Women Are Experimenting With Viagra Now

“I have a large clitoris, so I’m not sure if that plays into the reaction I have to it,” says Nicole, whose name has been changed for privacy reasons. She’s talking about Viagra, a drug she’s been taking recreationally for about a year, along with Cialis – which contains the active ingredient tadalafil, as opposed to Viagra’s sildenafil. “I take it like a man would, before intercourse, and have great results.”

Nicole is 42, married, and has no particular sexual ‘disorder’ to speak of. For her, Viagra and equivalent drugs aren’t fixers, but enhancers. In other words, the little blue pills don’t help her have sex, they help her have great sex.

General wisdom rules that Viagra doesn’t help with women’s sexual arousal, only their blood flow. Nicole acknowledges this, but says in her personal experience, it couldn’t be further from the truth. “When you feel your clit getting hard and full with just the thought or anticipation of sex, I’d beg to differ,” she says. “I can feel it get engorged, and it also helps with lubrication.”

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Nicole says Viagra also allows her to enjoy foreplay more, and makes her “want to draw out the sex session to enjoy everything. It makes oral sex more pleasurable, and I can orgasm in almost any position”. All in all, she describes Viagra as “good shit”.

If the majority of women haven’t tried it, it’s likely because Viagra remains unlicensed for women in the UK. Indeed, the drug’s package leaflet declares plainly: “this medicine should not be used by women”. If a woman attempts to purchase it over the counter – or, more likely, over the internet – the order will be blocked (unless it’s put through a male account, and a box asking about erectile dysfunction is dutifully ticked). In the eyes of the medical establishment, Viagra has one job, and it’s the same one it’s had since its FDA approval in 1998: It’s a magic bullet for boners, end of story.

Yet, from the beginning, Viagra’s sexual revolution has been dogged by one question: What about lady boners? “Immediately after Viagra’s ‘blockbuster’ debut, many wondered if the little blue pill would work for women,” Meika Loe wrote in her 2000 book, The Rise of Viagra. But the quest for an officially licensed little pink pill has, so far, remained elusive. Instead, many women like Nicole have been conducting experiments of their own. “I know it’s not for every woman,” she says, “but I think more women should give it a try.”

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However, it’s not hard to find women who decide it’s not for them, after giving it a try. This was certainly the case for Vanessa, who is also using a fake name for privacy reasons. “My partner and I have been experimenting with aphrodisiacs for years,” she says. When he got a prescription for Viagra, Vanessa wanted to try it. “It gave me a mild increase in sensitivity, but did not seem to result in harder or more frequent orgasms,” she says.

She also experienced an annoying side effect: headaches. “I get headaches pretty easily, so the risk of getting a headache each time made Viagra seriously not worth it for me,” she says. Yet, Vanessa also thinks that her experience with other aphrodisiacs may have had something to do with her rejection of Viagra, despite being what drew her to it in the first place. “I’ve played with some really effective aphrodisiacs, so the mild benefit of Viagra was totally unremarkable,” she says.

It’s experimentation of this kind that medical experts are wary of. Dr Lawrence Cunningham, the medical and health contributing editor at UK Care Guide, certainly advises caution. “It’s important to remember that Viagra was initially developed to treat high blood pressure and angina,” he says. “It worked by relaxing blood vessels, allowing for increased blood flow. However, what was found was that, in men, it increased blood flow to the penis, which initially aided in the treatment of erectile dysfunction. Now, it is obviously used recreationally,” he admits, but stresses that its effects on women are less clear.

“In my experience, some women have reported increased blood flow to the genital area, potentially increasing arousal or sexual pleasure,” says Cunningham. “However, the evidence is less robust than in men. A number of clinical trials have demonstrated mixed results, with some women experiencing benefits and others reporting little to no change.” Others experience a range of side effects, from flushing, dizziness and headaches, to an upset stomach, blue-tinged vision, and – perhaps most worryingly – adverse reactions when combined with other medications.

“If a woman is looking at trying Viagra, I always recommend that they consult with their healthcare provider beforehand,” he says finally. “It’s crucial to discuss the potential benefits, risks, and alternatives.”

On this evidence, it would seem Viagra is a bit hit and miss for women – mind-blowing orgasms for some, mind-blowing migraines for others. Yet, there is one portion of the population who take Viagra regularly, but rarely get a look in on discussions about the drug, and its effectiveness. And that’s mainly for one deceptively simple reason: their use of the drug isn’t sexy at all.

Louise, whose name has also been changed for privacy reasons, is in her late twenties, and has been taking tadalafil – a Viagra equivalent – since she was 16. She was put on the drug by specialist doctors, after being diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH). “The simplified version is that my condition causes blood vessels in the lungs to be quite brittle,” she explains. “Tadalafil and other vasodilators widen those blood vessels, which reduces the high pressure in my lungs.”

At first Louise was put on a full dosage and immediately experienced side effects – “dizziness, nausea and uncontrollable hiccups” – but her dose was reduced and she eventually acclimatised. What she was yet to acclimatise to was people’s responses to her taking an erectile dysfunction drug. Although no one has ever assumed she takes the drug recreationally, she says people’s initial responses are still “almost universally funny”.

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Yet, while Louise now sees her condition as “one of those ‘if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry’ situations”, she is also clearly frustrated with the lack of public knowledge. While pervasive cultural narratives about Viagra are surely partly to blame, Louise thinks some culpability also lies with pharmaceutical companies, and the medical establishment more broadly, for not prioritising or even acknowledging that Viagra and equivalent drugs might be useful for more than male pleasure.

In 2013, a team of scientists in the US conducted a promising study into the effective treatment of menstrual pain with Viagra, but it failed to secure further funding and was twice rejected by the National Institutes of Health for additional grants. “I just feel they’re out of touch with women’s health,” Dr Richard Legro, Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Penn State University, told StatNews.

Louise says her tadalafil prescription leaflet doesn’t even allude to the drug’s alternative uses. This inevitably leads women – like those with conditions like Louise’s, as well as those experimenting with Viagra for sexual pleasure – to conduct their own unlicensed and private experiments. “I think it’s part of a wider conversation about how the life of a drug works,” she says. “Lots of things begin as one thing, then are found to be useful for another.”

In a nutshell, this has always been the story of Viagra: the heart medication that just happened to give guys boners. Perhaps now, it’s time to stop thinking of that as its sole purpose.