THE PINK PILL – Review by April Neale

Do not take double or extra doses. This survey is being conducted by the WebMD marketing sciences department.

i have little to no sexual desire

Do not take double or extra doses. This survey is being conducted by the WebMD marketing sciences department. Here’s a run down of what we discussed in today’s episode: The First FDA-Approved Treatment for Low Female Desire Addyi vs Viagra: Why the “Pink Pill” Took 17 Years to Approve Cultural Bias in Medicine: Why Women’s Sexual Health Was Dismissed Why This Story Matters Now: The Documentary The Pink Pill Feminism, Pharma & Politics: Navigating a Controversial Topic Understanding HSDD: Biology vs Context in Low Sexual Desire Can a Medication Empower Women’s Sexual Autonomy? Addyi, Ozempic & the Shift From Moral Judgment to Biology Sexual Autonomy, Systemic Change & What True Choice Looks Like Check in with today’s amazing guest: Julie Bristow & Cindy Eckert Disclaimer: The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider.

How does Addyi work (mechanism of action)?

If you have heard yourself in our discussion today, and are looking for support, contact the free NEDIC helpline at 1-866-NEDIC-20 or go to eatingdisorderhope.com. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✨ Reach Your Weight & Health Goals — Without Dieting! Pre-order The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, Abbey’s revolutionary additive approach to eating well. Learn how to boost satiety, stabilize blood sugars, reduce disease risk, and improve your relationship with food — all while getting the best nutrient bang for your caloric buck. With 400+ research citations, cheat sheets, evidence-based actionable tips, meal plans, and adaptable recipes, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method is the only nutrition bible you’ll ever need.

Does Addyi interact with other medicines (drug interactions)?

🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — and leave us a review! It really helps support the show ❤️ 💬 If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review — and let me know who you’d love to hear about next!⭐ ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ Published17 March 2026 at 08:30 UTC Barbara Gattuso had been happily married for decades when she signed up, in the late 2000s, for a clinical trial involving a potentially revolutionary new drug. She and her husband had once had a fulfilling sex life, both pre- and post-children. But at some point during her perimenopausal years, her desire disappeared. It wasn’t stress, fatigue or relationship issues, though her lack of libido certainly contributed to those. Here’s a run down of what we discussed in today’s episode: The First FDA-Approved Treatment for Low Female Desire Addyi vs Viagra: Why the “Pink Pill” Took 17 Years to Approve Cultural Bias in Medicine: Why Women’s Sexual Health Was Dismissed Why This Story Matters Now: The Documentary The Pink Pill Feminism, Pharma & Politics: Navigating a Controversial Topic Understanding HSDD: Biology vs Context in Low Sexual Desire Can a Medication Empower Women’s Sexual Autonomy? Addyi, Ozempic & the Shift From Moral Judgment to Biology Sexual Autonomy, Systemic Change & What True Choice Looks Like Check in with today’s amazing guest: Julie Bristow & Cindy Eckert Disclaimer: The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider. If you have heard yourself in our discussion today, and are looking for support, contact the free NEDIC helpline at 1-866-NEDIC-20 or go to eatingdisorderhope.com. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✨ Reach Your Weight & Health Goals — Without Dieting! Pre-order The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, Abbey’s revolutionary additive approach to eating well. Learn how to boost satiety, stabilize blood sugars, reduce disease risk, and improve your relationship with food — all while getting the best nutrient bang for your caloric buck. With 400+ research citations, cheat sheets, evidence-based actionable tips, meal plans, and adaptable recipes, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method is the only nutrition bible you’ll ever need.

🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — and leave us a review! It really helps support the show ❤️ 💬 If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review — and let me know who you’d love to hear about next!⭐ ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ Published17 March 2026 at 08:30 UTC Barbara Gattuso had been happily married for decades when she signed up, in the late 2000s, for a clinical trial involving a potentially revolutionary new drug. She and her husband had once had a fulfilling sex life, both pre- and post-children. But at some point during her perimenopausal years, her desire disappeared.

