WOULD YOU TAKE FEMALE VIAGRA?
We meet a woman who says it changed her life
Mother of four Amanda Parrish has a spring in her step these days, and it’s not because of a new diet or exercise routine.
the 52-year-old is one of the first women in the world to take Addyi, the pink pill designed to increase women’s sexual desire.
though many experts are sceptical about the effectiveness of the ‘female Viagra’, Amanda says her sex life with husband Ben has been reinvigorated. ‘And it’s had a much broader impact,’ she says. ‘It has made all areas of my life happier.’
Since Viagra first appeared in 1998, numerous drugs for male sexual dysfunction have come on the market — but, until now, nothing to help women have better sex lives.
Addyi (pronounced Add-ee) targets chemicals in the female brain and is aimed at women suffering from hypoactive sexual desire disorder ( hSDD), a permanently low desire to have sex.
research suggests that at least two women in ten are troubled by the complete loss of desire the disorder brings.
Unlike Viagra, Addyi is not meant to be taken just before a sexual encounter. the drug, which has been available on prescription to pre-menopausal women in the U.S. since october, must be taken each day.
Amanda, who was involved in initial clinical trials of the drug, claims it is a game- changer for women in loving relationships whose libido has vanished. ‘ I was still attracted to Ben, but my sex drive had fizzled out,’ she says.
A former marketing executive, Amanda met Ben, 59, a lawyer, ten years ago. they married seven years later and between them have six children, aged between 15 and 21, from their previous marriages.
When they met, Amanda was a 42-year-old divorcee and their relationship was initially passionate. But after three years, her desire was ebbing. ‘I would linger in front of the television when it was getting late, or pretend to be asleep before he came to bed,’ she says.
She
felt embarrassed and guilty, she recalls. ‘ how do you say to the man you love: “I don’t want to have sex with you?” I’d participate in obligatory sex because I wanted to fulfil Ben’s needs, but those golden moments had gone.’
her doctor said lack of libido was a normal part of ageing. ‘ But I was only 45,’ Amanda says incredulously. ‘It wasn’t that I was missing the frequency of sex — I missed the way it made us complete as a couple. I liked the intimacy of it.’
In 2009, she heard about a new drug for female arousal and, as she’d had hSDD diagnosed, became one of more than 11,000 women who took part in clinical trials for Addyi.
‘About two weeks after I started, it was like a light switch being turned back on,’ she recalls. ‘I became flirtatious again. I took the initiative.
‘I know a lot of people wonder if it makes you into some kind of sex kitten — absolutely not. It just took me back to where our normal was.’
Side- effects can include nausea and dizziness, but Amanda suffered no ill-effects. the couple went back to having sex two or three times a week, and Amanda’s self- esteem and confidence were boosted. Can a pill really achieve all this? Janice hiller, a clinical psychologist at London’s tavistock clinic, is one of those sceptical about Addyi.
‘there might well be a minority of women who have a chemical imbalance in the brain,’ she says.
‘Dopamine and norepinephrine (which we call noradrenaline in the UK) are responsible for excitement, anticipation and arousal, so any lack of them would affect the sex drive.
‘But for the vast majority of women, it’s their relationship that is at the centre of a low sex drive — factors like drudgery, familiarity or anger. Communication between couples is what matters most.’
researchers and experts disagree about how much of sexual desire in women is biological and how much psychological.
It is normal, for example, for women to lose interest in sex if they are tired, have job or money worries or relationship problems. Yet women with hSDD do not feel normal sexual desire, even if they are in loving relationships and have no other problems. they are deemed to have a biological condition, caused by an imbalance in the cocktail of neurotransmitters needed for a healthy female libido — which is where the controversial new drug comes in.
While Viagra targets the hydraulics of erectile dysfunction, Addyi works on women’s central nervous systems in much the same way as an antidepressant does (in fact, it was first tested as an antidepressant). ‘Addyi promotes dopamine and norepinephrine, which we know are important for desire, and damps down serotonin, which is a disruptor of desire,’ explains Sheryl Kingsberg, one of the doctors involved in the trial.
‘Not all women have this dysregulation of neurotransmitters, so it won’t work for everyone. It’s probably a 60- 40 success rate. You know within eight weeks if it’s working or not.’
Critics have pointed out that Addyi is minimally effective at ensuring ‘sexually satisfying events’ (any form of sexual activity producing pleasure). Women who took a placebo during the trials recorded 3.7 sexually satisfying events per month, while those who took Addyi recorded an average of 4.5 events. So is the drug really worth it? ‘It’s not this huge change where you want sex every day,’ says Kingsberg. ‘What women say is that taking the drug restores desire to “sometimes”. And that means a lot to them.’
If women drink alcohol with Addyi, they are at risk of low blood pressure and fainting. You are supposed to abstain when taking the drug, which some would see as a drawback.
But Amanda, who takes Addyi ‘just before I brush my teeth and go to bed’, firmly believes that it can save marriages.
‘I have a lot of friends who say they’d be happy never to have sex again,’ she says.
‘they’re busy with their kids and jobs and think it’s fine to let sex take a back seat.
‘But that’s what makes so many couples susceptible to infidelity. Men want to be desired, too, and I think they end up looking for attention outside the marriage.’
She also believes many women miss the physical tenderness they once had with their partners and don’t know how to regain it.
‘People told me it was all in my head, and to go and buy new lingerie or get my husband to take me on holiday, but this is a biological condition, so it’s not that simple,’ she insists.
In the U.S., uptake of Addyi has been modest. In the first month it was available, only 227 prescriptions were written, compared with 500,000 for Viagra in its first month. ‘Women are interested in trying Addyi, but they’re not storming the gates,’ says Kingsberg.
however, it has yet to be approved for use in the UK.
Meanwhile, Amanda reiterates that her marriage has certainly not become a Fifty Shades of Grey rompathon.
‘But when the conditions are right, the desire is back,’ she says. ‘ And that is wonderful for both of us.’