Dapoxetine for Premature Ejaculation: Uses, Dose, Side Effects and What I Prescribe Instead

Here’s the honest answer, straight away: dapoxetine is a short-acting SSRI licensed for premature ejaculation in men aged 18 to 64, taken 30 mg or 60 mg about one to three hours before sex, never more than once in 24 hours. It works. It also, in my clinic, works less well than a daily tablet, and I do not prescribe it. Let me show you both halves of that — the drug first, my reasoning second.

As an andrologist in Chennai, I see men every week who arrive holding a strip of dapoxetine they bought without a prescription — usually from an online chemist, usually at 60 mg, usually disappointed. So this page does something the pharmacy pages selling you the tablet will not do: it tells you exactly what the drug does, exactly what it costs you in side effects, and what I use instead.

In a nutshell

Dapoxetine in a nutshell

The short version, before the detail. Every one of these is expanded below, with the trial evidence behind it.

1

It is on-demand, not daily

Dapoxetine is taken one to three hours before sex and never more than once in any 24-hour period. It is not a tablet you take every morning.

2

It is not for depression, anxiety or OCD

Despite what several pharmacy pages state, dapoxetine is licensed for premature ejaculation only. It was abandoned as an antidepressant precisely because it enters and leaves the body too fast.

3

It is not Viagra and does nothing for erections

Dapoxetine delays ejaculation. It does not produce or maintain an erection.

4

It leaves your body fast

Peak levels come at one to three hours, and the drug is largely cleared within a day — which is what makes an on-demand tablet possible.

5

Nausea is the dominant side effect

It is the commonest reason men stop, and it gets noticeably worse at 60 mg than at 30 mg.

6

A daily SSRI outperforms it

In a 12-week head-to-head, paroxetine took mean latency from 31 seconds to 370 seconds; dapoxetine 60 mg went from 38 to 179 seconds (Safarinejad, 2006). In an umbrella review of 44 meta-analyses, paroxetine produced the largest gain of any drug studied — 5.64 minutes (Raisi, 2025).

7

It does not cure anything

Every drug in this class delays ejaculation only while you are taking it; the problem returns when you stop (Gul, 2022).

8

Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction is a real class concern

Sexual symptoms can persist after an SSRI is stopped. PSSD has drawn European Medicines Agency attention, though prevalence is unknown and causation unproven (Xie, 2026; Tarchi, 2023). It is a reason to take any SSRI deliberately and under review — not a reason to avoid treatment.

What is dapoxetine, and what is it actually for?

Dapoxetine is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor — an SSRI — that was designed from the start for one job: to delay ejaculation on the day you need it delayed. It goes by the brand name Priligy, plus a long list of Indian ones. It is the only SSRI anywhere in the world that carries an official licence for premature ejaculation (Raisi, 2025).

One fact that almost never appears on the Indian pages selling it: dapoxetine is not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. It is licensed across much of Europe, in India and in many other countries, but it has never gained American approval. That is not a reason to panic if you have taken it — it is a reason to be sceptical of any page that presents it as a universally endorsed medicine, and a reminder that regulators genuinely differ on where its benefits sit against its risks.

Serotonin is the brake on the ejaculatory reflex. Every SSRI raises serotonin signalling and every SSRI therefore delays ejaculation — that is why this whole drug class ended up in sexual medicine at all, having arrived there from psychiatry. Dapoxetine’s difference is speed. Your body absorbs it quickly and clears it quickly, which is what makes an on-demand tablet possible in the first place.

The claim Google keeps repeating — and why it is wrong

Now let me correct something, because Google is currently repeating it. Several of the pharmacy pages ranking above this one state that dapoxetine is “used in the treatment of depression, premature ejaculation, anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder.” That is wrong. Dapoxetine is not used for any psychiatric condition. It was originally investigated as an antidepressant and failed in that role — the very pharmacokinetics that make it useful before sex, in and out of the system within a day, make it useless for a condition that needs steady blood levels for weeks. If a page selling you a prescription drug cannot get its indication right, treat the rest of its dosing advice with the same suspicion.

