being unable to trust a potential partner to be faithful). I don't know if I will ever be able to resolve my thinking patterns in these types of situations, to be completely honest. 

Thank you for the movie recommendation. Funnily enough, at the time of recommendation I was and am still currently watching Catch Me If You Can. I thought I was watching The Aviator, which would have been a funny coincidence. I will be sure to put The Aviator on my watch list.

Thank you again for your help. I will get over this and I hope I won't have to go through something like this again. But if I do, I am glad that you and Dr. Hook will be here to bring me back to Earth. All the best. 

I appreciate your reply and kind words. Since I have room to ask another question, I have a few concerns with moving forward in my sex life. 

My question regards the amount of sexual encounters that I had in the past. I had over 50 oral encounters, my latest encounter being around 8 months ago. My last encounter was receiving oral sex, whereas most of my encounters prior to this were giving oral sex (all these encounters were blowjobs).

I had around 3 penetrative anal sex encounters, me being the bottom 1 time and being the top 2 times. These penetrative encounters are well over 2 years ago. 

I was tested 5 months after all these encounters and my results were all negative, meaning I am STD free. However, I am inordinately concerned about HPV and it has been nagging me for a very long time. 

My questions are:

1) I do not have any symptoms of HPV. Does this mean I can safely resume sex without any concern of transmitting it?

2) It has been 8 months since my last encounter, which was receiving a blowjob. Would this be an adequate amount of time for the HPV virus to resolve itself if I were infected? 

3) If you were faced with this dilemma, would you feel comfortable with having unprotected sex with your wife?

Thank you so much for reading and I look forward to your response. I really want to have sex with partners of interest, but my fear of HPV prevents me from doing so. I feel like I am going to transmit the infection to them and ruin their lives as a result. Thanks again for reading!

1) Probably you have HPV, will get it again, and can infect your partners. Condoms aren't very protective. Everybody gets HPV; it's unavoidable and a natural, expected consequence of human sexuality. The most important thing is to be vaccinated if you have not done so, to protect you from the 9 HPV types most likely to cause warts or cancer. Otherwise ignore HPV unless you develop symptoms (i.e. warts).

2) Some HPV infections are cleared by the immune system within a few months, but some (most?) infections persist for years.

3) If I were in your situation, I would test for common STIs (HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia) once a year. I would ignore HPV and other STIs unless I had symptoms, and I would continue unprotected sex with my wife. She also has had her own HPV infections in the past and could still be carrying one or more of them. Her risk for a significant health outcome is perhaps a bit higher on account of your sexual lifestyle, but not by very much. The important prevention strategies for women are to follow Pap smear guidelines (regardless of presence or absence of STI risk) and, like you, to be immunized.

That concludes this thread. I hope the discussion has been helpful.