Hris London remembers the first time an impotence drug came to his emotional rescue. A 41-year-old lawyer and executive recruiter in Manhattan, Mr. London had been on a few dates with a lawyer who told him she couldn't judge a man without first having sex with him. The two made plans to meet after work, and Mr. London said he felt pretty certain about what was going to happen. He also felt not a little anxious.

"She was very wired — a Samantha on `Sex and the City'-type thing," he said. "She made it like it was this test — like passing the bar. I'm thinking to myself, I haven't had this sort of performance anxiety since I was 17."

Thanks to a doctor friend, Mr. London happened to have a tablet of Viagra on hand, and he darted into the bathroom and gulped the blue pill. It worked as billed, and later that evening, Mr. London said, he overheard his date giving his performance a rave in a phone call to a friend.

"In this city there's a lot of pressure to look good, to make money and to perform well," Mr. London said. "It's just one more added thing to give you more masculine, virile attributes and to have that insurance."

Mr. London is not one of the 15 million to 30 million American men who, by estimates of the National Institutes of Health, have impotence, or what drug makers call erectile dysfunction — the repeated inability to maintain an erection suitable for intercourse. Nor is he simply a thrill-seeking recreational user, curious about impotence drugs' supposedly wondrous physical effects.

Rather, he is one of an increasing number of sexually healthy men, many in their 20's, 30's and 40's, who doctors and sex therapists say are using impotence drugs — Viagra, Levitra and the new Cialis, a k a "the weekender" because it stays in the bloodstream for 36 hours — as psychological palliatives against the mighty expectations of modern romance.

Some of these men use the drugs when they are not feeling 100 percent virile, others to stave off anxieties that occur with a first-time partner, and still others to fend off what might be called the Samantha complex, a fear of wilting in the face of a new wave of sexually empowered women.

"There is an increased anxiety among young men because this generation of women is more open to erotica, more articulate about their own needs," said Megan Fleming, a former director of the sexual health and rehabilitation program at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and a clinical psychologist and sex therapist whose practice focuses on people under 40. "That contributes to men's anxiety, because they think they're being evaluated in a different way."

Ms. Fleming said it was not uncommon for her younger male patients to admit using impotence drugs as psychological safety nets. "It's men believing these myths of male sexuality," she said. "The myth of the man is always interested in sex, always ready to go and having to be a quote-unquote superman."

The issues are much the same for gay men as well. "I have no erectile dysfunction," said a 54-year-old gay Manhattan professional who uses Viagra regularly. "A lot of it's about the sexual adventure — you want to have sex for four or five hours. It relieves any concern about performance."

About 10 percent of the 16 million prescriptions written for Viagra in the United States since it was introduced in 1998 have been for men under 39, according to Pfizer, its manufacturer. Some prescriptions were for patients with severe impotence problems traceable to childhood-onset diabetes, pelvic or spinal trauma, or the use of antidepressants. But many men under 40 who receive prescriptions have no serious medical conditions at all, according to Dr. John Mulcahy, a professor of urology at Indiana University Medical Center. Eighty percent of impotence drug prescriptions are written by general practitioners, he said, and since the drugs are considered relatively safe, many doctors ask few questions.

"Most family doctors don't know a lot about E.D.," he said, using the shorthand for erectile dysfunction. "They'll say to a 21 year-old: `You want Viagra? Fine — what else is bothering you?' "

And many younger users are not included in statistics because they avoid doctors' offices altogether, getting impotence drugs anonymously through online pharmacies or from local dealers who peddle the pills on classified-listings Web sites. In some cases, they even deliver.

Contrary to some men's expectations, impotence drugs do not enhance libido; they work by increasing blood flow to the penis. Users have to become sexually excited to initiate the response, and after intercourse, typically lose their erections as they would without the drugs.

Sex therapists say a number of things could be contributing to the use of the drugs by otherwise healthy young men. Exposure to pornography, some speculated, has desensitized some men to less extreme sexual stimuli.

