So Do Pills Work As A PE Treatment?

Drug therapy may, in the end, simply be about drug company profits.

SSRIs, the standard drugs doled out for PE, are fairly heavy-duty pharmaceuticals, and they have major side effects.

But the whole proposition that some kind of SSRI can promote long-lasting sex is an interesting one.

To start with, the average time for which intercourse lasts for the majority of men is unclear anyway.

One thing we can say with some degree of certainty is that the time between penetration and ejaculation is definitely around three minutes for the majority of men, and only a very few manage to achieve intercourse which lasts longer than five minutes.

Pornography on the internet has not served us well in this respect, because the majority of men who perform in sex films seem to be able to thrust for a long time before they ejaculate.

It’s not that they’ve found some mysterious premature ejaculation remedy which the rest of us don’t know about: in fact they have all got symptoms of delayed ejaculation, which effectively means that they can thrust for a very long time without ejaculating.

This, however, is a sexual dysfunction just as difficult and challenging as premature ejaculation, and it’s certainly not, if you read the accounts of the men who suffer from it, any advantage whatsoever in establishing a harmonious or successful sexual relationship.

And what of the methodology? Well, scientific research that depends on two lovers measuring the time between penetration and ejaculation during intercourse with a stopwatch is not actually very scientific.

Nonetheless that seems to be the basis on which the drug companies, or the scientists who work very closely with them, have based their conclusions that SSRIs can actually extend the duration of sexual intercourse by between 50% and 100%.

I’d like to leave aside the fact that it seems like a ludicrous proposition for a couple to measure the time of intercourse using a stopwatch. Instead, let’s focus on the claimed improvements.

(Although I do want to mention one compelling thought: if a woman is prepared to take a stopwatch and measure the length of time for which a man can thrust inside her vagina before he ejaculates, how involved in the sex act is she?

And if she is so detached from what her partner and she are doing, it suggests to me that they do not have a very good relationship, and in that case it would not surprise me that the man is indifferent to the length of time for which he can maintain intercourse before he ejaculates.)

One of the major researchers in the field is Dr. Waldinger.

He’s done a great deal of research (and has indeed made the observation that for as long as drug companies fund research and premature ejaculation cures, there’s not likely to be a huge amount of objective and realistic research, because of the subtle pressure that the commercialization/medicalization of premature ejaculation exerts on researchers. 

This undoubtedly influences the outcome of what they’re doing in the laboratory … or indeed in the bedroom).

Premature ejaculation is regarded as a problem that affects mostly teenagers or young men, but nothing could be further from the truth.

It affects all men, of all ages, of all social classes, and all psychological types.

It’s associated with relationships which are stable as well as relationships which are in difficulties; it’s associated with men who care about their partners as well as men who don’t, and there’s no obvious emotional profile that applies to the men who suffer from PE.

A Drug That Might Cure Sexual Dysfunction

But, and it’s a big but, the social pressure that seems to exist on men to take drugs to control their sexual performance (for the rest of their sexual lives, mark you) is a very questionable and bizarre thing indeed.

Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of the Citizen’s Health Research Group in Washington has made this point very clearly when he talks of the idea that prescribing Dapoxetine for men with premature ejaculation is a good idea.

He asks why men would wish to take a drug for the rest of their lives, commenting that this is a  “massive hype.” Johnson & Johnson have not yet received a license for Dapoxetine as a prescription cure for PE in the USA.

By the way, the study’s findings were that prescribing this SSRI extended intercourse from an average of one minute to just under three minutes. Those of us who believe that psychotherapy and behavioral training is actually a much better treatment for PE than taking a drug, may see this as good news. It’s an insignificant improvement…..

In the biggest research project as of April 2005 (unsurprisingly supported by Johnson & Johnson), 2,600 men tested the effect of Dapoxetine on the duration of intercourse. If I told you that it appeared to double or even triple the  length of intercourse, you’d probably regard this as a successful trial of a drug that has enormous potential.

What would you say if I now tell you that three minutes (yes, that was the extended length of intercourse after men started taking the drug) does not make for a successful session of intercourse for most women?

The study also revealed strong placebo effects, and very little increase in sexual satisfaction for the participants.

So are drugs a genuine treatment? While it might be a little harsh to describe the research as a complete waste of time, I think the majority of men would not wish to take drugs to treat rapid ejaculation when their side effects include anxiety, depression, nausea and sweating, amongst many others, and there is such a paltry increase in the duration of intercourse.

What remains true, as it always has, is that if you’re looking for information about treatment for premature ejaculation, you can find it easily.

There are many techniques which work are very effective if you’re prepared to put in a certain amount of effort while applying the relevant behavioral techniques to train your body to respond to sexual arousal in a more controlled way.