Is dapoxetine the same as Viagra?

No. In my clinic, I see this every week — a man has bought the wrong tablet for his problem. Sildenafil (Viagra) is a PDE5 inhibitor that improves blood flow into the penis. It helps you get and keep an erection. Dapoxetine is an SSRI that delays the ejaculatory reflex. It helps you last longer once you already have an erection.

So they treat two different problems. A man with a firm erection who finishes in forty seconds needs one. A man who cannot get firm at all needs the other. Many men have both at once, and I find that changes the whole treatment plan (Youssef, 2026).

How dapoxetine works and how fast it acts

Your body absorbs dapoxetine rapidly. Peak plasma concentration arrives one to three hours after the tablet, elimination is biphasic, and by 24 hours the concentration has fallen to a small fraction of its peak. A high-fat meal slightly increases exposure but does not meaningfully change the timing, so you can take it with or without food.

That pharmacology is the whole design. A conventional SSRI like fluoxetine or paroxetine needs one to two weeks of daily dosing before the ejaculatory effect appears, because the effect rests on receptor changes that build up slowly. Dapoxetine skips that by hitting hard and briefly. The trade-off is that it only works hard and briefly — you get one window, and you have to plan sex around a tablet.

How quickly does dapoxetine 30 mg work?

Take it one to three hours before you intend to have sex. Earlier than an hour and you have not reached peak levels; much later than three hours and you are already on the way down. This is the single most common mistake I see — men swallowing it fifteen minutes before, deciding it does not work, and doubling the dose next time.

Can I sleep after taking dapoxetine?

You can, and drowsiness is a recognised effect, but understand what you are doing: if you take it and fall asleep, you have spent the dose. You cannot take another for 24 hours. Do not drive or operate machinery if you feel dizzy or drowsy after a dose.

Dapoxetine dose: 30 mg or 60 mg?

The recommended starting dose for every man is 30 mg, taken one to three hours before sexual activity, maximum once in 24 hours. Your doctor may increase this to 60 mg if 30 mg has not worked adequately and you tolerated it well.

I give you those figures because you will find them anyway, and finding them wrong is worse. But read this as carefully as you read the dose: this is a prescription-only medicine, and the number on the strip is the least important part of taking it safely. What matters is the screening — your heart, your blood pressure, your other medicines, and whether premature ejaculation is even the right diagnosis. A dose without that is not a treatment plan.

I want to be direct about the 60 mg dose, because it is the one being bought most freely in India. Going from 30 mg to 60 mg buys a modest additional delay and a markedly higher chance of feeling sick — nausea, dizziness and headache all rise with the dose. That is not a small toll for a modest gain, and it is exactly why the licence tells you to start at 30 mg and only move up if 30 mg has genuinely failed and you tolerated it well.

How long can dapoxetine make you last?

Honest numbers, not marketing ones. In the head-to-head against paroxetine, dapoxetine 60 mg moved mean intravaginal ejaculatory latency time from 38 seconds to 179 seconds over 12 weeks (Safarinejad, 2006) — roughly a four-fold increase, from about half a minute to about three minutes.

So: a real, measurable improvement, but not the transformation the packaging implies. If you are expecting twenty minutes, no tablet in this class will give you that.

Dapoxetine side effects — the honest list

The common ones, in rough order of how often men actually report them to me: nausea, dizziness, headache, dry mouth, diarrhoea, difficulty sleeping, fatigue, and sometimes flushing or sweating. Nausea is far and away the leader. In the original comparison against placebo, adverse effects with both dapoxetine and paroxetine were significantly more common than with dummy tablets — this is not a side-effect-free drug (Safarinejad, 2006).

It is worth seeing where dapoxetine sits against the alternatives on this. The largest synthesis of the field — an umbrella review of 44 meta-analyses covering 65 randomised trials — put the adverse-event risk ratio for dapoxetine at 1.8, against 4.1 for topical anaesthetics, 2.4 for tramadol, and 1.5 for paroxetine, the lowest of the group (Raisi, 2025). I will come back to that paroxetine figure later, because it does not match what I see in my own patients, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

Is dapoxetine 30 mg safe?