For men in cities like New York, experts said, the acceleration of dating rhythms — fueled by the ease of social introductions through work, friends and the frenetic marketplace of online dating — can contribute to the jitters. Studies show that 75 percent of impotence cases in men under 35 are "psychogenic," or caused by psychological factors. (In men over 50, the figure is 15 percent.) Ms. Fleming said such impotence is common with new sexual partners, when men are acutely sensitive to the possibility that they are being judged. "Whenever you're with a new partner, there's normal anxiety," she said. " `How does she feel about me? What is she interested in?' "

A 34-year-old consultant from Brooklyn said those very questions prompted him to try Viagra over a year ago. He now keeps a supply, and just this week received his first batch of Cialis from a online pharmacy he found through a Google search. (Though the drug, made by Lilly Icos, was approved for sale by the Food and Drug Administration in late November, it will not be widely available in the United States for another month.) The consultant likened taking the drugs in New York to having snow tires on your car in a blizzard-prone region.

"You don't have to worry about some swift turn of events that would cause you to lose it," he said. "We live in a crazy, high-velocity world, and if you're dating in New York right now, there are no road rules. It's a very tumultuous sexual arena, and it's exhausting."

The consultant, who asked not to be named because he was uncomfortable discussing his sex life publicly, said Viagra also helped during a brief fling with a woman who enjoyed sex in public places. "If you want to do anxiety-ridden, kinky sex, it can be really helpful," he said.

It's a long a way from Bob Dole, the former Senator and presidential candidate who in 1998 began appearing in Viagra ads sponsored by Pfizer. The company now projects a younger image; it advertises at Nascar races, and last year it hired Rafael Palmeiro, 39, the former Texas Rangers infielder, as a spokesman. Mr. Palmeiro has said that he has tried Viagra, but didn't need it.

Levitra, made by Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline, has been running ads during National Football League games showing a man trying to throw a football through a tire. Levitra pitches itself as a drug that improves not just erectile function but "erection quality," which some doctors say suggests more a lifestyle concern than a medical one. The drug's slogan, "When you're in the zone, it's all good," invokes a bit of slang — "It's all good" — more likely to be heard at a Phish concert than at an AARP convention.

Even so, the companies behind the drugs deny that they pitch to younger men or promote their pills as lifestyle enhancers, rather than for serious medical conditions.

"If someone has a discussion with a physician and their physician agrees that this is an appropriate prescription for that person, we support the doctor's position," said Mariann Caprino, a spokeswoman for Pfizer. "Have we gone out and given our advertising agency instructions to speak to this young population? No, we haven't."

But some sex therapists say the drugs can be valuable tools in helping young men overcome psychologically based impotence. Studies show that the drugs are 80 percent successful in such cases. "It helps their confidence enough that they can relax," said Carolynn Hillman, a Manhattan sex therapist.

Ms. Fleming said some men may use the drugs to mask deeper psychological or relationship issues that might be better dealt with in therapy. Some of her patients who use impotence drugs without their partners' knowledge also live in constant fear of being found out, she said.

As it is, many young users engage in their own personal trials with little medical guidance, testing dosages and brands in the impotence-drug equivalent of the Pepsi Challenge. Mr. London, who said he preferred Viagra to Levitra, also said he had learned that side effects common to all three drugs — among them headaches, bloodshot eyes and flushed cheeks — can vary with the size of a dose. Mr. London said that when partners asked him why his cheeks turned red, "you have to say, `It's a little hot in here.' "

Among gay men, suspicions can be particularly acute, since both partners might have taken the drugs and are familiar with their effects, which frequently include particularly firm erections. "I've been in situations where someone will say, `You must be using Viagra,' " said the gay Manhattan professional. "I wouldn't say I didn't, but I wouldn't say I did — that's part of the allure, that it's part of your natural ability."

But even those who successfully keep their use of impotence drugs secret from their partners have found that the medications only go so far in making relationships work. A 43-year-old Manhattan writer said he took a model he was dating to a Catskills hotel, along with a bottle of Viagra. They spent a sex-crazed week there, he said, but days after the trip, the relationship failed.

"She had no idea what made me superman," he said. "It was just unfortunate that we didn't have much to talk about afterward."

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