The Rise of the Cannasexual in America

Marijuana has been used as an aphrodisiac for millennia, but it’s just making its “official” debut in the U.S.

By Peter Holslin

The Pleasure Chest, an adult sex boutique in West Hollywood, isn’t exactly the first place you’d think of to celebrate a stoner holiday. But the shop took on an herb-friendly vibe on 4/20 — the unofficial annual smoke-out for cannabis lovers across the nation — when more than a dozen people gathered to see a presentation by local sex educator Ashley Manta.

Manta, rocking a T-shirt emblazoned with a logo from the online pot encyclopedia Leafly, was delivering a two-hour workshop on the benefits of bringing cannabis into the bedroom. She started with some basics like bowl-smoking etiquette and edible safety. Then, she moved on to more advanced topics like the science behind a THC-infused coconut oil lube called Foria, which the company says “was inspired by the ancient tradition of using cannabis as a natural aphrodisiac.” Eventually the discussion turned to a serious matter — the importance of consent when making love while high.

American culture now seems more receptive than ever to the idea of using cannabis as an aphrodisiac

“Negotiate before you medicate,” Manta counseled the crowd. “If you know that you’re going to be using cannabis with your partner, figure out what you want to do in the scene before you start adding cannabis in the mix.”

It was a timely presentation considering mainstream American culture now seems more receptive than ever to the idea of using cannabis as an aphrodisiac. Though weed has long been known as a sex enhancer, the leafy green plant is just now coming out of the underground in the United States. As it grows into a billion-dollar industry, the overlap of pot and sex is turning into a niche market of its own. Yet amid all the upbeat listicles and aphrodisiac weed strains, experts like Manta offer a dose of reality: The relationship between sex and pot is often more complicated than it seems.

“I want people to feel safe and comfortable incorporating cannabis into their sex lives,” Manta says. “I want people to be armed with knowledge, so that they can make the most informed decisions possible for their bodies and their situations.”

In American culture, sex and marijuana have often intertwined. Back before it was illegal, herb was a key ingredient in some medicinal remedies — including a 1935 treatment for gonorrhea. Then, in 1937, Congress banned it amid a rash of Reefer Madness propaganda and anti-immigrant hysteria.

Since that time, it’s most notably been embraced by the counterculture when it comes to sex: Think of all those hippies preaching “Free Love,” or musicians making weed-friendly euphemisms in their songs (from C+C Music Factory’s “Take a Toke”: “Take a toke slow or you might choke / I got the best love you ever smoked”).

Today, 24 states and the District of Columbia permit medical use of marijuana, while Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and the District of Columbia have also legalized recreational use. Growers and sellers are being backed by celebrities and venture capitalists, and the sex industry is paying attention. Since Foria came on the market in 2014, it’s gotten rave reviews for its vulva-friendly formula which is designed to activate mucous membranes and increase blood flow in sensitive erogenous zones. Health and lifestyle specialists have branded themselves as smoke-friendly and sex-positive. And in March, trade paper XBIZ reported that Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt invested $100,000 in the publicly traded Los Angeles “cannabusiness” Pineapple Express.

Bottle of cannabis ethanol extract, circa 1906/ Courtesy of Wiki Commons

Of course, cannabis remains illegal on the federal level, classified by the DEA as a Schedule I narcotic with “no currently accepted medical use.” But recent data suggests that many people enjoy using it for sexual purposes. Cannabis healthcare company HelloMD recently released a survey of more than 1,400 medical marijuana users in which 14 percent of the respondents reported using medical marijuana to boost libido and enhance sex drive. A high number of those polled also said they use cannabis for purposes that can have implicit sex benefits like relaxation (76 percent) and improving mood (95 percent).

According to physicians and researchers, when cannabis is smoked, eaten or otherwise ingested, the cannabinoids in the drug — including its active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, aka THC — bind with cannabinoid receptors inside the body. The process can have profound effects: taking your mind off everyday concerns, heightening sensory experience, and even expanding perceptions of time to make sex last longer (or at least feel that way).

But it’s hard to say whether sex and pot could really equal big bucks. Products like Foria aren’t available outside of marijuana clinics in most states, even where the drug is legal. Doctors and sex educators agree that more scientific research needs to be done to explore the connections between marijuana and sexual health.

