Men who smoke pot have more sex, say researchers—But is that really true?

October 28, 2017 7:04 PM

A recent study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine says pot smokers have more sex than non-pot-smokers. But is that legit?

Marijuana may not just mellow you out. It may actually rev you up—at least in the bedroom.

People who use marijuana tend to have more sex than those who don't use the drug, a new study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine suggests.

Researchers asked more than 50,000 Americans how often they had sex over the last month, and whether or not they used certain drugs—and if so, how frequently. They discovered that both men and women who use marijuana had sex more often than those who never used the drug.

And the more often they smoked up, the more sex they reported. In fact, guys who used marijuana daily reported having sex an average of 6.9 times during the past four weeks, compared to just 5.6 times for non-users.

Put another way, the daily pot users had nearly 20 percent more sex.

So what might be behind the sex spike? The researchers don’t know for sure, but past research may provide some clues about how pot affects your sex life, says study author Michael Eisenberg, M.D.

For instance, a prior study published in Psychopharmacology showed that an area of the brain called the right nucleus accumbens—involved in triggering your desires into action—lit up more when pot smokers viewed erotic images than when non-users did.

“By increasing arousal, it may be that your libido or sexual satisfaction are increased, which helps explain the association [with more sex],” he says.

That falls in line with the widespread belief that pot can act as an aphrodisiac. In fact, a 2003 study found that 53 percent of marijuana users said pot increased their arousal, while just 24 percent said that it lessened it.

The results held true even after the researchers adjusted for one possible major skewing point: that people who use marijuana may simply be more uninhibited, and thus more likely to have lots of sex. But when alcohol or cocaine use was not linked to any more sex. So if a lack of inhibition was driving the results, they’d probably see the same sex spike in people who used other drugs as well.

But don’t consider this the be-all, end-all picture on how marijuana affects your sex life. This study comes at the heels of past research on pot and sex, leading to a pretty murky picture on how the drug is affecting you in the bedroom.

In 2010, researchers from Australia linked daily pot use to problems reaching orgasm in men, as well as to premature ejaculation and delayed ejaculation. Other research has suggested that marijuana can mess with the processes needed to regulate erections, possibly leading to erectile dysfunction.

Still, this study does seem to show that pot doesn’t impair your ability to get erections—habitual smokers did get busy more often, after all. But there are some important caveats, mainly that it wasn’t designed in a way to prove cause and effect. So there’s no way to say that it’s the marijuana that’s making you have more sex. Plus, all of the data on sex frequency was self-reported, and the researchers didn’t look directly at sexual function.

The biggest takeaway? Well, it’s the same story as with a lot of science: “We need more data,” says Dr. Eisenberg. “I think we will need more information on its effects on sexual function and overall health, more broadly. More information will be needed so we can better understand how marijuana effects each individual organ system.”

So in the meantime, if you want to have more sex, your answer probably isn’t in smoking up more often. Try these 30 ways to have more sex.

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