Want to ignite her passion? Try lighting one.
A new study published this week in the journal Sexual Medicine suggests that psychoactive plants and other tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-based derivatives may help women with sexual dysfunction achieve orgasm. Researchers found that female participants who consumed cannabis before sexual activity with their partners were able to orgasm more frequently, more easily, and were more satisfied with their orgasms overall.
The study was personal for author Suzanne Mulvehill, executive director of the Female Orgasm Institute and founder of the Women’s Cannabis Project.
“I became interested in this topic because cannabis helped me overcome my orgasmic disorder, which I’ve been trying to overcome for over 30 years, seeing four sex therapists and trying other treatments,” Muhlbehir said in a recent statement. “I wanted to find out whether other women with orgasmic disorders have also benefited from cannabis.”
The researchers analyzed survey responses submitted anonymously online by more than 1,000 women who had had sex with a partner within the past month. After filtering out ineligible participants (those who were pregnant or breastfeeding, under 18, or who had used other drugs along with cannabis before sex), Mulvehill’s team was left with 387 individual surveys from which to draw conclusions.
The data showed that women who previously struggled to reach orgasm orgasmed about 40% more often overall thanks to cannabis, with 88.8% of participants who tried cannabis saying they orgasmed more frequently, compared with 63.3% of those who didn’t. The number of women who said they rarely or never orgasmed dropped by more than 25% with cannabis use, from 36.6% to just 11.4%.
“The largest group of women with orgasmic disorder ‘almost always’ or ‘always’ orgasm when they use cannabis before sex and ‘almost never’ or ‘never’ orgasm without cannabis,” Mulvehill noted. “Meanwhile, women without orgasmic disorder tend to orgasm with or without cannabis before sex.”
Similarly, cannabis use reduced those who found it harder to reach orgasm by 35.4%, with 22.8% of participants who didn’t use cannabis saying it was nearly impossible to reach orgasm, while only 7.4% of those who used cannabis felt the same way.
Finally, satisfaction among cannabis users nearly doubled from 43.6% to 86.1%, while dissatisfaction dropped from 56.4% to just 20.8% after using the drug.
“My study is the first to dichotomize women who have orgasmic difficulties from those who don’t, and it supports 50 years of research on cannabis and sex, revealing statistically significant results that cannabis helps women with orgasmic difficulties, improving the frequency, ease and satisfaction of their orgasms,” Mulvehill said in an interview. For PsyPost.
![Close-up of a woman smoking marijuana](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/iStock-857233854_e3c14e.jpg?w=1024)
The researchers found no significant differences in responses between experienced and relatively new cannabis users.
Cannabis would never be called a panacea for sufferers of anorgasmia (the complete inability to experience orgasm), but any intervention is better than no treatment at all.
“Around 4% of women with orgasmic dysfunction in our study used cannabis before sexual activity but still didn’t orgasm, suggesting that cannabis doesn’t help all women orgasm,” Mulvehill points out, “That said, studies have shown that the proportion of women with anorgasmia who don’t experience orgasm is typically between 10 and 15%.”
Mulvehill hopes to eventually develop a cannabis-based prescription medication to treat orgasmic dysfunction in women, if approved across the United States.