<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" A car horn outside somewhere woke me up. It was 3 a.m. The beautiful woman next to me was fast asleep, but I didn&amp;#039;t sneak out the door or wake her up for &amp;quot;round two.&amp;quot; Instead, I whispered, &amp;quot;Jenny?&amp;quot; and we stayed up all night talking about Project Runway. I&amp;#039;d never been happier in my life.  This could not have happened in my 20s. Back then, I was addicted to &amp;quot;love&amp;quot; \u2014 the kind that happened in a bathroom stall for six minutes. Or a motel for an afternoon. Or a beach house for a week straight. I spent years trying to make those minutes happen to the exclusion of everything else, and I called this servitude freedom. But it got harder and harder to lie to myself, and after one too many spins as a third wheel for coupled-up friends, I found a therapist and started taking medication for depression.  I was told that a reduced libido could be a side effect, but for me it was an active ingredient. Antidepressants turned down the volume on my master&amp;#039;s voice, the one that kept screaming, &amp;quot;Bang!&amp;quot; As the lowering of my sex drive helped lift my depression, I saw that I&amp;#039;d been stuck in an endless loop: Meaningless trysts were depressing, and depression led to meaningless trysts. I&amp;#039;d let my libido start relationships in hopes my feelings would catch up later, or keep me in ones where the feelings had faded. And I&amp;#039;d rarely given them a chance to grow from anything other than first impressions. Sex was a distraction, a consolation, a reward. A sport, a snack, a sleep aid.  Then I got on the pills. And then I met Jenny. And I wanted to hear everything she had to say, in every language she knew. Sex changes when your ears are open. Escaping the hound-dog years slows up the obsession for most men, as testosterone levels decrease. A few good ass-kicking breakups help, too. But for those of us who need one more push, who find ourselves always wondering who might be around the next corner on a block we&amp;#039;ve just circled, a little chemical wake-me-up is just the thing. As Jenny and I blabbed on into the night, I thought, Thank God for loud car horns and antidepressants. I asked her to marry me three months later, and we still haven&amp;#039;t had a good night&amp;#039;s sleep.  Peter Birkenhead lives in Los Angeles. His memoir, Gonville (Free Press), is due out next year.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/advice/a2832/sex-drive-anti-depressants/>