Which has had the bigger cultural impact: the invention of the female birth control pill in the 1960s, or the introduction of Viagra in the late 1990s? Which has been more critical to social evolution: that women got the right to say no to babies, or that men can now escape an ancient and hoary male stigma?

Freedom from motherhood spawned a massive cultural revolution that's changed both workplaces and families. The pill permanently affected the balance of power in both love and war between the sexes. Now, compare that change to what Viagra has wrought: A guaranteed hard-on for Bob Dole? Endless cyborg sex for club fucks? Grumpy and sore trophy wives?

If you answered the pill, you're right. But not for long. The pill gave a large measure of independence to women. But Viagra is doing just the opposite for men. Millions now depend on so-called lifestyle drugs like Viagra, Levitra and Cialis just to make them normal. Or better than normal, which for some is the new standard.

Just about everyone loves Viagra. Old men, young men, older women and young ones. But every drug, from antibiotics to the birth control pill, has come with a cost. What's Viagra's? In all the excitement, almost no one has asked.

An estimated 20 million men in America regularly pop the blue one, needed or not. That's a staggeringly big number, and it could potentially get even larger. Some 34 percent of all men aged 40 to 70 are said to need the drug for medical purposes. But according to Viagra-maker Pfizer, 80 percent of men who actually need Viagra haven't yet asked for it.

And as boomers slide toward their dotage, Viagra will be there when they need it, or even if they don't.

Pfizer has coined a lot of gold with the little blue diamond. It's their biggest seller and pulls in about $2 billion a year. That alone should catch your attention. Because while everyone is saluting a huge drug company, they're not guarding their wallets.

More than a modern pharmacological miracle, Viagra is also a huge marketing success. And the market is expanding. What began as a biological boost for those in medical need quickly became a standard accessory at clubs.

For ravers, Viagra is an antidote for street drugs like Ecstasy—which leaves men willing but unable. Down a Viagra in advance of a deluge of funky pharmaceuticals, and you can still get it on.

From urban clubs, the blue diamond has made its way into the bedrooms of mainstream America. Prepping for a date, you pop one, just to be sure. Presto, change-o: It's romance without effort, love on demand, with apologies (on either side) never necessary, nor even acceptable.

Me? According to the pop quiz on the Viagra site, I don't need it. But I had to try, because you feel like a freak if you haven't. And, yeah, I liked it. It's awesome having a middle-aged mind attached to a teenaged dick. It's dumb fun, and therefore easily addictive—which is why I stay away.

For all its powers, for some men (including me) Viagra is unnerving because you don't get the ebb and flow (so to speak) of conventional sex. Your dick is just there, a tool to use till you're through. Once all concerned are happy, there's an even greater disconnect between you and, uh, it. It stays ready even if you're no longer willing. Which is as powerful as it is alienating.

Viagra makes some men feel invincible. It can make you feel like a sexual cyborg: physically better than normal, even if less than normal emotionally. But the appeal is real, which is why Viagra's recreational use continues to grow.

But if you believe Pfizer, it's not possible for Viagra to have a recreational use. (Now, stop laughing.) The company claims that Viagra does nothing for healthy men. But here's the rub, the knot in the logic that gets you to open your wallet: If you do feel an effect, they say, you must have lost some sexual function, and therefore you need it.

Which millions of men (including me) will tell you is bullshit. Viagra can and does take normal men beyond what's normal, and for Pfizer to say otherwise is a classic marketing gambit of creating anxiety over a pseudo-problem for which they happen to hold the cure. The old, pre-Viagra normal is now subpar, which means you have to keep taking their pill just to keep up.

So what's it to be: a new normal? Take Viagra to ease the anxiety about not taking it? All this, and zipless fucking, too? Look, I don't begrudge those with actual disabilities. And it's fine by me if club fucks, sexual acrobats and hump-happy tourists want to enhance their pleasure.

But I'm worried that everyone loves Viagra. It's so quick, so easy, painless and safe.

Now, where have I heard that before?