it’s harder for me to become aroused

It wasn’t stress, fatigue or relationship issues, though her lack of libido certainly contributed to those. It was more like a mysterious evaporation – like “somebody pulled the plug”, as she recalls in a new documentary on flibanserin, the experimental drug that proffered potential relief. Originally developed as an anti-depressant by the German company Boehringer Ingelheim, flibanserin had instead shown promise as a treatment for low female libido, working on neurotransmitters in the so-called “sex center” of the brain. In a video from that trial filmed by Dr Irwin Goldstein, the “godfather of sexual medicine” and a key consultant on Viagra – that revolutionary blue pill for men with erectile dysfunction – Gattuso appears nearly giddy. She was chasing her husband around again, she said. She felt “phenomenal”, like a “new woman on this drug”. It is shocking how quaint this footage looks and feels now, as it seems like this should have been an obvious breakthrough with cascading results. But as the Paramount+ documentary The Pink Pill: Sex, Drugs & Who Has Control demonstrates, the road to get flibanserin – often called, somewhat derisively, “the female Viagra” – to women struggling with their libido was anything but obvious, strewn with regulatory roadblocks, pharmaceutical price-gouging, sexist double standards and a profound societal disinterest in female choice, pleasure and experience. Though the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved flibanserin, sold under the name Addyi, for premenopausal women suffering from Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD) back in August 2015 (and, as of last December, for women post menopause) most women are not aware that a drug for female sexual desire exists, let alone that it’s available. Until she was approached about making the film, “I had never heard of this drug,” Aisling Chin-Yee, the director, said.

Before Using

It is absolutely imperative that if you are a man with a penis, you should be able to do whatever you want with it. And those were not the same considerations for women.” (The FDA, which denied any accusations of gender bias, did not respond to the film-makers’ interview requests. “I will give the benefit of the doubt to the FDA that they were in the midst of like getting Doge-ed,” Chin-Yee said, referring to the Elon Musk-led consolidation that gutted the department.) Never mind that many women wanted their desire back, and felt less whole without it. “I thought ‘well, after you have kids, that goes away …’” says one HSDD patient in the film, frustrated by her lack of options and a prevailing narrative that “you’re a mother now and you focus on these things. That’s behind you.” The loss of sexual desire was “devastating”, says another whose menopause torched her formerly steady libido.

Related support groups

“I felt like someone had slayed me.” Both Gattuso and her daughter testified at the FDA’s public hearing on the drug’s approval, speaking emotionally about the toll their diminished libido had taken on their lives. Opponents of the drug put the onus back on them; one recommended they instead try what worked for her: “switching boyfriends, chocolate, coffee, certain episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, pornography, upgrading my vibrator, read Fifty Shades of Grey, a removable shower-head and an acceptance of myself and the libido I came with”. After much heated back and forth, the FDA approved Addyi in 2015. Eckert subsequently sold Sprout to pharma giant Valeant for $1bn. But the victory came with a major caveat: a black box warning, the most serious level available, for side effects such as dizziness, nausea and headache.

Learn to recognize the signs of HSDD in your patients.4

Doctors had to take a test to prescribe it. Pharmacists had to take a test to fill it. Women prescribed Addyi had to sign a pledge that they would not drink alcohol. (Viagra, on the other hand, came with a recommendation that one merely should avoid alcohol.) Faced with declining sales, Valeant more than doubled the price of Addyi, to $800 a prescription, making the drug cost-prohibitive. Then, in 2017, they shelved it altogether. “I had never even thought about going in and talking to my doctor about my sex life. The only thing I’ve ever been asked by a doctor is, am I having sex or sex tablet women am I not having sex?

Warnings & Precautions

It was more like a mysterious evaporation – like “somebody pulled the plug”, as she recalls in a new documentary on flibanserin, the experimental drug that proffered potential relief. Originally developed as an anti-depressant by the German company Boehringer Ingelheim, flibanserin had instead shown promise as a treatment for low female libido, working on neurotransmitters in the so-called “sex center” of the brain. In a video from that trial filmed by Dr Irwin Goldstein, the “godfather of sexual medicine” and a key consultant on Viagra – that revolutionary blue pill for men with erectile dysfunction – Gattuso appears nearly giddy. She was chasing her husband around again, she said. She felt “phenomenal”, like a “new woman on this drug”.

Let’s Get to the Root Cause

It is shocking how quaint this footage looks and feels now, as it seems like this should have been an obvious breakthrough with cascading results. But as the Paramount+ documentary The Pink Pill: Sex, Drugs & Who Has Control demonstrates, the road to get flibanserin – often called, somewhat derisively, “the female Viagra” – to women struggling with their libido was anything but obvious, strewn with regulatory roadblocks, pharmaceutical price-gouging, sexist double standards and a profound societal disinterest in female choice, pleasure and experience. Though the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved flibanserin, sold under the name Addyi, for premenopausal women suffering from Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD) back in August 2015 (and, as of last December, for women post menopause) most women are not aware that a drug for female sexual desire exists, let alone that it’s available. Until she was approached about making the film, “I had never heard of this drug,” Aisling Chin-Yee, the director, said. “I had never even thought about going in and talking to my doctor about my sex life.

