There’s no ambiguity about who Vyleesi is for. The prescription drug, commonly referred to as female Viagra, boosts the libido of women experiencing hypoactive-sexual-desire disorder, a condition in which lack of interest in sex causes distress. When Vyleesi was approved in 2019, an FDA official announced that it was evidence of the agency’s “commitment to protect and advance the health of women.”
But since then, female Viagra seems to have found an unexpected market: men. On the Reddit forum SexOnDrugs—which chronicles, you guessed it, people’s sexual escapades while on various prescription and illicit drugs—guys talk about taking the drug even if they have no apparent issues with sexual drive or performance. “Everything feels richer,” noted one man, who compared taking the drug to adding butter to food. Another claimed that he’d had sex with his wife “about 30 times over 20 hours.” (The drug, however, does frequently make people queasy: “The nausea hit me so hard that sex wasn’t even a thought,” another man reported.)
Vyleesi has never been approved for men. Some clinics advertise that they’ll prescribe the drug to men off-label, but even that is often not necessary for men to get ahold of it. Vyleesi is now readily available without a prescription. Many online retailers sell vials of the drug under the guise that they are for “research use only” and not for human consumption—a disclaimer that technically makes the drugs legal.
