Viagra's reign in Spain is manly on the gain

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http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/viagras-reign-in-spain-is-manly-on-the-gain/2007/02/11/1171128816688.html

Viagra's reign in Spain is manly on the gain

Dan Bilefsky in Madrid
February 12, 2007


A FEW months ago a man walked into a pharmacy in Madrid, pulled out two toy guns and told the attendants to hand over all the Viagra in stock.

Two hours later, in what was perhaps a show of gratitude, he returned with two bouquets of roses, before being arrested.

Such are the extremes to which men in this famously macho country will go to obtain the male impotency drug - nicknamed sexo azul, or blue sex, by Spaniards - which costs $US104 ($134) for a box of eight blue diamond-shaped tablets and has become as popular with teenage clubbers as it is with men in their 70s.

"There has been a Viagra explosion in Spain," said Dr Carlos San Martin, the country's leading sexologist, who counsels couples and has tried Viagra himself. "Some people are taking it for physiological reasons, but Viagra is also becoming a social phenomenon, a recreational drug that men of all ages are using because they want to be supermen."

Women are demanding their boyfriends get prescriptions. Young partygoers are buying tablets from dealers in discos for as much as $US80 a pill, cutting them into pieces, and distributing them among their friends, even though this diminishes the drug's effectiveness, specialists said.

Doctors here say that some men are even faking symptoms to try to get the tablets, whose main ingredient, sildenafil citrate, helps increase the blood flow to the penis and is effective for up to four hours.