Less common

The only thing I’ve ever been asked by a doctor is, am I having sex or sex tablet women am I not having sex? And whatever answer I gave always seemed like the wrong answer.” The Pink Pill examines just how persistent that disinterest in female sexuality, beyond reproduction, runs throughout the US medical establishment. As several sexual health doctors, gynecologists and urologists attest, most medical school curricula do not include sections on female sexual health, libido or clitoral anatomy. When Viagra was introduced in 1998, the medical establishment quickly adopted a drug that was seen as a breakthrough treatment for a physical issue in men. But the conversation around female libido and orgasm remained stagnant, often starting and ending with “it’s complicated”. And whatever answer I gave always seemed like the wrong answer.” The Pink Pill examines just how persistent that disinterest in female sexuality, beyond reproduction, runs throughout the US medical establishment. As several sexual health doctors, gynecologists and urologists attest, most medical school curricula do not include sections on female sexual health, libido or clitoral anatomy. When Viagra was introduced in 1998, the medical establishment quickly adopted a drug that was seen as a breakthrough treatment for a physical issue in men. But the conversation around female libido and orgasm remained stagnant, often starting and ending with “it’s complicated”. Frustration with this apathy and her own disappeared desire led Cindy Eckert, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur based in Raleigh, North Carolina, to buy flibanserin for $5m in 2011, after Boehringer Ingelheim decided not to fight for FDA approval. A hyper-feminine, distinctly 2010s entrepreneur with a fondness for everything magenta, Eckert renamed the drug Addyi after Dr Addison Grey, Kate Walsh’s character on the popular medical drama Grey’s Anatomy who represented the drug’s ethos of, as she says, “women living life on their own terms”. Her company, Sprout Pharmaceuticals, completed the necessary trials, demonstrating that Addyi improved the sexual drive and experiences of women struggling with HSDD. By October 2013, it was ready to go to market, subject to FDA approval.

• Pink pills are sometimes used to address sexual dysfunction in women.
• They are marketed as natural or holistic remedies, depending on ingredients.
• Medical approval varies; some are unregulated, over-the-counter supplements.
• Users should check for FDA approval or medical supervision before use.

Though Addyi works on neurotransmitters in the brain, akin to an antidepressant, the FDA assigned its review to its urology division – a better fit for Viagra, which relaxes muscles and increases blood flow to the male genitalia. The FDA rejected it, claiming that the side effects – namely dizziness, nausea, fatigue and low blood pressure – did not outweigh the benefits.

• Pink pills are sometimes associated with the "pink economy" in sexual health.
• They are popular among women seeking discreet, quick solutions.
• Not all pink pills are evidence-based; some rely heavily on marketing claims.
• Consulting a healthcare professional is essential before starting any supplement.

The question of side effects – essentially, why would desire be worth it for women?

Why the FDA rejected Addyi twice

What had once been the promising frontier in female sexual health was now essentially locked away. – continued to dog the medication as it sought regulatory. The Pink Pill amasses a significant recent history archive of the “female Viagra’s” role in the culture super p force uk wars of the 2010s, as Sprout mounted an aggressive lobbying campaign ahead of its 2015 hearing. Some of the backlash was predictably patronizing: “You might know [flibanserin] by its old name – wine,” joked Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.

• The pink pill aims to boost women's libido and sexual satisfaction.
• It often contains ingredients like aphrodisiacs or hormonal components.
• Some pink pills are marketed as supplements; others are pharmaceutical drugs.
• Effectiveness varies; consult a healthcare provider before use.

Some was more grounded, such as pushback from those who believed HSDD to be a fictional condition to guilt women for their lack of sex drive, low libido medicalized in the name of pharmaceutical profit, with no medical consensus on what constitutes “normal” sexual desire. The FDA questioned the potential for sedative effects, wondering if “a woman might take flibanserin the night before and get up the next morning and fall asleep taking her kids to school”, recalls Dr Anita Clayton, a University of Virginia psychiatrist and consultant to Addyi, in the film. “There was a very paternalistic attitude.” Data showing an increase of one “successful sexual event” per month was dismissed as ineffective – even though women with untreated HSDD experienced maybe one or two such events a year. The bias showing through the FDA approval process boiled down to “well, we just don’t know if [Addyi] is necessary’”, said Chin-Yee. “But that’s not a question that has ever come up when it comes to male sexual dysfunction. It is absolutely imperative that if you are a man with a penis, you should be able to do whatever you want with it. And those were not the same considerations for women.” (The FDA, which denied any accusations of gender bias, did not respond to the film-makers’ interview requests. “I will give the benefit of the doubt to the FDA that they were in the midst of like getting Doge-ed,” Chin-Yee said, referring to the Elon Musk-led consolidation that gutted the department.) Never mind that many women wanted their desire back, and felt less whole without it. “I thought ‘well, after you have kids, that goes away …’” says one HSDD patient in the film, frustrated by her lack of options and a prevailing narrative that “you’re a mother now and you focus on these things. That’s behind you.” The loss of sexual desire was “devastating”, says another whose menopause torched her formerly steady libido.

