No prescription
Men who take viagra or other erection pills to improve their erections could actually be making things worse for themselves, according to a recent US survey of 1207 university students.
Researchers asked the students if they ever used erectile dysfunction meds and for those that did whether they took them recreationally, without a doctor’s prescription. Seventy-two men said they popped pills they didn’t have a prescription for. The researchers then compared these men’s sex lives to those of men who didn’t take any meds at all, and also with those who took pills on prescription.
Low sexual satisfaction
Recreational Viagra users weren’t taking the pills because they had problems getting hard, the researchers discovered. Instead they were probably using them to get harder and longer-lasting erections and to improve sex.
But instead of better sex, men who used Viagra recreationally were the least happy with their sex lives. Even though physically they had no erection problems, these men were less satisfied in bed than both men who were prescribed meds by their doctor for diagnosed erectile dysfunction, and men who didn’t take any pills at all.
Less confidence
Not only did popping the pills not improve the sex lives of recreational users, it didn’t boost their erection confidence either. In fact, men who took the pills for fun were less confident in their ability to get hard than men who didn’t take any pills before having sex.
And the more often a recreational user took the pills, the less confidence he had in getting an erection without them, researchers found. That could be because erectile dysfunction meds can lead to unreasonable expectations when it comes to getting hard – a man might expect to have harder and longer erections and to get them faster and more often than he normally would.
If a man falls short of his erection expectations, his confidence could plummet. Lack of confidence can lead to worries about being able to have sex without the pills. And this could actually make it harder to get an erection – and lead to what researchers call psychogenic erectile dysfunction, or erection problems that are all in the mind.
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