For a healthy man aged 18 to 64, with no cardiac disease, no significant liver or kidney impairment, taking no interacting medication, and prescribed by a doctor who has examined him — yes, 30 mg on demand has an acceptable safety profile in the trials. Every one of those clauses matters. The drug is safe in the population it was studied in, which is not the same as safe for whoever buys it online.

What are the long-term side effects of dapoxetine?

This is a fair question with an unsatisfying answer: because dapoxetine is taken intermittently and most trials ran 12 to 24 weeks, there is very little genuine long-term data. What we can say is that men do not stay on these drugs. Across the SSRIs used for premature ejaculation, long-term adherence is poor and side effects are the limiting factor (Youssef, 2026) — and in my own clinic the number of men still using dapoxetine a year later is small.

The serious one: fainting and drops in blood pressure

If you remember one warning from this page, make it this. Dapoxetine can cause syncope — genuine loss of consciousness — and orthostatic hypotension, where your blood pressure drops as you stand up. This is dapoxetine’s characteristic serious adverse event, and it is why the prescribing advice includes an orthostatic test before starting in some settings.

Practically, this means three things. Do not drink alcohol with it; alcohol compounds the dizziness and the fainting risk. Stand up slowly, particularly the first few times you use it. And if you feel light-headed, lie down with your legs raised rather than trying to walk it off.

Is dapoxetine safe for the heart?

Not for everyone. Men with significant heart disease — heart failure, conduction abnormalities, ischaemic heart disease, valvular disease — should not take it, because a drug that can drop your blood pressure and cause fainting is a genuine hazard in that group. Men with mild or moderate kidney impairment need caution, and the licence rules it out entirely in severe kidney impairment. Buying a tablet from a marketplace skips precisely that assessment.

Does dapoxetine cause erectile dysfunction?

This deserves its own section, because Google itself cannot decide. Ask Google the same question on the same day and the Indian AI answer says dapoxetine does not typically cause erectile dysfunction, while the American one opens with “Yes, dapoxetine can cause erectile dysfunction.” Both cite the same rough figure of under 4%.

Here is the accurate answer. Erectile difficulty is an uncommon, recognised side effect of dapoxetine, but the trial evidence does not show it damaging erectile function as a rule. In the crossover trial against topical lidocaine, erectile function scores fell significantly in the lidocaine arm and did not fall with dapoxetine (Alghobary, 2021). In the paroxetine comparison, intercourse satisfaction scores improved on dapoxetine rather than deteriorating (Safarinejad, 2006).

What is true, and more important, is the class-level point: sexual dysfunction — reduced desire and erectile difficulty included — is a common and well-recognised side effect of SSRIs as a group (Shaw, 2025). Dapoxetine’s short exposure limits that, which is genuinely a point in its favour. The men I see with erection problems on serotonergic drugs are overwhelmingly on daily agents, not on-demand ones — and I will come to which daily agent causes me the most trouble shortly.

There is also a psychological loop worth naming. A man who takes a tablet to control ejaculation often starts monitoring his own performance, and performance monitoring is one of the most reliable ways to lose an erection. Some of the erectile difficulty attributed to dapoxetine is this, not pharmacology.

Who should not take dapoxetine

Do not take dapoxetine if you have significant cardiac disease, moderate to severe liver impairment, severe kidney impairment, or a history of mania or bipolar disorder.

You also must not take it alongside anything else that raises serotonin. The ones I actually encounter in my clinic, in order: tramadol, which doctors here prescribe for pain far too freely; any antidepressant — the SSRIs, SNRIs, or the older tricyclics; lithium; and linezolid, an antibiotic most people do not realise is also an MAO inhibitor. The label additionally lists monoamine oxidase inhibitors, thioridazine, and St John’s wort — that last one is Hypericum perforatum, a herbal antidepressant sold over the counter as a mood or “stress relief” supplement. It is more of a Western product than an Indian one, but it turns up in imported supplements, so check the label of anything you are taking for mood or sleep. Potent CYP3A4 inhibitors such as ketoconazole and ritonavir raise dapoxetine levels and are also out.

