Wanna light her fire? Try sparking up.
A new study published this week in the journal Sexual Medicine suggests that the psychoactive plant and other tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-based derivatives can help women with sexual dysfunction achieve orgasm. Female participants who consumed cannabis before sexual activity with a partner were able to reach climax more frequently and with greater ease, and felt overall more satisfied with their orgasms, researchers found.
This research was personal for author Suzanne Mulvehill, executive director of the Female Orgasm Research Institute and founder of the Women’s Cannabis Project.
“I was interested in this topic because it was cannabis that helped me overcome my own orgasm difficulty, something I tried to overcome for more than 30 years, seeing four sex therapists in this time frame and trying other treatment modalities,” Mulevehill said in a recent statement. “I wanted to research if other women who had orgasm difficulty were also benefiting from cannabis.”
Researchers analyzed questionnaire responses, submitted anonymously online, from over 1,000 women who had engaged in partnered sex within the past month. After weeding out for ineligible participants — those who were pregnant or breastfeeding, under the age of 18 or had used other intoxicants alongside cannabis before sex — Mulvehill’s team was left with 387 individual surveys on which to draw their conclusions.
According to the data, women who previously struggled to orgasm benefitted from a nearly 40% increase in climax frequency overall thanks to cannabis, and 88.8% of participants said they reached orgasm more frequently with cannabis, compared to 63.3% without it. The number of women who said they seldom or never climax decreased by over 25 percentage points, from 36.6% to just 11.4%, with the use of cannabis.
“The largest group of women with orgasmic dysfunction ‘Almost Always or Always’ orgasm with cannabis before sex and ‘Almost Never or Never’ orgasm without it,” Mulvehill noted. “Whereas women without orgasmic dysfunction tend to orgasm with or without cannabis before sex.”
Similarly, those who found it difficult to reach orgasm decreased by 35.4% with the use of cannabis, and while 22.8% of participants who don’t use cannabis said climax was nearly impossible to achieve, just 7.4% of participants who used cannabis felt the same.
Finally, satisfaction levels nearly doubled among cannabis users, from 43.6% to 86.1%, while dissatisfaction rates dropped after the drug, from 56.4% to just 20.8%.
“My research, which was the first to dichotomize women with and without orgasm difficulty, supported 50 years of cannabis and sex research revealing statistically significant results that cannabis helps women who have orgasm difficulty and improves orgasm frequency, ease, and satisfaction,” Mulvehill said in an interview for PsyPost.
Researchers found no significant variance in responses between those who were seasoned cannabis consumers and those relatively new to the drug.
While cannabis won’t likely be dubbed a cureall for those with anorgasmia — a complete absence of orgasm — the intervention helped more than no treatment at all.
“About 4% of the women with female orgasmic dysfunction in the study used cannabis before sex and did not yet experience an orgasm, revealing that cannabis did not help all women orgasm,” Mulvehill noted. “That said, studies show that the typical range of women who have anorgasmia, have not yet experienced an orgasm, is 10-15%.”
Mulvehill hopes to eventually develop a cannabis-based prescription medication to treat female orgasmic dysfunction once approved across the US.
