Getting To Yes! Yes! Yes!

“Female Viagra” hasn’t provided ultimate satisfaction, but these alternative aphrodisiacs might help put you in the mood.

- Ginny Graves

WHEN ADDYI, a drug intended to recharge female libido, got a thumbs-up from the FDA in August 2015, its manufacturers hailed it as the biggest sexual health breakthrough since the pill. More than a third of adult women have low desire, according to a 2008 study from the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, and this is estimated to cause distress in 9.5 percent of them. Addyi was created to help those women who are bothered by a fizzling desire that can’t be attributed to any other cause (like a medical or psychiatric condition or relationship problems).

But after more than a year on the market, the drug doesn’t seem to be turning many women on. The number of prescriptions averaged 1,600 per month during the first half of 2016, a paltry figure compared with the million-plus issued for male erectile dysfunction drugs. One reason “female Viagra” has gotten a lukewarm reception: It’s not female Viagra. Erectile dysfunction drugs solve a physical problem; Addyi ventures into the subtler, thornier realm of desire. Lab studies suggest it works by increasing levels of dopamine and norepinephrine and dampening serotonin levels in certain areas of the brain—and that’s making women leery.

“I have a handful of patients on Addyi, but women with low desire— even those who are really distressed about it—may say, ‘I don’t want to take a pill to feel the urge to have sex,’” says Sharon Parish, MD, a sexual-medicine specialist and professor of medicine in clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine in White Plains, New York. “As a culture, we’re becoming warier of medical solutions for issues that don’t feel like medical problems.”