The tramadol point deserves emphasis in India, where chemists hand out tramadol freely for pain. Combining two serotonergic drugs risks serotonin syndrome, and because that phrase means nothing to most people, here is what it actually looks like: agitation or confusion, a racing heart, high temperature, heavy sweating, shivering, muscle twitching or rigidity, and diarrhoea, coming on within hours of the combination. It can be fatal. If that happens, stop the drugs and get to an emergency department — do not wait it out at home.

Red flags — stop and get help

Get emergency medical attention if, after taking dapoxetine, you faint or lose consciousness, develop chest pain or a markedly irregular heartbeat, or show the serotonin-syndrome picture above. Stop the drug and speak to a doctor before taking any more if you have repeated dizzy or near-fainting episodes, a persistent severe headache, or any new mood disturbance — agitation, dark thoughts, or a sudden mood swing.

Can you take dapoxetine with Viagra or sildenafil?

Often yes, under supervision, and for some men it is genuinely better than either alone. A 2025 meta-analysis of five randomised trials found that dapoxetine combined with a PDE5 inhibitor produced significantly longer latency and higher sexual satisfaction than dapoxetine alone (Mahesvara, 2025). The British Society for Sexual Medicine now supports early use of PDE5 inhibitors for premature ejaculation, alone or combined with dapoxetine (Hackett, 2025).

But note the word supervision. Both drugs lower blood pressure. Taken together, without a blood pressure check and without anyone knowing your cardiac history, you have stacked two hypotensive agents in a man who may be dehydrated, may have had a drink, and may be about to exert himself. That combination is available over the counter in India as a single fixed-dose tablet, and it is the one I most often see going wrong.

A word about buying dapoxetine over the counter

Dapoxetine is a prescription-only medicine. In practice, Indian pharmacy websites and marketplaces sell it to anyone who clicks. I want to be blunt about why that matters, because no page that sells the tablet will tell you.

The screening that should happen before this drug — a cardiac history, a blood pressure reading, a check of what else you are taking, a conversation about whether your problem is actually lifelong premature ejaculation or something else entirely — is the part that prevents the fainting episode, the serotonin interaction, and the year wasted treating the wrong condition. Buying the strip skips all of it.

A large share of the men who come to me convinced they have premature ejaculation turn out to have something else driving it: an erection problem they are compensating for, a thyroid disorder, prostatitis, severe performance anxiety, or a relationship in trouble. A tablet does not touch any of those. This is why an andrologist or urologist assesses the man rather than the symptom — and it is the single reason self-prescribing fails so often.

Does dapoxetine actually work? What the trials show

Yes — and less impressively than you would expect from how it is sold.

The efficacy is real. Dapoxetine consistently beats placebo on latency, on perceived control, and on distress. But when you put it against its alternatives, it keeps coming second. Against daily paroxetine, it lost clearly (Safarinejad, 2006; Zhou, 2025). Against a topical lidocaine spray, it lost badly: mean latency reached 179.4 seconds with lidocaine versus 63.44 seconds with dapoxetine 60 mg, and when patients themselves were asked whether the treatment had worked, lidocaine was rated effective by 43 men and ineffective by 12, while dapoxetine was rated effective by 16 and ineffective by 39 (Alghobary, 2021).

That patient-rated figure is the one that changed how I think about this drug. Men in a controlled trial, receiving free medication and close follow-up, mostly said it did not work for them.

And whatever you take, the effect is rented, not owned. Every pharmacological option in this class delays ejaculation only while it is being used, and the problem returns on stopping (Gul, 2022).

