BY: SHAWNTAE HARRIS
Women – imagine taking one little pill and one hour later being blown off your feet. Imagine your sexual experiences being filled with “intensive” and “frequent” orgasms. Men have Viagra, but right now Canadian women with low sex drives do not have a solution to fill their sexual desires.
Canadian women are not satisfied with Addyi or “the pink Viagra”, as some are calling it, according to a study in The Journal of Sexual Medicine. This pill, which is the first ever FDA-approved drug to treat Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder, supposedly allows women to experience more “sexually satisfying” encounters every month. Women in the study said they want a more fulfilling sexual experience and they are willing to spend $13 dollars Canadian per pill.
“By taking such a drug, women hope to benefit in increased sexual satisfaction and fun with sex,” said the researcher in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Although often compared to Viagra, the two pills are very different. For one thing, Viagra is used to help men who want to have sex, but physically cannot, whereas Addyi changes the brain chemistry in women to make them want to have sex. While marketed to help women experience more sexually satisfying encounters, the drug doesn’t actually do anything to help women achieve orgasm easier.
There are also many risks and issues associated with Addyi, for example, those taking it should not drink alcohol, and it may interfere with other drugs including hormonal contraceptives.
Addyi needs to be taken once every day compared to Viagra that is taken right before sex. Women in a clinical study took Addyi and received only one extra sexual experience during the entire month. This study was performed on 159 Swiss women, where 61 per cent said they were willing to take a drug to enhance their sexual experience.
“Many scholars and sex scientists have argued that we are following the path of medicalization,” said the researcher of the study. “By placing unrealistic expectations on what ‘normal’ sexuality or ‘normal’ levels of desire are.” Almost half of the women in the study (48 per cent) said they want sex to last up to one hour. Meanwhile, 41 per cent said they want at least 15 minutes of intense sex.
Addyi began in 2016 and 1,500 prescriptions were written to date in the US. The sex boosting drug cost about one-thousand-dollars (a box) Canadian. Unfortunately, a massive sales drop caused the drug to be a flop. Some attribute the poor sales to weak marketing campaigns, while others argue that it simply doesn’t work for women.
But all of this aside, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International said it plans to relaunch Addyi in the U.S. There’s no telling how it will perform this second time around, but if history is any indicator, women will still be left waiting for a female equivalent to Viagra that actually works.
