An interesting new article in The Guardian examines the pros and cons of "the Viagra revolution," ten years after the little blue wonder pill's introduction to the world. On the one hand, sure, Viagra has helped people. On the other hand:
[I]t has also had - in many cases - a destructive impact. 'Now men have a drug to help them get it up and get going, they have also shown a worrying tendency to get up and leave - for younger women,' as one sex counsellor put it.... 'Older men are more able to perform again, so they're going elsewhere - to younger, greener pastures,' said New York divorce lawyer Raoul Felder, who recently acted for the wife of a 70-year-old man who began cheating on her days after taking Viagra. In Florida's retirement communities, rates of sexually transmitted diseases among elderly men - who have started visiting prostitutes after taking Viagra - are soaring, it emerged recently. Nor is this phenomenon restricted to the US. 'I have seen an exponential rise in divorce cases sparked by Viagra-fuelled adultery,' said James Stewart, of the London law firm Manches.
As if that weren't bad enough, another article in The Guardian points out that it might not be so good for your chances of conceiving:
Using Viagra may be damaging men's fertility, researchers have warned. Experiments suggest that the anti-impotence drug can harm sperm and may prevent some men from fathering families. In particular, young men who use the drug recreationally could impair their ability to have families. And fertility clinics that prescribe Viagra to help men produce sperm for IVF treatments could be preventing some couples from conceiving.
As if
that weren't bad enough, it turns out Cialis is emerging as the preferred choice anyway. It's been known for a while that men preferred it, but a recent study took the novel approach of - wait for it - checking to see which drug
women preferred, Viagra or Cialis, and the results were pretty clear:
New Zealand researchers road-tested two of the biggest-selling drugs on 100 couples affected by erectile dysfunction. They found women preferred Cialis, which can help men achieve erections during arousal for 36 hours, over Viagra, which works for about four hours. "The lack of time pressure with the longer-acting medication just seemed to make the women feel more relaxed and less stressed or pressured to get on with things in bed in an allotted time,'' said University of Waikato researcher Dr Helen Conaglen, who collaborated with her husband, Professor John Conaglen, of the University of Auckland. "As a result of the slower pace, there was more sexual satisfaction and more intimacy and romance.''
Of course, no one's out there studying whether Viagra or Cialis is preferred amongst those who are using these drugs purely recreationally, for instance as enhancements to long weekend binges on other drugs (which I have heard, you know, through channels, naturally, is entertaining in its debased fashion), so your mileage, obviously, may vary. But yeah, after seeing a rash of these Viagra articles go by, I did want to give you a "heads up."
HAR! Thank you, two shows nightly.
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