A couple weeks ago, I received an email intended for male gamers: “Who has time for dates or Tinder hookups, right? While you are playing, step your game up a notch with any of the products from the Aneros’ arsenal of prostate massagers. Sounds outrageous, but it’s actually a perfect pairing.”
Not surprisingly, the email was sent on behalf of Aneros, the first company to manufacture hands-free prostate massagers, the perfect sex toy for gamers whose hands are otherwise occupied by remote controls. And while pleasure is obviously a key component to the prostate massage experience, Aneros actually got its start making therapeutic medical devices for men suffering from prostatitis, a painful inflammation of the prostate. Aneros, in fact, is an orgasm-oriented offshoot of that original anal massager, called a Pro-State, which still exists today (the difference between the two is branding more than design).
The Pro-State’s evolution from medical device to sex toy was led by Forrest Andrews, a man who suffered from chronic prostatitis until his 40s. That’s when he discovered the Pro-State and two seminal (yes, pun intended) things happened: 1) His prostatitis symptoms were finally relieved; and 2) he experienced a massive orgasm (courtesy of the Pro-State) he calls “The Super O.” The orgasm was so seismic that Aneros hired him as an R&D tester to help market the Pro-State beyond doctor’s offices. Today, that marketing extends to gamers. I recently spoke to Andrews, who is now an executive at Aneros, about the health benefits of prostate stimulation, the men who wear their prostate massagers to the office and why they pair as well with video games as Mountain Dew.
What did you try for your prostatitis before the Pro-State?
In my 20s, I was on one antibiotic after another and tried every treatment available. At one point, I was on the same antibiotic for two years. I then went the nutritional route and restricted my diet, but that didn’t work either. Prostatitis is one of those things that’s difficult for a regular allopathic-based treatment to deal with, so I started investigating holistic avenues and happened upon Aneros. At the time, it was marketed as a health product and called the Pro-State. But strangely enough, I had an absolutely insane orgasms one of the first times I used it, shocking the hell out of me.
How does prostate massage treat prostatitis?
The product works in the same way that prostate massages administered by physicians or administers works. It increases circulation in the prostate. There’s a theory that when a part of your body is inflamed, you build up micro-calcifications, which are basically calcium deposits. This happens in your muscles wherever the inflammation occurs in the body, but in the prostate, these things can become resident there. And when this happens, it begets more inflammation over time. The gentle massage of the prostate helps eliminate some of that.
Before the advent of antibiotics, prostate massage was the most common way of treating prostatitis. But then it got shelved. Pro-State began when a urologist in Asia theorized that if men were able to do this in the privacy of their own home, they’d do it more often and perhaps have greater benefit. He got in contact with an inventor and created this product. That inventor started our company.
So the orgasm was just a bonus?
Exactly. I had no idea. It was enlightening — to say the least. I couldn’t believe it was happening at first. It was beyond my frame of reference. That’s why I reached out to the company and was like, “What gives?” I wasn’t alone either. For several years, it existed as a health device, but tons of calls came in from men like me, reporting this interesting side effect. A lot of them were talking about whole body orgasms completely different than their usual orgasm experiences. These non-ejaculatory orgasms started in the pelvis and radiated all over the body. Aneros got so many of these calls they decided they’d start marketing the product as an erotic device as well.
How has the massager changed since you began using it?
The first device used stainless steel wires that were looped as handles on the outside. It was hands-free, but it has external tabs that hit your P-spot, the perineum, and your K-spot, the kundalini spot, which is another acupressure point on the other side of your anus. My involvement with the company began when I told them that one of these tabs was too long and engaged too close to the scrotum. It wasn’t resting firmly on the P-spot.
I tested several generations of these devices. Sometimes I’d get sent a variety of prototypes and choose which one felt and worked the best. Using the device creates a positive feedback loop, and you can get to a point where you can have involuntary reactions to the device.
I should say one other thing, too: The device over a period of time trains one’s body to have this experience. Long ago, I coined the term “tantric training wheel.” That’s really what our products are like. You can come to a point where you’ve had the experience of a full-body orgasms free of ejaculation so often that you can use almost any type of stimulation to induce it. I even have it with thought if I focus my mind on it.
Why did you start marketing this to gamers?
We have an online product forum with a chat room feature, and there was a lot of talk about guys who were using the product while gaming. Basically, the forum has revealed that some guys use these devices actively and others passively. Active means they wear their massagers while having sex or masturbating. They’re using them to amp up the traditional orgasm — meaning an orgasm with ejaculation. Passive means inserting the device and letting your body react to it.
Men in our chatroom were talking about experiencing these insane orgasms while gaming and having a terrific time doing it. I don’t know much about the games they choose to play while feeling these sensations, but I did see mention of a South Park game recently.
What other topics are popular on the Aneros forum right now?
Some guys who enjoy passively using the massagers love wearing them out into the real world. This means they’ll start their day by inserting the product before they leave their houses and go to work. I will say, it could be rather conspicuous to have one of those orgasms at work. At least it’s not something I could ever experience discreetly. It’s absolutely impossible. I mean, everybody would know about it.
The other thing guys chat about on the forum is nipple stimulation. Men are really into nipple stimulation. A lot of guys, myself included, are orgasmic from nipple play. It can give me a full-body orgasm. These are orgasms without ejaculation. They also don’t have a refractory period, meaning it’s a way men can become multiply orgasmic.
Why don’t more men know about non-ejaculatory orgasms?
It’s because ejaculation is so easy for a man to access. It’s a pushbutton type of gratification. It’s a strong physiological response rooted in a biological imperative around procreation, not necessarily pleasure. But having different kinds of orgasms opens up a world of opportunity. The truth is, if you can master full-body orgasms, it makes you a much more interesting sexual partner. You can keep up with a multi-orgasmic female partner and experience some really powerful sex together.
Tierney Finster
Tierney Finster is a journalist, screenwriter, actor and model from Los Angeles, California. She is a contributing writer at MEL, specializing in love, sex, mental health, drugs, queer culture and the cannabis industry. She has written for publications such as Playboy, Purple, Dazed and Confused, Jezebel and Broadly and was the key researcher behind Sex On, HBO’s revival of its iconoclastic docu-series Real Sex.