“I felt like someone had slayed me.” Both Gattuso and her daughter testified at the FDA’s public hearing on the drug’s approval, speaking emotionally about the toll their diminished libido had taken on their lives. Opponents of the drug put the onus back on them; one recommended they instead try what worked for her: “switching boyfriends, chocolate, coffee, certain episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, pornography, upgrading my vibrator, read Fifty Shades of Grey, a removable shower-head and an acceptance of myself and the libido I came with”.

• The pink pill targets issues like low desire and menstrual discomfort.
• It may improve mood and increase energy levels in women.
• Side effects can include headaches, nausea, or hormonal imbalances.
• Its use is often personalized based on hormonal levels and health status.

After much heated back and forth, the FDA approved Addyi in 2015.

if she’s saying these things, it may be hsdd

Frustration with this apathy and her own disappeared desire led Cindy Eckert, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur based in Raleigh, North Carolina, to buy flibanserin for $5m in 2011, after Boehringer Ingelheim decided not to fight for FDA approval. A hyper-feminine, distinctly 2010s entrepreneur with a fondness for everything magenta, Eckert renamed the drug Addyi after Dr Addison Grey, Kate Walsh’s character on the popular medical drama Grey’s Anatomy who represented the drug’s ethos of, as she says, “women living life on their own terms”. Her company, Sprout Pharmaceuticals, completed the necessary trials, demonstrating that Addyi improved the sexual drive and experiences of women struggling with HSDD. By October 2013, it was ready to go to market, subject to FDA approval. Though Addyi works on neurotransmitters in the brain, akin to an antidepressant, the FDA assigned its review to its urology division – a better fit for Viagra, which relaxes muscles and increases blood flow to the male genitalia.

Missed Dose

The FDA rejected it, claiming that the side effects – namely dizziness, nausea, fatigue and low blood pressure – did not outweigh the benefits. The question of side effects – essentially, why would desire be worth it for women? – continued to dog the medication as it sought regulatory. The Pink Pill amasses a significant recent history archive of the “female Viagra’s” role in the culture super p force uk wars of the 2010s, as Sprout mounted an aggressive lobbying campaign ahead of its 2015 hearing. Some of the backlash was predictably patronizing: “You might know [flibanserin] by its old name – wine,” joked Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.

How can I get more information about Addyi?

Some was more grounded, such as pushback from those who believed HSDD to be a fictional condition to guilt women for their lack of sex drive, low libido medicalized in the name of pharmaceutical profit, with no medical consensus on what constitutes “normal” sexual desire. The FDA questioned the potential for sedative effects, wondering if “a woman might take flibanserin the night before and get up the next morning and fall asleep taking her kids to school”, recalls Dr Anita Clayton, a University of Virginia psychiatrist and consultant to Addyi, in the film. “There was a very paternalistic attitude.” Data showing an increase of one “successful sexual event” per month was dismissed as ineffective – even though women with untreated HSDD experienced maybe one or two such events a year. The bias showing through the FDA approval process boiled down to “well, we just don’t know if [Addyi] is necessary’”, said Chin-Yee. “But that’s not a question that has ever come up when it comes to male sexual dysfunction. Eckert subsequently sold Sprout to pharma giant Valeant for $1bn. But the victory came with a major caveat: a black box warning, the most serious level available, for side effects such as dizziness, nausea and headache. Doctors had to take a test to prescribe it. Pharmacists had to take a test to fill it. Women prescribed Addyi had to sign a pledge that they would not drink alcohol. (Viagra, on the other hand, came with a recommendation that one merely should avoid alcohol.) Faced with declining sales, Valeant more than doubled the price of Addyi, to $800 a prescription, making the drug cost-prohibitive. Then, in 2017, they shelved it altogether. What had once been the promising frontier in female sexual health was now essentially locked away.