Secrets of Spanish Fly
Saturday December 30th, 2006 in Doing It, Info, Pharmo, Rant, Sex | 6 Comments »
Spanish Fly, you’ve seen it at sex shops and next to the condoms in vending machines at gas station bathrooms in the middle of West Texas (well, I have). You hear the urban legends and the stories from friends about the nephew of a guy who’s friends with the uncle of your old high school buddy who slipped some Spanish Fly in “like hellsa girls drinks at a raging party and they were all like totally all over his junk n’ shit.” You’re a smart person, right? So you immediately think, “an aphrodisiac? Bullocks! Absolute whipper snapper junk!” Or “aphrodisiac? What about some charm and a smile?” or “aphrodisiac? you mean like waving my naughty bits at the person of interest?” But at the same time, I’ll even admit I’ve considered the possibilities of this little potion. Hell, if it’s sold all over the place and has been for years, of course it works, right? There’s got to be something in there that makes anyone who ingests it go hog-wild (not a sexy term, I know).
Spanish Fly is sold at my place of employment and a gentleman purchased a small bottle, swearing by it’s amazing effects. So I decided to check out the ingredients to attempt to discover the active ingredient. After reading the charming description on the back about the “spurious secret formula” I saw that the ingredients were: Water, fructose, glycerin, quaternium-15, citric acid, artificial flavor, and caramel color. So it’s a tastey little liquid with some random chemical in it. But what is quaternium-15?
Quaternium-15 is a preservative found in a shite load of cosmetic and hair products, which releases formaldehyde …yum. Which products, you ask? These products. So it’s in all these products, meaning it can’t be harmful right? Well it’s essentially harmless but studies have reported that exposure to Quaternium-15 may cause dermatitis and eczema. One thing I am curious about is it’s effects on pregnant women? What about all the guys with prego-fetishes who slip Spanish Fly into the beverages of unknowing pregnant women?
“False advertising!” you yell after yelling “Heretic!” to the pale goth kid on your block. But it’s not necessarily false advertising because right there on the bottle in the tiniest of letters the producers of Spanish Fly note that this product has no aphrodisiac effect what so ever. This brings into question the placebo effect. If people think it’ll work, then most of the time it’ll work. I just worry about the person who has Spanish Fly slipped in their drink and they end up having an allergic reaction. Nothing says sexy like anaphylactic shock!
My main question though, and I hope someone can come up with an answer, why do they put quaternium-15 in Spanish Fly? Is it just to have a product with a fancy named chemical in the ingredients list for people to read and think, “Huh, I’ve never heard of that name. That must be the aphrodisiac”?