How the options actually compare

Option	How it is taken	Typical effect on latency	Main drawback
Dapoxetine (on demand)	30–60 mg, 1–3 h before sex, max once daily	About a four-fold increase; 38 s to 179 s at 60 mg	Nausea and dizziness; fainting risk; you have to plan sex around a tablet
Daily SSRI (paroxetine, sertraline, fluoxetine)	One tablet daily, effect builds over 1–2 weeks	Largest gains of any drug class; paroxetine about 5.6 min	Off-label; sexual side effects; a daily commitment
Topical anaesthetic (lidocaine spray, EMLA)	Applied 10–15 min before sex, then wiped off	Largest on-demand effect; beat dapoxetine head-to-head	Numbness; transfer to your partner; can reduce erection quality
Behavioural and pelvic floor work	Ongoing practice, alone or with a therapist	Modest alone; best results combined with a drug	Needs time and effort; you need a willing partner
Combination (drug + behavioural, or drug + PDE5i)	As above, together	Beats any drug alone	More complex; needs supervision

On-demand versus daily: what I prescribe instead — and why

Let me state my position plainly, and then defend it.

I do not prescribe dapoxetine. I use a daily SSRI, and specifically fluoxetine.

The first half of that is not a controversial position — it is what the head-to-head data show. In the 12-week comparison, paroxetine 20 mg daily took mean latency from 31 seconds to 370 seconds while dapoxetine 60 mg reached 179 seconds, and the authors concluded that paroxetine provides significantly better results in latency and intercourse satisfaction than dapoxetine (Safarinejad, 2006). A 2025 crossover study, in which every man received both drugs in turn, reached the same conclusion — paroxetine was superior overall, and when patients were asked afterwards which they would rather stay on, 61.9% chose paroxetine against 26.8% for dapoxetine (Zhou, 2025). The umbrella review of the whole field puts paroxetine at the top of every drug studied, with a mean gain of 5.64 minutes (Raisi, 2025).

So the real argument is not dapoxetine versus nothing. It is on-demand versus daily, and daily wins.

Why I use fluoxetine and not paroxetine

I should be equally plain about the second half. Using fluoxetine for premature ejaculation is off-label. Dapoxetine is the only SSRI licensed for this indication anywhere (Raisi, 2025), and the British Society for Sexual Medicine explicitly takes issue with off-label daily SSRI use and favours on-demand dapoxetine (Hackett, 2025). A responsible page tells you that a respected national body disagrees with its author, so there it is.

And on the raw numbers, fluoxetine is not the strongest SSRI in this class. A meta-analysis of ten trials found fluoxetine clearly better than placebo, but sertraline and paroxetine more effective than fluoxetine (Liu, 2022).

So why fluoxetine?

Because latency in a trial is not the same as outcome in a life. Paroxetine buys those extra minutes at a price that, in my Indian patients, is consistently too high. I see severe erectile dysfunction and marked loss of libido on paroxetine — often enough that I stopped reaching for it. A man who has traded forty-second sex for eight-minute sex he no longer desires, and cannot reliably get hard for, has not been treated; he has been given a different problem.

Where my experience and the published data disagree

I want to be scrupulous here, because the literature does not currently say what I have just said. In the umbrella review, paroxetine carried the lowest adverse-event risk ratio of any treatment assessed (Raisi, 2025). The meta-analysis comparing the SSRIs found no significant difference in side effects between them (Liu, 2022).

So I am giving you a clinical observation from my own practice, in one population, over many years. It is not a trial result. It is not a contradiction I can resolve for you with a citation.

Why might they diverge? Trials count adverse events by asking a checklist question at a study visit. In my experience men do not volunteer that they have stopped wanting sex, and nobody asks them a second time. That gap is where my experience and the published numbers part company. You are entitled to weigh both.

What fluoxetine does better in day-to-day practice

Fluoxetine, in my hands, behaves better. Its long half-life forgives the missed dose that real men actually miss, and it is far kinder to come off than paroxetine, which is notorious for a rough discontinuation. The sexual side-effect burden I see with it is materially lighter. And it is once daily, which men keep taking.

Dr Shahs notes (from my clinical observation)

In my own practice, more than seven in ten men started on fluoxetine for premature ejaculation report a significant improvement in timing. That figure is my clinic’s experience, not a published trial result, and I am giving it to you as such. What I can tell you is that it is a far higher proportion than the men I have seen do well on on-demand dapoxetine — most of whom had already bought it themselves, taken it wrongly, and concluded the problem was untreatable. It usually is not.

