YOUTH NOW
How Erectile Dysfunction Pills Hooked Younger Guys
The little blue pill isn’t a silver bullet for what ails young people’s sex lives
For over a decade, George, 33, has struggled on-and-off with erectile dysfunction (ED), a challenge that he says left him frustrated and embarrassed. “When I was nineteen, the girl I was seeing was polite about it, but it made me feel incredibly insecure and inadequate,” he says. He considered seeking out a prescription at the time, but a friend with medical expertise told him it was probably normal—that he just needed to get comfortable with the person.
Comfort alone, however, didn’t do it. Many years later, George, who spoke with Medium on the condition we not use his last name, finally mustered the courage to ask his doctor about sildenafil, which is better known as the little blue pill Viagra. “I went to the pharmacy to get it and the prescription my doctor wrote would have cost $150 to fill because it wasn’t covered by my insurance,” he says. Then, George read an article about the company Ro, a web-savvy startup selling affordable, generic forms of Viagra via an app, with a price tag closer to $6 per dose.
Erectile dysfunction, which is defined by the American Urological Society as “the inability to attain and/or maintain…
