Illustration: Matija Medved

Optimize Me

Can Male Performance-Enhancers Give You Mind-Blowing Sex?

Take this Tiger King and call me in the morning

Dana G Smith
Elemental
Published in
6 min readFeb 4, 2020

--

Optimize Me is an Elemental column exploring (and fact-checking) the weirdest self-improvement trends. It comes out every Tuesday.

IIt’s a fact of life: Everyone wants to be better in the sack. “Male performance-enhancing” supplements promising to boost your “strength, stamina, and endurance” have been around for almost as long as the gas stations they’re sold in (okay, maybe not quite), and there’s a reason Viagra and Cialis are both in the top 20 most prescribed drugs despite only being effective for half of the population. Even common psychiatric medications such as Adderall and antidepressants are being used off-label to try to improve men’s orgasms. Sure, part of it is ego, but many men also genuinely suffer from sexual dysfunction issues, which can seriously impact their quality of life. So if you find yourself drawn toward advertisements for Tiger King, Bull Blood, or Black Rhino pills, here’s what you need to know.

First, not all performance problems are the same, and it’s important to know what you’re dealing with before you go down an Amazon rabbit hole. “A lot of times, if people are not used to the lingo — the concept of libido, the concept of erections, the…

--

--

Dana G Smith
Elemental

Health and science writer • PhD in 🧠 • Words in Scientific American, STAT, The Atlantic, The Guardian • Award-winning Covid-19 coverage for Elemental