To be clear about the boundary: this is not a page telling you to buy fluoxetine. It is prescription medication, off-label for this purpose, it needs a doctor who knows your history, and it interacts with a long list of other drugs. The point is that if dapoxetine has failed you, you have not run out of options — you have tried one option, the weakest of them, usually without supervision.

What about permanent damage? PSSD, honestly

Two of the most common questions Google is asked around this drug are whether paroxetine can cause permanent erectile dysfunction and whether the sexual side effects of Prozac are permanent. Men deserve a straight answer instead of silence, so here it is.

Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, PSSD, is a described syndrome in which sexual symptoms — reduced genital sensation, loss of sexual pleasure, low desire — persist or emerge after an SSRI is stopped. It is recognised in the literature, has attracted regulatory attention from the European Medicines Agency, and among cohorts of people who do develop it, symptoms have persisted beyond six months in a large majority (Xie, 2026).

Now the calibration, which matters just as much. A systematic review looking specifically at this question concluded that reliable prevalence estimates could not be determined and a cause-and-effect relationship between SSRI exposure and persistent sexual impairment could not be established — while also concluding that the possibility could not be excluded (Tarchi, 2023). In plain English: this is real enough to take seriously, rare enough that we cannot yet count it, and not proven to be caused by the drugs.

What that means for you practically: it is a reason to take any SSRI deliberately, at the lowest dose that works, under review, with a plan for stopping — not a reason to refuse treatment for a condition that is wrecking your relationship. It applies to dapoxetine too. It is a class issue, not a fluoxetine issue or a paroxetine issue.

What works better than any tablet alone

The most useful finding in this entire literature is not about which drug wins. It is that drugs alone lose to drugs plus everything else.

A 2025 meta-analysis of eight randomised trials found dapoxetine combined with non-pharmacological therapy significantly outperformed dapoxetine on its own — on latency, on diagnostic scores, and on how men rated their own control — with the added therapies including pelvic floor muscle training, biofeedback, electrical stimulation, shockwave therapy, desensitisation techniques and behavioural work (Nieves Martín, 2025). Combining dapoxetine with a PDE5 inhibitor beats dapoxetine alone as well (Mahesvara, 2025).

Topical anaesthetics deserve more respect than they get in India, where they are dismissed as unserious. In a randomised study of 273 men, lidocaine spray produced the largest latency increase, ahead of EMLA cream and benzocaine condoms (Hamarat, 2026) — and in the head-to-head above, topical lidocaine outperformed dapoxetine on both latency and patient satisfaction (Alghobary, 2021). The trade-off is transfer to your partner and some loss of sensation, which is why technique and washing off matter.

And the behavioural work — the stop-start method, the squeeze technique, pelvic floor training — is the only part of this that you keep after you stop treatment. Off-label SSRIs produce a modest but clinically meaningful delay that is limited by side effects and poor long-term adherence (Youssef, 2026). The skills do not wear off.

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When to see a doctor rather than order a tablet

See someone in person, rather than self-prescribing, if any of these apply to you.

Your premature ejaculation started recently after years of normal function — acquired premature ejaculation usually has a cause worth finding, from thyroid disease to prostatitis to an emerging erection problem. You also struggle to get or keep an erection. You have pain on ejaculation, blood in the semen, or urinary symptoms. You are on antidepressants, tramadol, or any other serotonergic medication. You have heart disease, liver disease or kidney disease. Or the distress is significant enough that it is affecting your mood, your sleep or your relationship — because at that point treating the tablet-sized part of the problem is not enough.

Premature ejaculation is one of the most treatable conditions I deal with. Lifelong premature ejaculation means ejaculation within about a minute of penetration, present since your first sexual experiences; acquired means it developed later, typically within about three minutes (Partin, 2025). Both respond to treatment. Neither responds well to a strip of tablets bought online at the wrong dose.

Frequently asked questions

Is dapoxetine good or bad?

