Viagra: My Personal Moments

Editor's Note: This personal account of a first experience with Viagra was published on ThirdAge in three episodes.

Episode I

Helen saw it coming long before I did. When the first reports began to appear in the press of an easy-to-take drug that could effectively treat men who were unable to have erections--a good year before Viagra hit the drug stores--Helen said that this drug was going to change the sexual landscape in a radical way. She wanted to buy Pfizer stock.

I was more skeptical, and more naive. I thought of the drug as being for men who were unable to have intercourse, at all or very often. I was glad that there was going to be a drug that would help these guys have erections without having to go through relatively unpleasant procedures like penile implants or injections, but I didn't see that as changing the sexual face of the nation. I was equally skeptical about Pfizer as an investment opportunity. "No one drug makes or breaks a drug company," I intoned wisely.

Of course, I was wrong on both counts. In the year before Viagra came out, Pfizer stock more than doubled in price. And since then it has become clear that for every man who takes Viagra for erection problems severe enough to prevent pleasurable intercourse, there are a thousand or so taking the drug because they have been dissatisfied with their erections in far less dramatic ways.

Limitations

I'm a member of the latter group. At 54, my penis sometimes does not get hard as easily, as quickly, as reliably, or as completely as it once did, or as I would like. While this does not keep Helen and me from having what I would have to describe as consistently wonderful, passionate, often mind-altering sex--with and without intercourse--it does make certain ways of being sexual difficult or impossible.

As sexually enlightened and understanding as we really are, this can nevertheless be frustrating and limiting. Like when we've got fifteen minutes, max, in the morning before Helen has to get up and go to work. Or when we're both exhausted, but want to have an easy connection before dropping off to sleep. Or when we'd like to have intercourse in certain positions--ways that make maintaining full erections more difficult, at least for me.

Finding New Means for Sexual Creativity

Other Episodes

Read Episode II and Episode III of Viagra: My Personal Moments.

Copyright © 1998 David Steinberg

Photo credit: © copyright 1998 PhotoDisc, Inc.

back to ThirdAge Romance