The Times Magazine 33Since a nasty dose of Covid knocked me
sideways this spring, I’ve seriously upped my
supplement game with daily doses of vitamin C
and D (for immunity), spirulina (for antioxidant
stuff), zinc (immunity again), magnesium
(for muscles/nerves/energy), something
called quercitin – which I can barely spell or
pronounce, and have no clue what it does,
but comes highly recommended by my most
healthy friend’s “herbalist” – and, now, for the
past couple of weeks, Libido.
Do I feel more horny as a result? Hmmm.
I’ve been maybe slightly more in the mood
erm, you know, with myself, in the mornings,
but that’s also possibly because I was on
holiday last week – what Simonds would
probably call “nature’s natural stress reliever”- and wasn’t dragging myself out of bed at
5.45am to cycle to the lido. Unfortunately,
since I’m single and that holiday was in rural
Connemara, where my only proposition came
from a leathery, half-cut, 70-year-old farmer
propping up the local bar, it was hard to tell
whether Libido was sending firecrackers to my
nethers or not. But I’m now back in London,
and as yet nobody need lock up their sons.
At least, no more so than usual. Which might
be part of the problem; I’m not sure I’m a
good test case since, at 44, my libido has never
been particularly subdued.
For balance, I foist a packet of the male
formulation on a 58-year-old male friend.
He claims to have taken them completely
assiduously, but reports that he “can’t say they
did anything for me. Once the bird has largely
flown the nest, it will take more than a passion
fruit-flavoured pastille to tempt it back,” he
says. “I even tried trebling up, on the basis
that if one will put you in the mood, three will
set you on fire, but all I got was a sickly sour
taste in my mouth.”
“It’s a daily ritual, which in itself is kind of
a boundary-breaker,” insists Simonds, who has
been based in America for seven years, the last
four in California. “The act of just taking it in
the morning or the evening starts momentum.”
The act of taking it every morning has,
I’ll concede, made me think about sex a lot
more, albeit about all the sex I am not having.
I might though, perhaps, call that a placebo.
But Simonds and fellow Brit and co-founder
of Asystem, Oli Walsh, both in their mid-
thirties, have valiantly been trialling their own
formulation, with their wives, for a few weeks
longer than I have. “There’s a definite, noticeable
increase in sexual arousal,” nods Simonds.
“Libido is one of those where, if you’d asked
me beforehand if I needed it, I would have
said, ‘No,’ ” chimes in Walsh. “And then, when
you start taking it, you suddenly go, ‘Oh, OK,
my arousal has increased.’ It feels maybe more
like it did when I was in my twenties.”
When I ask how their wives are finding the
trial – both taking their own Libido and their
husbands’ responses to theirs – there’s a lot
of vague, slightly flustered flimflam about
“destigmatising topics”, “helping to further that
cause” and “we’ve got three kids”.
Simonds, Walsh and their wives have
submitted blood and saliva samples to test for
hormonal or other changes. As yet, they tell
me, they’re still awaiting results.
Simonds, whose background is in
sustainability, and Walsh, who ran a digital
marketing agency before they founded
Asystem in 2019, had hitherto focused on
supplements for stress and sleep. With Maude,
they collaborated on a survey of more than
3,000 customers that revealed that 24 per
cent of women and 55 per cent of men were
interested in using libido supplements, but
only 7 per cent of women and 26 per cent of
men had ever done so. More dramatically, the
survey also found that 93 per cent of men and
84 per cent of women wanted to have sex with
their partner every day, while in reality, only
6 per cent of men and 16 per cent of women
reported doing so.
“That’s a huge disparity between the
desires of people, the amount that people were
wanting to have sex – with themselves or with
a partner – and the reality,” says Simonds.
“The other thing that was illuminating was,
OK, what were people doing about it? Are
they doing anything? Only 7 per cent of
women had tried a supplement, so people
haven’t turned to a solution yet.”
Unsurprisingly, Maude and Asystem
are far from the only companies capitalising
on the much publicised sex drought with
supplements. At Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow
(who else?) last year launched a range of
libido-enhancing pills for women called
DTF (“down to f***”) containing fenugreek,
shatavari (a member of the asparagus family,
apparently) and saffron extract.
JS Health sells a Hair + Libido formula
containing Tribulus, ginkgo and two kinds of
kelp, while rapper Cam’ron, who has a sideline
in sexual wellness supplements, plugs his Pink
Horse Power pills, which claim to boost men’s
stamina and libido, and whose ingredients are,
descriptively, “organic”.
Waiting 30 days for your supplements to
kick in too slow for you? Harrods can bang
help straight into your bloodstream with
a “libido enhancer” IV drip at its in-store
Elixir Clinic.
While an IV drip seems a wee bit de trop,
I’m persisting with my Libido gummies for
a while longer, because, well, why not? Who
wouldn’t want to “increase blood flow to
the vaginal area”, just in time for summer?
But then again, as my friend observes,
“I reckon Barry White on the stereo, a
dirty martini and the children sleeping over
with their grandparents might be a more
successful formula.” nSo this is, as it were, a hard one. A bit
close to the bone, if you will. Either these
Libido gummies work or they don’t. Either
way, I’ve got to be careful not to trap
myself into implying there is a problem
that needs addressing, when there isn’t.
Goodness me, no. Not yet anyway. As
and when the issue, ahem, arises – or
rather, doesn’t arise – I’m minded to go
for the full-fat, no-mucking-about, blue-
diamond option, thanks very much. Go
big or go home. But that’s a call for far in
the future. If ever.
Meanwhile, I conscientiously chewed
(a less than flavoursome Jelly Baby, in
taste and consistency) and swallowed my
gummy every afternoon for a fortnight,
heroically resisting the urge to neck the
whole packet in one go, just for the hell
of it. I cannot report an increase in my
sex drive. Not that I was seeking so much
as an uptick, let alone some painful, pants-
busting priapic surge. I keep an eye on
the national averages and, as a couple in
our late fifties together for 30-plus years,
my wife and I nobly drag those averages
up rather than down. Yes indeed.
Regarding desire as opposed to
consummation, I noted no change there
either, toddling along at my roughly one
sex-related thought every half-hour, like
most men. More frequent at this time of
year. That 30-odd reveries a day has stayed
pretty steady since my late teens, when
for a few years prior to that it had been
off the scale. I’m not sure I want to revert
to the obsessive carnality of my mid-
adolescence: I wouldn’t get anything else
done. Especially when you add on the
sport, sleep and biscuit-related thoughts
that accrue over the decades as well.
Also, at my age, a man must
take care not to become that
tragic creature, the Old Goat.
Behaving like a real-life Austin
Powers is not only unpleasant,
it’s also illegal. The fire
down below, these
days glowing
comfortably
rather than
blazing
dangerously, is
best left unstoked
by accelerants.
Robert Crampton
I TRIED THE NEW LIBIDO PILLS.
SO DID THEY WORK FOR ME?