The Curse of The Blue Pill

A middle-aged man comes to the clinic with a terrible headache. The pain is excruciating and started in the later part of the night, waking him up from sleep. There is associated blurry vision and a feeling of nausea. His wife accompanies….

A middle-aged man comes to the clinic with a terrible headache. The pain is excruciating and started in the later part of the night, waking him up from sleep. There is associated blurry vision and a feeling of nausea. His wife accompanies him to the hospital and helps to hold his head which he laments is throbbing like a carpenter repeatedly hitting a nail. The patient who is not a known hypertensive, has an unusually high blood pressure. When he describes the headache as ‘the worst headache of his life’, alarm bells go off in the doctor’s head. The doctor orders for an immediate brain MRI, thinking it may be a subarachnoid haemorrhage, but the imaging test comes back clean. Nothing out of the ordinary. Zilch.

And yet, the patient is lying on the couch in obvious distress.

Suddenly, the man makes eye contact with the doctor and makes a very subtle nod of his head in the direction of his wife. The doctor takes the hint and asks the wife to go and settle some bills and paperwork. The doctor and patient are left alone.

The man reaches into his pocket and brings out a folded paper containing a few diamond- shaped, blue pills. The almighty Viagra.

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Suddenly, it all makes sense.

The headache started immediately after sexual activity, a few hours after taking the drugs.

How many did you take? The doctor asked.

Six tablets, he replied.

The doctor then asks a foolish question. Why?

The man confesses to using the drug to spice up his bedroom activities. According to the history, he did not particularly have Erectile Dysfunction (ED). The drug was just a way to affirm his authority as an ageing man in his fifties. He was even considering marrying a new wife to keep up with his newfound stamina. The drug was given to him at a local pharmacy. He did not want his wife to know the source of his headache and elevated blood pressure.

The man was admitted and discharged after twenty-four hours.

In 2006, when the marriage of Wendy and Johnny Kidd – parents of supermodel Jodie and make-up guru Jemma – came apart, the shock reverberated for days. To their friends, the news that Johnny had taken up with an art student half his age was saddening, yet the real surprise was the small, blue, diamond-shaped tablets that Wendy found in his wash bag.

Johnny had been taking Viagra, the wonder-pill that peps up a flagging libido. Its reviving effect had led Johnny to cast aside 33 years of marriage, and his devoted wife and family.

For a drug that’s meant to save marriages, it’s having a perversely opposite effect.

The heart surgeon Christiaan Barnard reportedly taunted his third wife Karin with his Viagra-induced sexual enthusiasm for other women, then left her for a 28-year-old Viennese medical student.

Then there was the journalist Rod Liddle, whose wife Rachel found Viagra in his pocket.

The list goes on and on.

In the US, where Viagra has been around longer, lawyers have dealt with hundreds of divorces where the drug has taken a starring role. ‘Older men are more able to perform again , so they’re going elsewhere—to younger greener pastures,’ said New York divorce lawyer Raoul Felder.

Viagra has become the third party in many marriage splits. It’s increasingly cited in divorce cases: one Lagos housewife recently claimed her husband’s irrepressible sexual appetite after taking Viagra make him ‘sexually aggressive’ and insatiable in the bedroom, changing his behaviour in a way she found offensive.

In Katsina, a 70-year-old man began cheating on his 61-year-old wife just days after taking the pills, with their house girl. When he was diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection (STI), his sons discovered he was visiting brothels.

And these are the ones we know. There are thousands of men out there who are taking the blue pill without even knowing it. In Nigeria, many traditional or ‘natural’ male enhancing drugs have Viagra as part of their components. The drug is crushed and mixed with some herbs that men are told to drink with tea, yoghurt or milk. Some Asian marketers change its shape and sell it under false names online. One can only imagine, the number of lives destroyed.

Viagra is the most famous brand-name medication in the world. The shape, the colour, and the effect are very exciting. It was launched in Britain in 1998 where it immediately caused a stampede. In 2003, Viagra was joined by two other ED drugs: Levitra and Cialis.

Typically, men in their 50s and upwards take it to restore lost erections or to add some spice as they get older. Most times, the men’s wives are delighted to get the problem fixed and the marriage is revitalised. However, in other cases, Viagra-takers find their wives’ enthusiasm for their rekindled sexual oomph more muted than their own and start looking for someone younger and friskier with whom to enjoy their renewed vigour. Or, like many a time, they may find that, once Viagra has fixed the sexual flaws in the marriage, the problems go deeper than just sex.

Whatever the outcome on a marriage, Viagra is the enabler: it gives men the sexual confidence of knowing they can perform in any circumstances.

The problem with these pills happens when they are not taken accordingly. When, these drugs which are supposed to be given under prescription are sold freely over the counter. When these drugs are crushed (at high doses?), mixed with God knows what and sold to unsuspecting men with undiagnosed, underlying heart conditions. The effects can range from a terrible headache to a stroke, to a man dying on top a woman. We have heard it all.

Yet, even with all the advocacy, health education and medical information out there, men still fall prey to the blue pill. Why??

Cliff Arnall, a psychotherapist who works with men suffering from midlife problems, says: ‘Women don’t understand how fully the male traits of competitiveness and performance are focused on the erect penis. If the penis starts to under-perform even slightly, it can precipitate men into a midlife crisis.’

Russians have a saying: ‘When a man reaches the age of forty, the grey hair arrives, and the demon starts to stir’.

So I guess we have our answer. While women tie their femineity to having babies, men tie theirs to their performance.

C’est la vie.

However, the drug doesn’t always work. Urologists say that about 80 per cent of men with erectile dysfunction are helped by these drugs: the rest have to move on to other options such as penile pumps or injection therapy. There are also side effects: Viagra can cause headaches, vision problems, blocked nose and rarely stroke. Cialis causes back pain severe enough to deter users. These unpleasant effects occur especially when these medicines are taking without discretion, usually at higher doses. Typically, the dose is much lower for elderly men or those with background medical conditions. Men also need a thorough cardiac risk assessment before taking these drugs. It is also important for the doctors to try to find out the cause of the ED first, before prescribing drugs as it may be a pointer to a more serious problem.

Calm down.

As Hausa people say: don’t lose your eye while looking for your eyebrow.