Some big news today for women who, in theory, want to be more horny: Flibanserin, often called “female Viagra” has been cleared by the FDA to go on the market. So, what is this stuff, and how does it work?
First of all, “female Viagra” is a pretty misleading name. Viagra works as a vasodilator; it opens up the pipes so you can get enough blood in your penis to get an erection. It doesn’t give you an erection, it just gives you the tools to get one.
Flibanserin is literally a drug built to make you horny. It’s designed to address an imbalance between dopamine and norepinephrine, the neurotransmitters that increase sexual desire, and serotonin, which makes you more interested in long walks on the beach. In theory, anyway: Part of the issue is this leads with the idea that there’s something wrong with women who aren’t attracted to their partners anymore.
To give you an idea of just how little we understand the psychology of desire and the anatomy of sex in women, it took a self-funded three-year study by two French doctors before we got a sense of just how extensive the clitoris is and how it works. When did this medical breakthrough happen, you might ask? 2009. Yes, we had Facebook and smartphones before we had even the dimmest understanding of how the genitals of half the human race function.
That’s illustrated by the fact that flibanserin just doesn’t work most of the time; between 8 percent and 13 percent of users saw improvement over placebo, and that’s a tiny number. This is why the FDA rejected it twice, and only approved it this time because its maker did a heavy marketing push and women’s groups petitioned the FDA to put it on the market, even though you can’t take it with hormonal birth control and the side effects are scary.
The numbers seem to imply that for most people, it’s not the neurotransmitters that’s the problem here. In fact, we know that’s an issue thanks to Viagra. One rarely discussed aspect of the blue pill is that it got a lot of men with erectile dysfunction out to the doctor, only to discover after taking it that their pencil still didn’t have any lead. There’s nothing quite like thinking a pill will solve all your problems, and then discovering your problems are deep-seated, emotional, and will require a lot of work to get through.
It’s not hard to see why most people would rather try a pill than unzipping what might be a big messy pile of emotional baggage, especially the kind of baggage that might trash your relationship. On the other hand, considering how often flibanserin actually works… that might be the only option.
(Via USA Today)