People who smoke more marijuana are having more sex than those who smoke less, or don’t smoke at all, a new study suggests. However, it’s unclear if the pot has a direct cause-and-effect on a person’s sex life.
Marijuana is said to be a natural aphrodisiac by some avid users, but scientific proof has been mixed, NPR reports.
Researchers looked at data from around 5,000 people who took part in a yearly survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between 2002 and 2015. “We reported how often they smoke – monthly, weekly or daily – and how many times they’ve had sex in the last month,” said Dr. Michael Eisenberg, a urologist at Stanford University Medical Center and lead author on the study. “What we found was compared to never-users, those who reported daily use had about 20 percent more sex. So over the course of a year, they’re having sex maybe 20 more times.”
People who took cannabis daily had sex 7.1 times monthly, on average for women, and 6.9 times for men. Women who did not use weed at all ad sex an average of 6 times monthly, while non-smoking men had sex 5.6 times a month.
The researchers factored in things such as alcohol or cocaine use, age, religion, having kids, and found that the link between pot and sex held. Eisenberg said, “It was pretty much every group we studied, this pattern persisted.”
The association does not necessarily mean that marijuana is driving a heightened sex dive. Mitch Earleywine, a psychologist at the University at Albany who has studied weed and sex, said, “In some surveys, we saw that people [who used cannabis] did have sex more, but it seemed to be mediated by this personality type that’s willing to try new things or look for thrills.” Earleywine was not involved in the study.
Eisenberg said there could be something about pot,
It’s possible it makes men or women more interested in sex.
Whatever the link may be, Eisenberg is of the opinion that the study leads him to believe that cannabis use is not going to reduce libido, unlike tobacco. “We don’t want people to smoke to improve sexual function, but it probably doesn’t hurt things.”
The study was published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
