A new Sex trend among college students is getting attention on TikTok − and it has doctors worried.

That trend is using honey packets, a controversial supplement marketed for sexual enhancement. In a TikTok with over 400,000 views, students at Arizona State University snicker as they either tout having taken the supplement themselves or note its use on campus.

"Hey, man never tells his secrets; I can't say," is what one college student would say when asked if he has taken it, before smiling and walking out of camera focus.

But the doctors, however, do not smile much. The US Food and Drug Administration issued warnings recently about multiple brands of honey packets due to hidden drugs in the ingredients.

'Honey Packets' For Sex Are Dangerous

According to this TikTok, ASU students aren't unfamiliar with honey packets. One guy in the video says he took a bunch in one night.

But honey packets aren't exactly new, and there's no shortage of brands one can buy at liquor stores or truck stops, much to doctors' dismay.

"It's crazy," says Dr. Jesse Mills, a health science clinical professor and the director of the Men's Clinic at the University of California, Los Angeles. "You can go to any liquor store and truck stop and buy a honey packet, and you have no idea what's in there."

Mills explains, this is what makes the packets so deadly − it's just that tadalafil is an extremely potent drug against erectile dysfunction but could severely cause deaths when taken along with other drugs.

"If any college student is having questions about how well they're performing sexually, they should be evaluated by a sexual health specialist, and we can determine how much of it is something physiologic that we can treat or how much of it is something that we need to address from a more psychological standpoint," Mills says.

Why Are College Students Touting 'honey Packets' For Sex?

The honey packets discourse online raises an important question: Why should young men want to use honey packets in the first place, assuming they do not have a sexual health issue?

"These young guys need honey packs?" one TikTok commenter said. "Normalizing ED (or, erectile dysfunction) is crazy," another commented. "A college kid taking a honey packet is not a flex, I would be embarrassed to admit that," another added.

Doctors say the honey packet interest among college students speaks to insecurities many young men feel around sex, as well as their desire to fit in among peers. Hookup culture in particular, they say, may be to blame for young men feeling more pressure in the bedroom: Not only are they worried about pleasing their partner, they also might have concerns about how they compare to other people their partner has slept with before.

"They're not thinking about having sexual dysfunction," Mills says. "They're thinking about how can I perform, how can I be better than I was or better than other partners that this person has had, and it's more of an internal competition. It has nothing to do with their erectile dysfunction."

To those who have this kind of insecurity, they need to understand that taking a honey packet is not the way.

"For a college student, if they already are having difficulty achieving an erection and maintaining it for intercourse, then that's a big health problem that needs to be addressed," Mills says. "But if they think that it's just going to help them last longer, help them party harder, then it's probably not going to work unless they really believe in it − in which case, anything works, because the placebo effect is incredibly powerful."