We’ve all heard about the little blue pill (Viagra), but are you familiar with a product for women that has the same special powers? Meet Addyi—daily pill to help increase sexual desire in women from Sprout Pharmaceuticals, helmed by Cindy Eckert. Addyi has been FDA approved for treatment in premenopausal women since August 2015. On December 15, 2025 the FDA also approved Addyi for the treatment of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD) in postmenopausal women under 65 years of age. This landmark decision helps further close the gap between men and women’s sexual healthcare.
Throughout her career Eckert had helped build a male sexual health company, then looked around and realized that while there were 26 FDA-approved options for men, there were zero for women. The new documentary The Pink Pill: Sex, Drugs and Who Has Control dives into the gender bias in health and follows the journey of women who have improved their sex life with the use of Addyi.
The hope is that the documentary “lays bare just how hard it is to get a product approved for women,” Eckert tells us. She hopes it also sheds light on how “we’ve got to put an end to medical gaslighting that happens all the time,” Eckert tells us.
The ideal candidate for Addyi is someone who feels “I don’t think about sex anymore. It’s like this switch went out,” says Eckert. “They want to want to have sex, and they want to think about it and be excited about it again.” If this is you, she recommends seeing a doctor who can diagnose you with Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder and help you address it.
The Recent FDA Approval
The FDA approval granted on December 15 had been a long time coming. Eckert says this milestone reflects a decade of persistent work from her and her team with the FDA to fundamentally change how women’s sexual health is understood and prioritized. “I was in the room a decade ago when Addyi became the historic first for women’s sexual health, and I have been waiting for this moment ever since,” says board-certified New York urologist Rachel Rubin, MD in a press release. “So many of my postmenopausal patients have carried the weight of frustrating low sexual desire with no FDA-approved option to turn to. Today’s decision finally includes them. It’s a critical acknowledgment that their pleasure, their wellbeing and their quality of life matter—and that science-backed care should be available to every woman, at every stage of her life.” Board-certified Galveston, TX OB-GYN Mary Claire Haver, notes that “Expanding Addyi’s approval is historic in validating women’s experiences and ensuring that millions of women suffering have real choices when it comes to their sexual health.”
