In Which I Test SINsual Shot, A Slightly Sketchy Herbal Aphrodisiac

If you've ever wondered whether or not I'll ingest things that show up in the mail, the answer is yes. Last night I took an erotic herbal energy drink called SINsual Shot; it's Chocolate Mint flavored, and it's surprisingly effective.

At first glance, SINsual Shot seems like a 5-Hour Energy Drink knockoff you would find next to the Enzyte display on the counter your local head shop. It also packs about the same wallop of B-vitamins as 5-Hour Energy, but the comparison ends there. The fun stuff in the SINsual Shot comes from a familiar list of ingredients: Mucuna Pruniens extract, Maca root extract, GABA, ginseng, and—everyone's favorite—Horny Goat Weed. Unlike many other products that contain these ingredients, SINsual Shots are not gender-specific, and I think that's dandy.

Now, I live near a Vitamin Shoppe, I have a lot of free time, so I've taken a handful of freaky herbs in my day. My girlfriend, who requested to be called Luna Lovegreat, has not taken any freaky herbs, but she was nice enough to drink one of the two SINsual Shots I brought home.

"I don't know," said Luna. "I don't want to feel like humping everyone I see."
"It's not like that. We'll probably just feel flushed and a little spaced out."
"Then what?"
"Then we try to have sex, probably not successfully, then eventually we'll get over ourselves and have sex."
"That's it?"
"Well, that's where I should be taking notes. Either the sex will be extra good because we'll have extra blood flowing down there, or we'll just feel flushed and a little spaced out."
"Where are they selling this?"
I consulted my PR document. "Gas stations."

10:51 PM: We take our SINsual Shots. I take Chocolate Mint—which has 100% real cocoa powder and tastes like dank NyQuil—and my girl takes Forbidden Fruit—which is actually rather tasty. I've been told by the SINsual Shot Twitter that I can make a SINsualChocoMintTini by simply mixing in my fave vodka, so I do.

11:13 PM: I'm lying down, reading. I can start to feel my heart beating in my head. I ask Luna how she's doing and we start a long conversation in which we talk rather quickly. As time goes on, I notice that the SINsual Shot—probably the ginseng in it—is giving me considerable focus, and I feel like I could do a lot of writing.

11:24 PM: Luna declares, "I have a sense of dread and it won't go away." She insists it's due to anxieties from earlier in the day, but I have my doubts.

11:40 PM:: Nothing definite yet, but Luna says she's feeling touchy-feely. "Or is it the just the expectation to feel it?" she asks. We fear that we'll never have sex again because we're so paranoid about the placebo effect.

11:42 PM: We're sitting on the bed, studying each other. "We're like lab rats who want to fuck each other," she says. She is right, so we go for it.

I won't get into the details because this post isn't about me and my life, it's about the SINsual Shot. To summarize, there wasn't anything unusual about the sex itself, but the orgasm was quite intense. There was a long build before climax, and although the website warned me that I "may experience warmth that will come over the body," I was not prepared to feel the blood sizzle on my face and shoot down my spine.

Luna's experience differed: she wasn't all red and sweaty like me, but she had a big smile. "I was trying not to like it, but that was really good."
"Good how?" I was sweating a little on my notepad.
"Like I felt really...empathetic. Like we were really close and could share what we were feeling without trying to guess."

Why didn't I feel like that? Herbal ingredients are sensitive—they affect everyone differently, and the same person can have two different experiences from trial to trial—so it could be that. Or maybe the drugs weren't working at all and I just happen to be a benevolent, empathy-inducing sex god.

So we had a few sips of water and had sex again. And again. And some other times. Each of my orgasms felt like jumping into a burning tower of charcoal, and each of Luna's orgasms were extra-long, muscle flexing ordeals.

The SINsual Shot definitely reduces recovery time and increases stamina, and it's hard to complain about a product that A) delivers what it promises and B) allows you to have an unusually sexy Tuesday night, but the headache I worked up makes me hesitate to try this shot again. Plus, when 3 AM rolled around, I thought that I wanted to go to take some Advil and go to sleep, but it turned out that I wanted to have more sex. I know it's my fault for taking a dose of stimulants close to bedtime—and I woke up feeling oddly fine after only three hours of sleep—but honestly, who would whip up a batch of SINSualChocoMintTinis before 9PM?

I still have my reservations about this stuff, and I'm strongly opposed to the aesthetic of the bottle and the capitalization of the "sin" in SINsual, but I have to say that I'm pleased with the experience overall. I don't think I could handle myself in public under the influence of a SINsual Shot, but I'd stash a couple bottles of Forbidden Fruit at home for those quiet nights when I feel like becoming a benevolent, empathy-inducing sex god.

· SINsual Shot (sinsualshot.com)

[Thumbnail photo by John B. Root (rebootcash.com)]