Daniel Medforth, 36, of Withernsea, East Yorks, had an erection lasting longer than four hours. A lot longer.
Medforth, a plasterer by trade and a married father of two, told U.K. tabloid The Sun that he took 35 doses of Viagra in an hour after drinking with his friends for two days.
“My mate brought them downstairs, I just said I’d take one for a laugh and one led to two to three, et cetera,” Medforth told The Daily Beast.
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But after pill number 35, laughter gave way to concern. After his vision turned green—a Viagra side effect known as cyanopsia—and he experienced what he described to The Sun as “a massive erection that would not go away,” Medforth went home to his wife, who promptly redirected him to the hospital where he belonged. And there he stayed there for the next 36 hours—one hour for every year of his life that he almost threw away.
He told The Daily Beast that his wife was “a little mad” at him, which, one would hope, is an understatement.
After his discharge, Medforth was put on bed rest but his penis refused to rest with him. His total erection time? Five days.
He told The Sun, “It wasn’t a permanent erection but every time I brushed against something for five days it sprang into life—and it was no use to me.”
How strange that his wife was not in the mood for sex after Medforth nearly left her a widow and their children fatherless. But don’t worry, all is currently well at home.
“Fortunately my wife has forgiven me and I realize I have been very, very lucky,” Medforth told The Sun.
Two “very’s” might not be enough to capture the full extent of Medforth’s good fortune. Men who have overdosed on Viagra have suffered far worse fates than he. Don’t read this sentence while you’re eating but, in 2013, a 66-year old Colombian man had to have his gangrenous penis amputated after taking too much Viagra in a bid to impress his new girlfriend. In 2009, a 28-year old Russian man suffered a heart attack after downing a whole bottle to participate in a 12-hour orgy on a bet. He won the bet. And then he died.
Apart from these more salacious cases, Viagra overdoses can result in a range of cardiovascular symptoms including chest pain, fainting, irregular heartbeat, low blood pressure, heart attack, and, rarely, death. Sildenafil citrate, the generic name for Viagra, works by relaxing blood vessels, which can cause a dangerous drop in blood pressure if the drug is taken in excess or in conjunction with nitrates, which are medications used to treat chest pain.
And there’s the much-feared four-hour erection to worry about, too—or, as it’s called in the medical community, priapism. If priapism is not treated quickly enough, it could lead to erectile dysfunction or “a permanent loss of function.” In other words, too much Viagra at once can create the very problem that the drug was intended to solve.
Medforth told The Daily Beast that he escaped his own overdose experience relatively unscathed. Was the prolonged erection ever painful?
“No, not at all,” he said.
Did he experience any other side effects in the hospital?
“Other than the stomach cramps and [a] bad headache for a few days, no, none.”
He did tell The Sun that his “doctors and nurses told [him] off” and that the paramedics “were trying not to laugh,” so perhaps humiliation was his most severe side effect.
When asked if he regrets his decision in light of what could have happened to him, he told The Daily Beast, “Yes, of course I do. At the time, I thought it was a laugh [and] didn't think of the consequences.”
