This Anxiety Medication Is a Secret Horny Pill
Is Buspirone the fix for all my sexual problems?
Life just had to go and play me dirty.
I’ve been intensely interested in sex, even from a young age.
Sex jokes I wasn’t supposed to understand still made my ears perk. I dog-eared the kinky erotic paperbacks my mom tried to hide. My dad used my mom’s birthday as the password to lock the porn channels on the satellite receiver, so I cracked it on my first try and watched it every chance I got.
Once I got a taste for actual sex, it sealed the deal. My interest turned into a genuine obsession.
I’ve got a dirty mind and a brain that runs on sex. Most of my hobbies are sex-related in some way. I even made talking about sex my job.
I feel my best when I’m horny and highly sexual.
So, it was a real kick in the pussy when I finally hit adulthood and it all came crashing down.
Instead of spending my twenties fucking my husband in every room of our apartment, initiating threesomes and foursomes, and trying my hand at filming porn, I slept more than I needed to and watched too much TV.
My fascination with sex was alive and well. But my desire for it was mostly gone.
I still had a dirty mind but I only managed to get my lady boner up once in a while. I’d get a shot of horniness right around ovulation and then it was gone again.
I was basically a sex spectator, watching all the action from the sidelines. But not in an exciting, pervy voyeuristic way. It was more like I’d been benched and had to sit on my hands, wishing I could play too.
It was a cruel joke. And it was even worse because I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me.
Diagnosis Roulette
When your sex drive vanishes, you go in detective mode.
I became a sexual private investigator, doing online research, self-observation, and lots of theorizing to uncover just what the fuck had happened to me.
I spent close to fifteen years running through every explanation I could think of.
Maybe I wasn’t actually bisexual. Maybe I was a lesbian trapped in marriage with a man I love deeply but in a more-of-a-friend kind of way.
I could be asexual. Or maybe just graysexual. Just not, you know, sexual-sexual.
Or was it a body image thing? Would I love getting naked and fucking if I was a little more fit?
I couldn’t land on any solid answers, so I started cycling through all the solutions.
Every article I read recommended scheduling sex. I tried it and it didn’t work. To this day, I’m convinced it’s something people with high sex drives invented to coax boring, unenthusiastic sex out of people who don’t arouse easily.
I tried extremely precise and restrictive diets. I followed exercise regimens that were so punishing I had to do them alone because my husband couldn’t keep up. I followed the advice for some really intense health nuts, but all it did was make me so tired I couldn’t fuck even if I wanted to.
And I’ve tried all the capsules and supplements that people whisper about in private Facebook groups. Shit you’ve got to order from overseas because the studies on it are questionable, but MarySue66 swears it made her happy and horny and you could use some of that.
It was all guesswork, though. Doctors would frown at my test results, shrug, and recommend I lose weight or reduce my stress - which is doctor-speak for “I have no fucking clue what’s wrong with you or how to fix it.”
Thankfully, that changed recently.
After seeing more doctors and specialists than I can count, I actually got a concrete diagnosis. My problem finally had a name. Hypothyroidism.
A diagnosis is a bittersweet thing. You’re glad to finally know what you’re up against. But it can also knock the hope right out of you. Especially when you do a bit of googling and find out that there’s no cure for what you’re dealing with, only ways to manage it.
Reading that feels like hearing the “reduce your stress levels” line all over again.
What’s worse is that the diagnoses kept coming. The more digging my doctors did, the more they found. Conditions were popping out of each other like Gremlins.
Alongside an underactive thyroid, I also had hormonal imbalances. Specifically, low progesterone and low testosterone. You know, the brain chemicals that make you feel alive and horny.
When the hormonal treatments didn’t stick the way they should, my doctor figured out that PMDD was the culprit. It’s why I felt like a chipper butterfly for about two weeks of the month and like a human cocoon the rest of the time.
Then I got assessed for ADHD and as luck would have it, I’ve got that too. And because I’m doubly lucky, I don’t have the kind that makes my husband hyperhorny and always half-hard. I have the kind that can distract me from my own horniness.
Because the hits keep coming, I also got diagnosed with OCD. There’s no hypersexual version of that one. It’s just obstacles that your brain keeps throwing at you.
And then the cherry on top. Complex PTSD, which is a fancy way of saying I have deep-seated trauma and emotional triggers from growing up in a very difficult household.
So yeah, it’s a lot. It’s a big mess of problems.
I’m a big mess of problems.
The more those acronyms piled up, the less hopeful I felt. I thought I might have to say goodbye to my sex life for good. I was honestly amazed that I could even get out of bed in the morning. It would take a goddamn miracle to get me in the mood to fuck.
