Cocaine
A powerful and addictive stimulant, with its use on the rise in the UK, cocaine raises your mood, your heartbeat, your body temperature and the speed at which you chat rubbish to strangers in bars. What it definitely won’t raise is your penis at the end of the night.
The science on cocaine and erections...
Be it in your brain, your heart or your penis, cocaine causes the narrowing of blood vessels in the body, known as vasoconstriction. This is not good news for erections.
For your penis to become firm, blood needs to flow freely into the spongy tissue inside it. Any restriction of this blood flow reduces the likelihood of a healthy erection.
Long-term use of cocaine has been linked with permanent vascular damage that means potentially chronic erectile issues. It also paves the way for a whole host of other problems such as intracerebral hemorrhages and other things you’d never want to Google Image search, let alone have.
MDMA
If we’re to believe the movies, MDMA is good for sex. And true, it’s known to lower inhibitions and increase feelings of intimacy, with users frequently reporting the desire to have sex. The bit Hollywood tends to leave out is that it also kicks into gear the part of the nervous system that causes your erection to fade away.
The science on MDMA and erections...
As covered in our Book of Erections, when activated, the sympathetic nervous system constricts blood flow to the penis, causing your erection to fade. This usually happens after ejaculation, can be triggered by stress, or in this case the trigger can be mimicked by a drug: MDMA.
Some male users mix MDMA with sildenafil (Viagra) or other ED medication to counteract these effects. This is, perhaps unsurprisingly, highly inadvisable.
It’s a cocktail that can result in dangerous adverse effects and more alarmingly, this kind of drug use is linked to high-risk sexual behaviours (such as unprotected sex and/or sex with multiple partners), and transmission of STIs including HIV and other blood-borne viruses.
