I just had to share excerpts from a Daily Mail article by one of our bloggers, author Tanith Carey.  The article, entitled “Addicted to Viagra: They should be at their most virile, but a growing number of young men can’t cope without those little blue pills”, echoes what I so often here from men who have had a steady diet of Internet pornography: they feel pressure to perform what they’ve seen displayed online, and they also struggle to connect to a real woman, without either using the pills of beckoning images from their mental catalogue of pornography. 

To the casual observer, bachelor Daniel Atkinson looks like any other healthy, athletic young man in the prime of his life.  Six foot tall with chiseled cheekbones and a trim physique, Daniel admits he never has any difficulty attracting the opposite sex.  But Daniel, 32, has a very intimate secret.  When he wants to have sex with a woman, he needs up to two Viagra pills to perform. 

Daniel is one of the growing number of young males turning to the drug due to performance anxiety, triggered by a host of psychological issues, from the proliferation of porn on the Internet making ‘normal’ sex seem boring, to financial pressure.  As Daniel explains, “I diet, I exercise at the gym… I love the company of women and always have, but now I’m in my 30s, and I have been exposed to so much sex, I sometimes find it hard to do without Viagra.”

So why is a drug, once linked to greying, paunchy men past their prime, now taking over the sex lives of the young and seemingly virile?  What’s more, what does it say about out sexualized society, where even the natural prowess of youth is not enough for the young men of today? 

Harley Street psychological counselor Raymond Francis explains that his male patients have been influenced by seeing pornography at a young age.  “Sometimes these men will have deeply embedded and unrealistic expectations of the women they want to have sex with—or what they should be able to do.”

One such patient is Sam, 31, who was dependent on the drug throughout much of his 20s, before he sought help two years ago.  Sam places the root of his problem on Internet porn, which he says he started viewing when he was 12—long before he lost his virginity.  “Seeing all of these studs going for hours on end seemed to underline what I couldn’t do.  I felt so ashamed.”

Men can also feel pressure to live up to what their wives and girlfriends have experienced in the past, as the article continues:

“Women our age do have more of a sexual past.  I’ve had 15 partners, while my partner’s only had five, so that’s another layer of pressure on him.  Because I’m quite skilled sexually, he probably wonders where I learned it from and how he compares.”

Janice Hiller, a clinical psychologist, also says she has seen an increase in the number of male patients dependent on Viagra.  Her youngest patient has been 22.  Janice blames the trend on an increasingly sexualized society and the unrealistic expectations raised by the Internet.  “After they have been exposed to a lot of Internet porn, the major stimulus for men can become pornographic images rather than the girl they are with.  These images go round in their heads and they then cannot become aroused with a real girl.”

Parents: As you talk with your sons about pornography, it’s important to emphasize that pornography does not “aid” sexual performance–instead, it often cripples men and women sexually.  As they condition themselves to become aroused to hardcore pornography, their sexual expecations and appetites become selectively keyed into a type of sexual performance and interaction that is unrealistic, dangerous and even degrading.  Don’t your kids eventually want to have a full-bodied, exciting sexual life with their life-partners?  Hopefully they do; if so, pornography will only stunt them sexually and set them up for unhealthy and addictive life patterns.