Opinions of Thursday, 25 July 2013

Auteur: Cameroon Tribune

Aphrodisiacs - When Pleasure Comes With Risk...

The consumption of sex boosters is gaining grounds with victims amongst young people and women.

A healthy sex life, some say, helps to nurture love and intimacy in a relationship. For centuries, men and women have tried to find substances that can enhance their sexual desire and bring back pleasure to their sex lives. Information indicates that aphrodisiacs are substances that help to stimulate sex drive. But the manner in which individuals, mostly young people, are increasingly consuming these sex stimulants is a cause for concern as some of them have died in due course. Not only old men are victims of sex stimulants for young men and women have joined the fold.

Some 19 years ago, Samuel E was a student at the Lycée Leclerc Secondary School in Yaounde. He had a date meeting with a girl and did not know how he could impress her given that it was their first romantic rendez-vous. After chatting with friends, he was advised to take a known aphrodisiac. He went to a roadside drug vendor who sold the said drug to him and instructed Samuel to take a quarter tablet of the drug. Widening his imagination, Samuel instead took two tablets of the drug wishing for an extraordinary result. 30 minutes later, Samuel became extraordinarily more virile than he could control. Suddenly, he lost consciousness and fell on the bed with his stomach up. The yelling from Samuel's female guest alerted the entire family who rushed him to the hospital. Upon arrival at the hospital, Samuel was put under reanimation for a day before he regained consciousness.

Today, Samuel is 39 years and is suffering from serious sexual impotency whose gravity the doctor had already explained to his family when he consumed the overdose of the sex stimulant. If Samuel could be counted among the fortunate people who have survived the uncontrolled use of aphrodisiacs, many young persons have found death after consuming sex stimulants. Women are not left out. Sandrine N, 26, is one of those who have found death at the peak of "joy". Some years back in Yaounde, she died during love-making after consuming an overdose of some herbs and other sex stimulant drugs gotten from roadside drug vendors.

After her death, an autopsy on her corpse revealed that she had consumed a lot of sex stimulant drugs. A friend of late Sandrine narrated to Cameroon Tribune how she suffered criticism from her boyfriend who said she was "zero" during intimate moments he had spent with her. In a bid to be active, she was told to consume some sex stimulants one hour before an intercourse. Things happened as Sandrine had imagined and the boyfriend said during the few minutes she spent with her on that fateful day, he was surprisingly amazed by her improved performance. After a while, it is said that Sandrine made a loud noise and became inactive on the bed. It was later discovered she was dead.