Tl;Dr: stimulants cause ED by constricting your blood vessels. Viagra and cialis counter this by dilating your blood vessels.
I’ve been on and off mental health meds for nearly 30 years now, and I’ve had intermittent ED during that time too.
Until very recently I had just assumed it was the SSRI I was taking, because any time I’d go back on the stimulants I would to back on the antidepressants too. I was also on a fairly low dose of stimulants because my heart rate would get too high, but the dose was too low to really be effective.
Back then, the ED wasn’t a constant issue. I even got on Testosterone because my levels were 103 (normal is 700-1100) because the antidepressants weren’t helping my general fatigue, but it did nothing for the ED
Eventually I got my heart into good enough shape that I could go up on my stimulant. Then the issue became more frequent. Around that time I had been laid off (my first time not voluntarily leaving a job) and had no success finding a new one, so I attributed that to the increased frequency.
That is, until I forgot to pick up my refill from the doctors on a Friday before a holiday weekend. Two days into withdrawals, my penis finally started working again.
But still, I thought “gotta have 3 occurrences to establish a pattern.” Which I easily got due to my ADHD and my refills frequently falling on Fridays.
One Google search later, and I find that stimulants cause ED due to vasoconstriction. So I thought, there must be some medication that could counteract that side effect.
And there is! Viagra and Cialis. They both work as vasodilators which directly address the reason the stimulants cause the issue.
My wife and I had decided years ago not to try the meds because we didn’t want it to be a crutch. At the time we didn’t know if the cause was physiological, medication related, or psychological. Now, with this medical reasoning, we agreed that since we knew what the direct cause was, treating it wasn’t problematic.
Luckily my doc agreed and put me on a daily dose of 5mg cialis, which is the dose used for an enlarged prostate, not ED. Suddenly, my body was responding my arousal. Insurance didn’t pay, but it was $24 with a coupon at the pharmacy.
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My wife and I had decided years ago not to try the meds because we didn’t want it to be a crutch.
I’ll die on the hill that the most blatantly-false lie the mainstream medical establishment actively spreads is PDE5 inhibitors not being fun (or functional) in healthy male populations. It was a transparent lie Pfizer told to downplay abuse-related concerns when they were applying for Viagra’s approval, but caught on and went mainstream because there’s an obvious social bias against admitting such use among medical professionals.
This idea of it being a crutch is exactly the sort of manifest harm that happens when clinicians peddle in misinformation.
Anyway, glad you discovered stimdick, and don’t feel bad if you need some help doing your thing.
Hell, a recent meta analysis showed a connection between low-dose PD5 use and mortality reduction.
No causal work done yet, but the data is so strong that researchers are actually doing more work to verify it and see if it would have the same mortality impact for women.
They were developed as a BP med for very specific cases, because of the vasodilation effect.
That definitely makes sense. I would imagine that vasodilators help prevent things like strokes. It’s actually part of the logic that led me to ask, since I have too much blood thanks to the testosterone.
Can you expand on that? Like how fun is it for healthy males? I’ve never thought about it, but my first thought is that my boyfriend would be super offended if I brought it up. Like is it actually noticeable as like a “party drug”?
Me and a buddy each took one from our other buddy’s meds at his hest, as a joke, thinking it’d be funny to walk around the bar with hard-ons. It wasn’t, and it didn’t happen. In fact I completely forgot about taking it til the next morning when my gf complained about being sore the next day. We fucked 3 times that night and she said I was hitting her cervix, when I usually only grazed it. I told her what happened, she gave me a look and told me it was fun but not to do that again. She initially thought I met a girl that night.
Yeah, a lot of people don’t realize that the meds will only give you an erection if you’re turned on enough that you would get one if whatever issue causing ED wasn’t present.
Well, outside of the rare case of priapism.
But it definitely can increase your size. I thought I had just shrunk half an inch, but it turns out it’s just been years since I’ve been hard as a rock.
Depends on your definition of party drug lol. It’s not psychotropic at all, so the fun is on the sensual side of the house.
Biggest perks in my book are lower refractory period + hassle-free “reboots” when tangents happen (unwrapping a condom, taking turns on oral, etc.).
This is just one experience so take it with a grain of salt. My significant other went to what I like to refer to as “nerd college” not a big name but similar structure. He said there was a fair amount of his frat brothers that used it when drinking so they were “always ready to go” and “not suffering from whiskey dick.” Thankfully he wasn’t that guy.
I’m sure there’s other reasons but, that’s one.
That wasn’t really our reasoning, though.
It was more that using the pills wouldn’t be treating the underlying cause, and if that cause was psychological it might make me mentally dependent. Kinda like sleeping meds.
Poor phrasing on my part, but that’s actually what I was getting at!
You can certainly develop tolerance with high doses, but sildenafil/tadalafil don’t have anywhere near the level of rebound effect or physiological dependency issues you’d get with (e.g.) exogenous test, or z-drugs.
It’s a big part of why they’re so popular in advertising and so widely prescribed: they’re pretty low-risk and the overwhelming majority of doctors are happy to hand them out after cursory due diligence. Boner pills are the closest thing in modern medicine to a free lunch.
It’s a shame there’s such a stigma attached to it. It’s wild how many biological processes have to work just right for an erection to happen, and there are so many things can impact it.
And for those of us with vulvas, I’ve had a little bit of luck with some creams that include the active ingredient in Viagra to act as a local vasodilator. They aren’t available for us normally, but some places online have compounding pharmacies that make them. Not quite as effective, much more expensive, and don’t last long, but also not as many potential side effects as from oral vasodilators.
I talked to my ADHD doc about this a while ago and she also put me on the 5mg daily dose of tadalafil and it has made a big improvement with ED for me. My wife and I are both very happy with the results. I was already exercising and eating well so it was definitely the stimulants that were causing me an issue. Adderall seems to affect me a bit more than Vyvanse and methylphenidate was the worst one for me in terms of the sexual side effects.
Yeah, I was in the same boat. I ticked off the lifestyle changes before looking into other solutions.
It’s not a stimulant, but Stratera cause, by far, the worst ED I’ve experienced.
Huh. I have never had that experience. Interesting to know.
