If there’s one thing wellness has mastered, it’s making beverages stressful. We’re not just drinking smoothies anymore; we’re hand-blending adaptogenic cacao, paying Erewhon prices, and quietly hoping it fixes our guts, our sleep, and our childhood. So, of course, someone looked at that and thought: you know what this really needs? Horniness.
Enter Sex Dust, the Moon Juice powder that sounds like contraband at Burning Man but actually lives in the “add to your smoothie” aisle. It’s part of the brand’s Moon Dust line, a mix of shatavari, shilajit, maca, horny goat weed, schisandra, cacao, and stevia that promises to “ignite desire,” “target stress,” and “support healthy hormonal balance for all genders.” In theory, you dump it into your morning smoothie and your libido logs back into the mainframe. In practice, it’s a lot less magical than it sounds.
(Also, there are plenty of other kinds of “dusts.”)
What’s actually in this stuff?
On paper, Sex Dust is horny hot chocolate with herbs.
“The only thing I could find any real evidence for as far as libido/sexual dysfunction was maca. And even that has limited evidence,” says Claire Rifkin, MS, RDN, LDN, a New York–based women’s health dietitian and clinical director of Claire Rifkin Nutrition. “Everything else in the blend, she adds, “has tiny pockets of research, but it’s all like sex-adjacent sort of stuff, like cocoa possibly having a mild impact on mood.”
The other big selling point is the adaptogen angle: herbs that supposedly help the body handle stress so desire can come back online. “There is actually like a touch of real science there,” Rifkin says, “but I think there’s also a heavy dose of wellness marketing along with it.”
Some adaptogen trials show people feel less stressed, but that’s very different from “we fixed your hormones.” Feeling less stressed can absolutely help your sex life; it just doesn’t turn a powder into a prescription-grade libido drug.
The not-so-sexy fine print
The label copy is all soft-focus empowerment, but the safety stuff is not. Rifkin notes that shilajit has had “lots of reports of contaminated shilajit products. Namely lead contamination.” Horny goat weed “can impact blood pressure, which can lead to potential for heart arrhythmias,” which is especially dicey “in old men taking Viagra along with horny goat weed, because the two work on the same mechanism of action.”
There’s also a gender gap between how this is marketed and how it’s been studied. The branding leans hard into feminine vibes and promises support from PMS through perimenopause, but most of the limited libido data on ingredients like maca comes from studies in men, often focused on erectile function. “One of the biggest problems I see with this product is it feels like it’s marketed far more to women than men,” Rifkin says, while the science skews the opposite.
All of which is why she files Sex Dust firmly under “extra,” not “treatment.”
“A powder like this would be like a definitely-not-crucial-cherry-on-top to everything else,” she says. “If you genuinely have low sex drive the first place you should start is with your PCP or healthcare provider.” Once you’ve ruled out things like meds, mood disorders, pain, illness, and hormone shifts, “if you like really want to add in a powder for fun, and you’ve disclosed it to your healthcare team, and its safe for you, then sure, go for it.” But she adds, “I would never look at a powder like this as a first-line, or even second, or third, or fourth-line intervention for low-sex drive.”
If we’re ranking interventions for libido, Sex Dust is dessert. It might be fun, but it’s not dinner.
What you’re really buying
Zoom out from the herbs and you hit the actual engine behind this whole thing.
Sex therapist and intimacy coach Leigh Noren says, “I think they’re selling hope because low libido or an unsatisfying sex life can feel really disheartening. And, if we’re being cynical, preying on people’s insecurities about sex.” By the time clients get to her, a lot of them “come to me feeling broken, and oftentimes they’ve already tried all the quick fixes out there, like sexy lingerie, vitamins or ‘sex dust’ that’s meant to get their desire back–and they didn’t.”
Hope is crucial, she says, “but it’s, unfortunately, not enough.”
A surprising number of people who think they have “low libido” are actually dealing with the normal ebb and flow of desire in long-term relationships and mostly need reassurance that nothing is wrong with them. Others are genuinely unhappy—“sex used to light them up or make them feel closer to their partner,” Noren says, and when that fades, “life feels dull or it creates relationship anxiety and low self-esteem.”
Both groups are perfect customers for something called Sex Dust. A teaspoon of powder is way less confronting than saying “I feel ignored,” “I don’t know what turns me on anymore,” or “I’m resentful that I do everything at home.” You get to do something “for your libido” that’s low-effort, private, and doesn’t require talking about the actual relationship.
Noren actually likes people doing something intentional for their sex lives, and says intentionality is key. “However, that initial possible placebo effect usually doesn’t last very long at all, because desire is so much more complex than we’ve been led to believe,” she says. “If it was as simple as powders or vitamins, believe me, sex therapists like myself would be out of a job pretty quickly.”
She also side-eyes the way these products talk about “balancing hormones,” which she calls “a minefield—partly because it signals that desire is only biological (and it’s not – we’ve known this for decades)—and partly because balanced hormones isn’t really a thing.”
Instead of getting curious about their own bodies and erotic blueprints, people get pushed farther outward into products and fixes. As she puts it, “sex starts within—not with a powder.”
The ritual is real—but it’s not magic
From the perspective of somatic sex educator and intimacy coach Kiana Reeves, products like Sex Dust are selling a blend of both physiology and fantasy, “but the heavier lift is fantasy and hope.” She points out that “most of us carry a quiet longing for more connection, more spark, more ease in our sexual lives. When a product promises desire in a jar, it taps into that longing.” Adaptogens might “help modulate stress,” she says, but the real hook is the idea “that better sex is within reach” without having to face deeper emotional or relational layers.
She actually likes the ritual part too. “I think it’s one of the most valuable aspects of these products,” she says. “When you take something with the explicit purpose of supporting your sexual self, you shift your attention inward. You’re telling your body, ‘I’m prioritizing pleasure.’ That intention alone can create measurable changes—more awareness, more receptivity, more emotional openness.” Placebo, in her view, “isn’t a trick; it’s the mind-body connection working.”
The problem is when the jar becomes a stand-in for all the harder work: looking at stress, resentment, disconnection, and the fact that desire tends to evacuate the premises when you’re exhausted and feel like a walking to-do list. Chronic stress and stress hormones absolutely suppress sex drive, but so do things like never feeling appreciated or never getting time alone. No powder is strong enough to override that.
Before you hit “add to cart”
So where does that leave you, staring at the product page and wondering if this is the thing that will finally make you horny again?
Annoyingly, the real work starts with questions that have nothing to do with superfoods. Are you exhausted all the time? Do you and your partner mostly talk about chores? Do you feel pressure to perform sexually even when you’re not in the mood? Are you on meds that can crush desire and nobody mentioned it?
Those aren’t questions a powder can answer. They’re also not questions wellness brands want you sitting with for very long; it’s much easier to sell “hormone balance” than “you’re resentful, touched out, and your phone is the third person in your relationship.”
If you’ve talked to a doctor, ruled out the big medical stuff, maybe checked in with a therapist or sex educator, and you still want to try Sex Dust because it seems fun? Fine. In that context, it’s just another little thing in a world that does not exactly encourage you to prioritize pleasure. Just loop in your clinician if you’ve got heart or blood-pressure issues, are pregnant or nursing, or are on meds that could clash with the herbs.
But if you’re pinning all your hopes on this jar, you’re setting yourself up for heartbreak it was never designed to prevent. Sex Dust might make your smoothie look moodier and your morning feel more intentional. The stuff that actually moves the needle—sleep, less stress, honest conversations, better sex scripts, medication tweaks, figuring out what actually turns you on—comes in much less Instagrammable packaging.
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