It is a legitimate, licensed medicine that works better than placebo and less well than the alternatives it has been tested against. It is not dangerous in a healthy, properly screened man at 30 mg. It is a poor first choice, in my view, and a genuinely risky one when bought without screening.

Which drug is better than dapoxetine?

On latency, daily SSRIs outperform it (Safarinejad, 2006; Zhou, 2025). Topical lidocaine beat it on both latency and patient-rated effectiveness in a crossover trial (Alghobary, 2021). Which one I reach for depends on three things: whether you also have an erection problem, how often you have sex, and what side effects you can live with.

How long should I take dapoxetine?

It is taken only on the days you need it, never more than once in 24 hours. If it is not helping after a fair trial at the correct dose and timing, the answer is to change approach, not to keep escalating the dose.

Can I take dapoxetine regularly?

Not daily. It is licensed strictly as an on-demand drug and taking it more than once in 24 hours increases the risk of fainting and other adverse effects without adding benefit. If you want a daily approach, that is a different drug and a different conversation with your doctor.

Which antidepressant is best for premature ejaculation?

On trial evidence, paroxetine and sertraline produce the largest latency gains, ahead of fluoxetine, which in turn clearly beats placebo (Liu, 2022). In my own practice I use fluoxetine, because of the erectile and libido side effects I see with paroxetine in Indian men. All of these are off-label for this indication except dapoxetine.

Who cannot take dapoxetine?

Men with significant heart disease, moderate to severe liver impairment, severe kidney impairment, a history of mania or bipolar disorder, and anyone on MAO inhibitors, other SSRIs or SNRIs, thioridazine, lithium, tramadol, St John’s wort or potent CYP3A4 inhibitors. Also anyone under 18 or over 64, since the licence does not cover them.

Does dapoxetine cure premature ejaculation?

No. It delays ejaculation on the day you take it. Like every drug in this class, the effect ends when the drug is stopped (Gul, 2022). Behavioural and pelvic floor work, ideally combined with medication, is the part that produces lasting change (Nieves Martín, 2025).

References

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2. Mahesvara IBGA, Suarsana IW, Putra IBOW, Manuaba IBKP (2025). Efficacy and safety of on-demand dapoxetine combined with phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor compared to monotherapy dapoxetine as a treatment of premature ejaculation without erectile dysfunction: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Archivio italiano di urologia, andrologia : organo ufficiale [di] Societa italiana di ecografia urologica e nefrologica. PMID 41031773
3. Nieves Martín M, Marín Novoa P, Avendaño-Coy J (2025). Dapoxetine combined with non-pharmacological approaches for lifelong premature ejaculation. A systematic review and meta-analysis. The journal of sexual medicine. PMID 41020367
4. Gul M, Bocu K, Serefoglu EC (2022). Current and emerging treatment options for premature ejaculation. Nature reviews. Urology. PMID 36008555
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6. Liu Q, Gao H, Huang Y, Wang M, Jiang H, Dai Y, Zhang X (2022). Comparison of fluoxetine with other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in the treatment of premature ejaculation: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Andrologia. PMID 35760074
7. Alghobary M, Gaballah M, El-Kamel MF, State AF, Ismail SR, Selim MK, Mostafa T (2021). Oral dapoxetine versus topical lidocaine as on-demand treatment for lifelong premature ejaculation: A randomised controlled trial. Andrologia. PMID 32153050
8. Safarinejad MR (2006). Comparison of dapoxetine versus paroxetine in patients with premature ejaculation: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, fixed-dose, randomized study. Clinical neuropharmacology. PMID 16960468
9. Partin M, Clark R, Newman R, Silverberg B (2025). Male Sexual Disorders: Ejaculatory Disorders. FP essentials. PMID 40377952
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11. Martin-Tuite P, Shindel AW (2021). Management Options for Premature Ejaculation and Delayed Ejaculation in Men. Sexual medicine reviews. PMID 31668585
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13. Shaw J, Lai C, Bota P, Le A, Andricioaei A, Tran T, Allee T (2025). The Off-Label Use of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors for Sexual Behavior Management: Risks and Considerations. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland). PMID 41095519
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