sex drive Archives - Hormones Matter

Cipro Ain’t Sexy: Fluoroquinolones Tanked My Sex Drive

Published on February 9, 2017

15.9K views

From a relatively young age, I always had a strong sex drive. Even in elementary school I found myself very attracted to various girls and even female teachers at times. After losing my virginity in high school, sex became one of the most important things in my life. I absolutely loved it, and couldn’t imagine life without it. If someone offered me a million dollars, and all I had to do was to not have sex for a year, I would have told them to take a hike without a second thought. (I think if this hypothetical time period was lowered to a couple months, I would have considered it. Likely it would have had to be less than that for me to be confident I could hold out!)

I eventually did marry in my mid-twenties. My wife was just 19 and had a healthy sex drive, too. We experimented and eventually ended up getting into swinging after we’d been married around ten years. Some people have their relationships ruined from swinging, but many, many do not. Although there were occasional minor jealousy issues, we were successful in the lifestyle. I loved it because my sex drive was so high that I almost always wanted to have sex multiple times per night, but my wife was usually satiated after one big-O. Having other partners around for me was a good thing. I would usually be ready for a second round within minutes of a first round… sometimes less! On average, I had an orgasm at least 6 or 7 times a week.

After we’d been swinging a few years, I took Cipro. I took it a few more times over the next couple years. Looking back I realized I had some minor symptoms before the straw that broke the camel’s back. The third time I took it, I had a severe reaction that affected many systems in my body, but mostly my tendons and nerves. Of course, sex took a back seat for the next few months. About five months or so after my reaction, I was still in extremely bad shape (in fact I still am today, about five years later), but I suddenly realized I hadn’t had sex in months. My wife and I tried. I was able to perform despite the pain and did find it enjoyable. I thought this might “jump start” my sex drive and sex life again, but it didn’t. It was just obvious I didn’t have the drive I had just six months earlier.

I told my doctor this and he ran a testosterone test on me. My levels were under 200 (250 is considered the low end of normal). Now I don’t think I ever had this level tested before, but I’m pretty sure it was at or close to 1,000 (the high end of normal) based upon my sexual history. He offered me some testosterone supplements. I tried this for a little while and it did help somewhat. Slowly, my sex drive recovered a bit.

Now, some five years post Cipro, I like to have an orgasm about 3 or 4 times a week, and there’s no way I can perform twice in a row. My swinging days are over. I used to work out often and was proud of my body. Now my muscles have wasted away and I have noticeable nerve damage. I don’t feel desirable, and my own desire for sex is probably only about 20% of what it once was.

Although my desire for sex has diminished, I still miss sex a lot. I miss wanting it more. I miss my old friends from the swinging societies and having group sex. I still have a good sex life with my wonderful wife, which is more than many more unfortunate floxies have, but sometimes I’m still bitter about what I’ve had to give up.

Participate in Research

Hormones Matter is conducting research on the side effects and adverse events associated with the fluoroquinolone antibiotics, Cipro, Levaquin, Avelox and others: The Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics Side Effects Study. The study is anonymous, takes 20-30 minutes to complete and is open to anyone who has used a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. Please complete the study and help us understand the scope of fluoroquinolone reactions. To share your fluoroquinolone injury story, send us a note from this link: Write for Us.

What Else Can I Do To Help?

Hormones Matter is completely unfunded at this juncture and we rely entirely on crowdsourcing and volunteers to conduct the research and produce quality health education materials for the public. If you’d like help us improve healthcare with better data, get involved. Become an advocate, spread the word about our site, our research and our mission. Suggest a study. Share a study. Join our team. Write for us. Partner with us.

To support Hormones Matter and our research projects – Crowdfund Us.

This post was published originally on Hormones Matter in April 2014.

Post Fluoroquinolone Sex and Libido

by Lisa Bloomquist

Published on April 8, 2014

11.9K views

One of my symptoms of getting “floxed” (a short-hand term for fluoroquinolone toxicity – an adverse reaction to a fluoroquinolone antibiotic including Cipro/Ciprofloxacin, Levaquin/Levofloxacin, Avelox/Moxifloxacin, and Floxin/Ofloxacin) was losing my “give-a-damn.” I stopped caring about many aspects of my life – my job, my relationships, my aspirations, and many other things that used to give me pleasure; including three things that were previously on my list of favorite things in the world – food, sex and alcohol. My desire for those things, things that used to bring me pleasure and excitement, was simply gone – over night – as my body went from being healthy and strong to being fatigued, in pain and unable to move much at all.