“Everything within the sex industry is very personal-preference-based. Obviously nothing works for everyone,” says Sarah Mueller, resident sex educator and lube expert at the Minneapolis sex toy store The Smitten Kitten. “I think that especially when it comes to drug use, people are so subjective that even if a lot of people really enjoy adding some sort of cannabis into their sexual play, there’s going to be an equal number or more people who don’t enjoy it.”

Researchers have found (and writers have written) that many other cultures have embraced cannabis use for sexual health. During the 1930s in the capital of Soviet-ruled Uzbekistan, women reportedly took a mixture of cannabis and lamb’s fat to make consummating their marriages less painful. More recently, in the parishes and fishing villages of western Uganda, scientists writing in the journal African Health Sciences in 2005 reported that men smoked and chewed cannabis sativa to treat erectile dysfunction. And in “Marijuana Medicine: A World Tour of the Healing and Visionary Powers of Cannabis,” anthropologist Christian Rätsch writes that the Berber population in the Rif mountains of Morocco believes in the aphrodisiac and transcendental effects of kif — finely chopped cannabis leaves and flowers mixed with tobacco.

Bhang is common in India during the Hindu festival Holi/ Courtesy of Marcusprasad via Wiki Commons (full credit below)

In 1977, cannabis scholar Michael R. Aldrich published a now legendary and much-cited paper in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs highlighting what he describes as elaborate, cannabis-centric Tantric rituals in ancient India. Drawing from research of texts from the late Vedic period (1100–500 BCE), Aldrich writes that a Tantra student (a sādhaka if male, sādhakī if female) would drink a spiced “marijuana milkshake” dosed with an edible ball of ground cannabis known in India as bhang. The ceremony was designed to consecrate chosen deities, and the students would also partake in epic rounds of sexual intercourse. As the rituals proceeded, Aldrich writes, the high would help the student set aside cultural inhibitions and achieve heightened levels of awareness — all with a goal of reaching divine release.

“The Tantric practice is not a matter of ‘Hey, let’s go get stoned and screw,’” Aldrich writes. “Rather, from the moment of first awakening, the sādhaka’s every action is intentionally made sacred and intensified.”

All of these uses have been much touted by weed-friendly bloggers in recent years, and today you can see similar Tantric-style spiritualism being channeled by practitioners like Dee Dussault, a yogi and sexual health educator in San Francisco. Dussault offers ganja yoga sessions, sexuality coaching, guidance to couples with the help of sponsored vaporizers, and Tantra classes for private clients — “and they are always welcome to bring their own weed,” she tells me in an email.

Yet all of this romanticizing of the Far East, with tales of divine release and sensuous transcendence, overlooks less favorable depictions of THC use and abuse. One modern representation is particularly stark: Hussein Kamal’s iconic Egyptian film Adrift on the Nile. Adapted from a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz, the 1971 movie follows a group of disillusioned civil servants and intellectuals as they spend the waning days of the revolutionary rule of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser canoodling and smoking hashish on a houseboat parked on the banks of the River Nile. Over the span of the movie, they descend further and further into erotic, THC-addled decadence, and finally they lose touch with political and moral responsibility altogether. In one scene they accidentally run a woman over on a drive through the city, and when they’re later confronted by a journalist they shrug their crime off with surreal indifference. “How can you be that high?!” the journalist yells, according to one translation of the Arabic dialogue. “Wake up!”

The underlying message from Adrift on the Nile — that there are risks to marijuana consumption — is important to consider as the positive marketing campaigns grow with the cannabis industry in the United States. Manta, the sex educator in Los Angeles and a self-identified cannasexual, is enthusiastic about the possibilities cannabis offers for sexual health. But she approaches the topic with an understanding that not everybody reacts the same to the drug. In her sex-centric cannabis column for Leafly, she recommends an intentional approach: “Before I go and bring cannabis into the bedroom,” Manta says, “I’m going to check and test the strain that I’m using, and smoke it or vape it or do whatever I’m planning to do when I am having sex, and then masturbate and see how it impacts my arousal, my ability to orgasm, my sensations.” She encourages this field test between both partners, “so you know what’s going to happen.”

Peter Holslin is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles who writes about music and sex from a social point of view. He’s the former music editor at San Diego CityBeat and has contributed to VICE, BuzzFeed, Rolling Stone, and LA Weekly, among others. You can follow him on Twitter, or find him at the nearest restaurant that serves pho or roasted goat.

Photograph of Bhang making courtesy of Marcusprasad (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wiki Commons