Why can’t so many young, healthy men make love without a little blue pill?
Answer: The disturbing rise of porn culture is polluting modern relationships like Sebastien’s
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T FIRST glance, Sebastien Smith looks like a young man in the prime of life. The 29-year-old goes to the gym most days, has never had a health problem and — thanks to his athletic physique — is popular with female acquaintances.
he is a long way from the image of a typical Viagra user: greying older men rendered impotent by weight gain and heart problems.
Yet in fact, Sebastien is one of a growing number of healthy men in their teens and 20s using the drug recreationally, to meet their own high expectations — and those of the women they meet.
As this investigation uncovered, an unwholesome combination of a dating scene based on casual encounters, and expectations of impossible stamina got from pornography, have left these chaps convinced they need pharmaceutical help just to be ‘good enough’.
Sebastien, from Newcastle, says: ‘I always keep a Viagra tablet in my wallet just in case. I started taking it six years ago — all my friends do, too.
‘If I drink too much on an evening out, it means I can still perform, however much I’ve had. It gives me confidence.’
Sebastien admits he first viewed pornography at the age of 15, and it’s perhaps no surprise this has coloured his idea of what intimacy should be.
‘Sex is a performance,’ he says in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘You feel like you’re being reviewed by women. They expect a lot, and you don’t want them to talk about you negatively afterwards.
‘I’ll always take Viagra because I’d always rather have the security of knowing that the girl I am sleeping with was satisfied at the end of the night.’
You may well ask if popping a pill is really the best way to a woman’s heart — but there’s no doubt Viagra — active ingredient Sildenafil citrate — has had an enormous impact on sex lives since its creation 20 years ago.
It works by widening the blood vessels to improve blood flow on arousal, and is extremely effective in treating forms of erectile dysfunction, typically suffered by men aged 50 and over.
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recently, it was only given by doctors to men with a genuine medical erectile problem — so Sebastien used to buy his supply from online pharmacies, which have come under fire for failing to perform the necessary checks before dishing out prescriptions.
But this spring, Britain became the first country in the world to allow Viagra to be sold without a prescription, meaning he can buy it at Boots along with toothpaste and razors.
The decision was taken by the Government’s drugs watchdog, the Medicines & healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MhRA), partly to counteract the flood of potentially dangerous fake pills on the market. Sildenafil is now the most counterfeited drug in the world.
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society had no qualms about the decision, saying the drug has been proved safe. however it seems that its free availability means it’s also now being taken to improve stamina by men who don’t need it and to counteract the effects of binge drinking..
So, how have even healthy young men come to feel sexually inadequate in the first place? Invented by accident by scientists at drug company Pfizer trying to find a treatment for angina, Viagra’s release in 1998 coincided with the early days of the internet and the spread of online pornography.
In a toxic alignment of the stars, the little blue pills helped porn actors film ever longer, more unrealistic scenes, while faster internet speeds made pornography easier to watch. Later, smartphones allowed it to be easily viewed by young boys, shaping their impression of what making love should be like.
Sadly, the ‘ideal’ young men risk their health for may not match what women really want.
Psychosexual counsellor Murray Blacket, of the College of Sexual And Relationship Therapists, says: ‘I think the majority of women want connected, emotionally charged sex, not a constant diet of the athletic, superhero kind. Men need to ask women what they want, not assume they know. There will always be men and women with a high sex drive. But I think if porn Confidence boost: Sebastien Smith keeps pill in his wallet becomes the measure for how we should have sex, then we’re all in trouble.’
Another youngster who started looking at pornography at 15 is Vincent Turner from South London, now 25 and an office manager. For him, viewing those Viagra-fuelled clips has now come full circle. For the past two years, he has been taking the drug himself to impress women he meets through online dating sites.
‘ The pressure starts when women ask you to send a ‘private’ picture,’ he says. ‘It’s all about size — I feel reduced to a measurement. Then that expectation