To lose the desire for sex, at the age of 32, was bizarre and disquieting. At 32 I was supposed to be at my sexual peak, but instead I found myself not caring at all about my former favorite recreational activity. As I went through sexual relationships I was able to muster up the energy to participate, and enjoy, sex. But it was different after I got “floxed.” My way of thinking and feeling about sex was just… different. I no longer cared about sex and I no longer desired it. It moved from the top of my priority list to the bottom. My libido was a faint shadow of its former self.

As I’ve recovered (it took a couple of years to recover from the toxic reaction that I had to an antibiotic that I took to treat a urinary tract infection brought on, ironically, by sex), my sex drive has come back, and I have started to feel like myself again – with the desires and appetites that make me feel like me. It’s nice to be recovering, and to be getting my “give-a-damn” back.

Because I was able to “fake it till you make it” as they say, my story of losing my sex drive is not the most compelling. It was not the biggest loss that I suffered from, and, well, there are worse things in the world than what my vagina went through. But some of the other sexual side-effects that other people have suffered through as a result of fluoroquinolone toxicity, are far worse, and they are nothing to be dismissed or disregarded.

My fellow “floxie” friends have been through more sexual adverse effects of fluoroquinolones than I have. Here are a few snippets of their stories:

A woman in her mid-20s is unable to orgasm
A man in his 40s feels like he is being kicked in the groin when he orgasms
A man in his 50s does not respond to any erectile dysfunction medications – including a shot that “works every time” according to his doctor
A woman in her 50s experiences nerves that are so over-stimulated that she has a continuous, painful orgasm that lasts for hours
A woman in her 30s with extreme vaginal dryness
A man in his 30s with erectile dysfunction
People of all ages and both sexes who have not had sex for years

I hope that some of my “floxie” friends come forward with their stories about what it feels like to go through the loss of sexual function and sexuality described above. It affects every aspect of a person’s life and it even rocks their identity. It is wrong for a drug to take away such an important part of being human as one’s sexuality.

Fixing a person’s sexual dysfunction, or lack of desire, isn’t as easy as taking a pill – though the people who advertise Viagra and Cialis would like for us to think that it is. The people who are suffering from fluoroquinolone induced sexual side-effects are, unfortunately, not helped by any pharmaceutical “cures.”

Sexual dysfunction is real, it is serious and it is life altering. To take away a person’s ability to be sexual with an unnecessarily strong antibiotic that damages a patient’s central, peripheral and autonomic nervous systems, is wrong.

Please consider the possibility of losing your ability and desire to have sex before you take Cipro, Levaquin, Avelox or Floxin. If there are alternative antibiotics available, please use those; because your sexuality is really quite important and fixing it once it’s broken isn’t easy.

Information about Fluoroquinolone Toxicity

Information about the author, and adverse reactions to fluoroquinolone antibiotics (Cipro/ciprofloxacin, Levaquin/levofloxacin, Avelox/moxifloxacin and Floxin/ofloxacin) can be found on Lisa Bloomquist’s site, www.floxiehope.com.

Participate in Research

Hormones Matter^TM is conducting research on the side effects and adverse events associated with the fluoroquinolone antibiotics, Cipro, Levaquin, Avelox and others: The Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics Side Effects Study. The study is anonymous, takes 20-30 minutes to complete and is open to anyone who has used a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. Please complete the study and help us understand the scope of fluoroquinolone reactions.

Hormones Matter^TM conducts other crowdsourced surveys on medication reactions. To take one of our other surveys, click here.

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What Else Can I Do To Help?

Hormones Matter^TM is completely unfunded at this juncture and we rely entirely on crowdsourcing and volunteers to conduct the research and produce quality health education materials for the public. If you’d like help us improve healthcare with better data, get involved. Become an advocate, spread the word about our site, our research and our mission. Suggest a study. Share a study. Join our team. Write for us. Partner with us. Help us grow. For more information contact us at: info@hormonesmatter.com.

To support Hormones Matter and our research projects – Crowdfund Us.