s it possible to take an over-the-counter drug to improve your sex drive, erections, or orgasms? Will $59.95 buy you a 1-month supply of awesome orgasms? How much would you pay to find out? Although we’ll discuss the use of aphrodisiacs in Chapter 14, here we will consider those advertisements that run in many men’s magazines about better sex.
Over the years I’ve had many male students ask me about a drug called Mioplex. This "male orgasm intensifier" has intrigued many college students, a group the company tends to target. Produced in Europe, Mioplex claims that it can increase a man’s "ropes," or number of physical ejaculatory contractions during orgasm. It also claims that in-
creasing a man’s ejaculatory contractions will help female partners to have better and longer orgasms. Mioplex is a flower seed extract, which has been unavailable in the United States but can be ordered online. It is similar to other drugs that men’s magazines promote to enhance sexual performance.
These vitamins or health food supplements are considered "food" items and not drugs—as such, they don’t have to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. There is no guarantee that they work, and they may have side effects. The bottom line on products like this is that many do not work. Go ahead and spend your money if you don’t believe me, but don’t say I didn’t tell you so.
the vas deferens, seminal vesicles, and prostate gland. These contractions lead to ejaculatory inevitability, whereby just prior to orgasm there is a feeling that ejaculation can no longer be controlled. Next, the semen is forced out of the urethra by muscle contractions (the same set of muscles that contract in female orgasm).
The first three or four contractions are the most pleasurable and tend to be the most forceful (various herbal and drug products have recently appeared on the market claiming to increase male orgasmic contractions; see Sex in Real Life, “Sexual Performance Scams”). The force of the ejaculation can propel semen up to 24 inches; this distance is generally longer in younger men (Welch, 1992). After these major contractions, minor ones usually follow, even if stimulation stops. As with women, the muscular contractions during orgasm occur about every 0.8 seconds.
Some men are able to experience multiple orgasms, whereby the orgasm phase leads directly into another orgasm without a refractory period. Research has found that some men are able to teach themselves how to have multiple orgasms (Chia & Abrams, 1997; J. Johnson, 2001). The Chinese were the first to learn how to achieve multiple orgasm by delaying and withholding ejaculation. Some men learn to separate orgasm and ejaculation, thereby allowing themselves to learn to become multiorgasmic. The average number of orgasms a multiorgasmic man can have varies between two and nine orgasms per sexual interaction (Chia & Abrams, 1997; Dunn & Trost, 1989).
Resolution Phase Directly following ejaculation, the glans of the penis decreases in size, even before general penile detumescence. During the resolution phase of sexual response, when the body is returning to its prearousal state, men go into a refractory stage, during which they cannot be restimulated to orgasm for a certain time period. The refractory period gets longer as men get older (we discuss this more later in this chapter). Younger men, on the other hand, may experience another erection soon after an ejaculation.
Masters and Johnson’s model of sexual response is the most comprehensive model sexologists use. It has not been without controversy, however. Many feminist therapists believe that Masters and Johnson’s sexual response cycle should not be used universally for classification and diagnosis of sexual dysfunctions (we will discuss this more in a moment). What has happened is that the definition of healthy sexuality has been focused on orgasm and has given less importance to emotions and relationships (Tiefer, 2001). Other researchers would say that the model of sexuality that values performance, pene-
tration, and orgasm is a male model of sexuality (Burch, 1998). Often this belief leads to a view of female sexuality that is passive and even nonexistent.