Except it didn’t. It just took a pill.
Sexual Side Effects
If a diagnosis is bittersweet, so is medicating it.
Medication can give you your life back. It can give you some over-the-counter happiness when your brain won’t make its own. It can balance your hormones when your glands are too lazy to do it themselves. It can clear up the fog just enough for you to actually get through the day.
But medication can also take part of your life away.
I looked up every medication that was meant to help with my conditions. There was a recurring theme - sexual side effects.
Sexual dysfunction terrified me. That’s what I started getting medical help for in the first place - I didn’t want to end up with a treatment that made them worse.
The highlight of my week was the one time I managed to get horny and fuck. Even Donut Wednesdays and Sushi Saturdays couldn't make up for losing that.
Plus, I’m a sex blogger. Part of my job is reviewing sex toys. I had half-a-dozen toys lined up for review and I had no idea how the hell I would write about them if I lost the ability to have an orgasm. That’s sort of the selling point.
So, I put off asking for medication and tried everything else I could.
I tried shifting my mindset. I learned OCD-specific coping methods. I pencilled in workbooks and actually tried the cheesy exercises they recommended.
Eventually, I just had to give in. My symptoms had become so bad that I almost never wanted to have sex anyway. If I had sexual side effects, they couldn’t be much worse than what I was already going through.
I’ve already got plenty of sexual dysfunction. I might as well be happy.
It started with Prozac, which is an antidepressant but also the main medical treatment for OCD.
It worked. My OCD symptoms lessened. My negative self-talk got a lot more quiet. I spent a lot less time ruminating in my head and I liked myself a whole lot more.
That should’ve been a one-way ticket to the Bone Zone. And it probably would’ve been if it wasn’t for the chronic anxiety I hadn’t managed to shake.
Needless to say, that was a major cock block, so I brought it up to my doctor (I didn’t mention the Bone Zone though).
She wrote a prescription for Buspirone to lessen the anxiety.
And that was the one. That was the magic little pill I needed.
I felt the anxiety slowly fade away.
But then I felt something else, too. After a dose increase and about two weeks of adjusting to it, I was feeling excited about things again. I was creative like I hadn’t been in a long time. I was full of energy.
I was horny as fuck.
It wasn’t just the kind of low level arousal I felt when my anxiety was low. I was getting turned on enough to go into dirty girl mode.
So, I did some digging. Turns out I was experiencing some sexual side effects. But like, the good kind.
Buspirone is basically a secret horny pill. It’s meant to be an anti-anxiety medication but it’s often given alongside SSRIs to lessen their sexual side effects.
As I discovered, it can lessen those problems if they come from your broken brain, too.
I’m Back in My Happy Place
I want sex again and that’s huge for me.
I don’t want it all the time. PMDD is still very much a factor. My Hell Week isn’t exactly a sexy seven days.
OCD triggers can cockblock me, too. Stress in general can flare up my anxiety.
But I want sex a whole lot more now, and I’m having plenty of it.
I have more sex in one week than I used to have in two months.
I even had sex five fucktastic days in a row.
I used to believe I have a very long refractory period because sex wiped me out so much that I needed at least an entire day to recover. Now, sex just gives me more energy. I wake up the next day with a freshly fucked afterglow, eager to be tied down, teased, and banged again.
And it’s all thanks to a pill that I was scared to take at first.
I was so scared of the sexual side effects of my medication - and rightly so. People who deal with loss of desire, anorgasmia, and disinterest in sex sometimes find it so depressing that they go off their antidepressants.
Sex is fun and invigorating. It can be one of the brightest spots in your life. I don’t blame people for refusing to give it up and choosing the fog instead.
That’s why I think horny meds like Buspirone aren’t just frivolous. They genuinely improve your quality of life. They legitimately make people happy - and not just the partners of the people who take them. They’re life-savers for people like me - people who feel completely disconnected from their bodies because they love sex but can’t bring themselves to go pursue it.
Not having the gusto to do the things that make you happy is a miserable state to be in. If pills with positive sexual side effects can fix that, I’m all for it.
My health isn’t perfect by any means. There are still struggles. I have more than one condition with no real cure.
But at least now I’m back to where I’ve always wanted to be - smack dab in the middle of the Bone Zone.
If you liked this article, I bet you’d love my dirty and intimate sex podcast, Pillow Talk With Emma Austin!
And be sure to sign up to my weekly newsletter for personal updates, new articles, and lots of other fun, naughty stuff!
