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Ni attributes the explosive interest in natural performance enhancements to a number of things: deep-seated grass-roots discontent with the current traditional medical establishment; an aging boomer population open to alternative healing; and scary side effects associated with Viagra. There is also the steady East-meets-West current sweeping ancient Asian practices across the Pacific Rim to California, where they take root and flourish before taking flight, like so many spores, to other distant lands. One of the more prominent examples of this is the fleet of medical graduates who've studied Asian medicine at traditional universities, and the graduates from universities of Chinese medicine that have cropped up all over America in the last five years. Now working in the field, these health practitioners are more likely to view the body systemically rather than symptomatically. (Chinese medicine views the body as a system that is treated as a whole, rather than as an ensemble of component parts whose symptoms are treated separately. Historically, Chinese doctors were only paid when their patients were well.)

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My own experience with deer antler velvet was promising but inconclusive. I brought some deer velvet elixir back to France after a three-month absence from my husband. It is hard to know if it was the deer velvet, or the absence, that made both our hearts grow fonder. I was aware, however, of a steady swell of increased energy that would have been squelched by jet lag under normal circumstances. My husband, on the other hand, walked around every morning looking down at his erection and asking, "Is this deer velvet, or am I just happy to see you?" For its many reputed happy benefits we are anxiously awaiting our next bottle of deer velvet.

My other friends, all of them similar tail-end boomers with kids, heavy workloads and long-term spousal units, had more conclusive results. One of them is a serious skeptic of "alternative" products who has become a deer-velvet devotee. "I feel juicier!" she exclaimed as she swerved through traffic on our way to the Tea Garden. "I feel an overall sensual charge everywhere, down to the tips of my armhair!"

Another girlfriend described her feelings differently. "I have felt more sexual and I really notice it," she said. "Not in a 'Get the fire hoses out!' kind of way, but in a subtle, 'Oh! Hmmm, uh huh ...' kind of way."

We humans have brought entire species to the brink of extinction in our quest for products that give us that "Oh! Hmmm, uh huh ..." kind of feeling. The natural and animal kingdom, in all its abundant and flamboyant manifestations, has always provided raw material for us. (Lest we forget, the sexy, sultry smell of musk comes from the musk pod, a preputial gland found in a pouch in the abdomen of a male musk deer.) As modern science continues its trek through the wilderness of ancient medicine, deer velvet may one day end up a common household item. "Before long it will probably be as thoroughly studied and written about as ginseng, echinacea and St. John's Wort," says Davidson. "Science is catching up, albeit painstakingly, with Chinese medicine, which does not need to isolate properties in order to know its precise effect on the body. I guess a 5,000-year-old discipline has had plenty of time to understand these things intimately."

Unlike the traditional Chinese, traditional Western doctors are more likely to associate deer antler velvet with a stag's head perched in taxidermic rigor mortis on the wall of a hunting lodge than to any potentially beneficial medical application. My local generalist, who'd never heard of the substance, looked at me with a slight smirk when I spoke of it. "Deer antler velvet will only be accepted by the medical community after it's gone through years of rigorous testing," he said, "including double-blind tests like all other traditional pharmaceutical products on the market."

But as our conversation progressed, he began to wax poetic about the prolific generosity of Mother Nature. "Well over half the pharmaceutical products we use came from nature before being synthetically reproduced -- from plants, fruits, animals. Medical researchers, particularly those involved in cancer research, continue to look everywhere for natural sources with curative properties: in Amazonian forests, in Pacific coral reefs. Some of these substances are bizarre. A highly effective antibiotic was recently created using properties found on toad skin. And penicillin, after all, was first discovered on bread mold. So deer antler velvet -- well, who knows?"
salon.com | Oct. 9, 1999

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