By ADESOLA AYO-ADERELE
As a Health Journalist a few years ago, I always got desperate calls from men asking to know where they could obtain “original” Viagra. The callers usually referred to me as Doctor, sending me on a hysterical laughing spree each time.
Indeed, the way we maintained the HealthWise page (and later, a full HealthWise website) was such that if anyone told you that the writers weren’t medical doctors, you’d find it hard to believe. That was because we got professionals to provide insight, becoming a really educational and much-sought-after page and website within weeks of launch.
Whenever men called to ask for advice about Viagra, I’d start chatting them up, asking questions about their age, health history, etc.
On average, the callers ranged in age from 60 and up, were diabetic, hypertensive, and sometimes with erectile dysfunction. Based on my readings on drugs—Viagra inclusive—I always warned them against using the drug without adequate supervision by a doctor who knows their medical history because of the health risks involved; and, equally important, against buying the drug online or at an unregistered pharmacy.
The calls always ended with a doleful ‘Thank you.’
Reading the ex-DSS Assistant Director Dennis Amachree’s account of Gen. Sani Abacha’s inglorious demise didn’t totally present anything new. However, it somehow confirmed media reports about his failing health, what with his blackened lips, which he tried to mask with lipstick.
Sometimes I took the liberty of advising my aged male callers to limit their s£xual activities to their wives because they won’t have to prove their s£xual prowess to a wife who had spent two or more decades with them. But then, would they hear?
Yet, with the unguarded access to aphrodisiacs in Nigeria, men should be careful.
Frighteningly, it isn’t only old men with failing libido who seek the dangerous thrill always attributed to the drugs. Young people in their 20s who have been deluded to believe that “real men” do five rounds in a day readily patronize roadside aphrodisiac hawkers.
As commonplace as it is, most of those so-called herbal drinks in sachets that NAFDAC has been unable to rid Nigeria of are aphrodisiacs, while their long-term abuse wreaks havoc on delicate organs such as kidneys and liver—as attested to by a lab-supported report we did on their ingredients several years ago.
Sometimes I wonder how the Abachas feel each time the news about their late patriarch comes up. But while the nation might be laughing Abacha to scorn, here’s hoping that someone’s father or husband isn’t swearing that “A man only dies once” while popping a Viagra equivalent in a seedy brothel somewhere.
The only bad thing is that the woman involved usually bears the brunt, even when a simple post-mortem exam would have revealed that Papa popped the pill that did him in.
Doxology.
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