Men who take erection pills recreationally feel down

Young men who take erectile dysfunction drugs for fun may damage their sex lives, a new study suggests.

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Nearly 6 percent of the sexually active college men involved in the study reported taking drugs for erectile dysfunction (ED) without a prescription. Yet an analysis of these students' sex lives unveiled a paradox: The more ED drugs men took, the worse they felt.

"Using ED drugs recreationally has the potential to negatively influence one's confidence," said Christopher Harte, lead author of the study published this month in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Men who abused ED drugs reported the same level of physical sexual functioning as non-users did, but Harte found that they were less confident about their abilities to get and maintain an erection. The recreational users also were less satisfied with their sex lives overall, even if they were satisfied during intercourse.

"One needs to be careful when they are frequently using these medications. It can set you up to have unreasonable expectations" about your sex life, said Harte, a research fellow at VA Boston Healthcare System.

Because the survey captured students' feelings at one moment in time, Harte said it isn't clear how the link worked: It could be that experimentation with ED drugs led to anxiety, or that it was underlying anxiety that had led the men to try ED drugs.

The erection-mind connection Harte's study involved 1,200 college-age men from across the U.S.

Cleveland Clinic urologist Dr. Drogo Montague said Harte's findings confirm what many sexual health experts suspect about misuse of ED drugs.

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Men who take erection pills recreationally feel down