Asking For A Friend

ED is a tricky thing that a lot of people don't quite understand.

Medical ED is a vascular issue - the drugs used to treat it are vascular drugs (you might've heard that viagra was developed as a heart medication) These drugs just open up the blood vessels to allow for better flow. Viagra, Cialis, et al will not GIVE you an erection, they only make one POSSIBLE. If you're not mentally aroused, popping a little blue pill won't do anything. Pumps and rings work the same way - they increase or restrict blood flow, but you've got to be aroused/wanting the erection for it to work.

Psychological ED is a mental issue that medical interventions will not solve. Knowing which you're dealing with can be fairly simple - if you get sleep erections or "morning wood", or you can get erections solo, then your body is physically working fine. If those have stopped it may be worth seeing a doctor.

If it's a mental issue it may be worth seeing a therapist. I understand that in either case it can be embarrassing and unfortunately that embarrassment is just going to make things worse.

Outside of professional help, my bet advice is to try to take a radical approach of de-centering your erection altogether. The very first time you couldn't get or maintain an erection very likely set off a cycle in your head of worry, anxiety, shame, fear, disappointment, etc. Our brains learn patterns and once they latch onto something it's really hard to make them let go. The next time you wanted to get an erection you probably had the thought - if only for a split second - of "I hope this doesn't go like last time", or if you easily achieved an erection you might've thought "thank god this wasn't a repeat of last time."

Those thoughts, tiny as they may have been, stick in your brain, and it starts to learn that approaching sex/masturbation comes with anxiety or shame or guilt or fear. Your brain doesn't want you to have those things, it wants to protect you. In a misguided way, it wants you to stop trying to have sexual interactions because it's mistakenly learned to believe that they are bad for you, so the next time a sexual encounter is a possibility, your brain's not going to give you an erection, it accidentally learned that sex makes you feel bad. It is just a computer made of meat, after all. Sometimes it fucks up.

De-centering the erection can help reboot the computer. If you're not even trying to have one, then there's no "will I or wont I?" anxiety. It gives your brain a chance to observe and learn that actually sexual exploration is fun and good and pleasurable and it doesn't have to put up those shields to protect you from the bad emotions when sex appears on the table. You're basically playing a game of "you'll find it as soon as you stop looking for it" - but it's your erection, not your lost car keys.
Whether partnered or solo, it can still feel plenty good to just be touched! You may also find that you can have an orgasm without an erection (most easily achieved through prostate stimulation but even some penile stimulation can still result in a non-erection orgasm if you're not into anal play) Try vibrators, they're for penises too! Any wand or bullet style vibe is suitable, but Hot Octopuss's wrap-around masturbators were specifically developed for folks with ED so that you don't have to penetrate something.

Not stressing about the erection is a process, don't expect to try it once and be cured. It can take a little while to re-wire the brain, to let go of the very-not-arousing stress of not being able to get or maintain erection, the disappointment or even grief of coming to a point in life where you don't feel like you can rely on your body anymore, like things are happening out of your control. This is especially hard if you've spent 5 decades in a society that is constantly pushing a message of "manliness" or "strength" or sexual prowess being directly related to your bodyily functions, and now they're not cooperating with you. Try to be patient and understanding with yourself. It sounds counter-productive to give up on erection as a means to get it back, but the more you stress about it and try to force it, the further away you get from being able to achieve it, because all that struggle is just slamming on the brakes in your brain and reinforcing its idea that this is bad and should be avoided rather than just giving you the erection you want and remedying the whole issue.

Erotica is a bit outside my niche. That said, I know that Fetlife.com has a long list of Erotica groups that could certainly fill that request. Reddit is also has some pretty active communities. Both platforms can offer just the basic "erotica" forum or you can try to narrow it down further to kinky erotica, femdom, etc. If it's less erotica and more personal writing/essays both of those platforms are still good options, you'd just swap out "erotica" for "writing/journaling/essays/etc"