Using Cannabis to Treat Female Orgasmic Disorder and Difficulty: Dr. Suzanne Mulvehill

​The Cannabis Boomer Podcast is not just for baby boomers and older adults, but also for adults of all ages who are interested in the science of cannabis. Key words for the podcast, in general ,are: baby boomers, cannabis, boomers, marijuana, THC, CBD, health, wellness, science, and aging.

For this particular episode, key words are: cannabis, female orgasm difficulty and disorder, female orgasm, sex, marijuana, THC, CBD, CBN, and women's health.

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And now welcome your host, The Cannabis Boomer, Dr. Alex Terrazas, PhD.

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odern era began, arguably, in: 1947

Women often struggle to achieve orgasm, and that carries health risks. Female orgasmic disorder difficulty affects over 40% of women worldwide. As an aside, only 5% of men have trouble having orgasms.

The female orgasm produces numerous physiological, psychological and relational benefits, including stress relief, improved body image, pain relief, better sleep, and cardiovascular benefits. In a recent study using survey data, over 40% of cannabis users reported increased desire and orgasm intensity due to cannabis. Roughly the same percentage of the participants also stated that cannabis enhanced their sense of taste and touch. In another study, nearly 60% said cannabis increased their desire for sex. 75% reported increased sexual satisfaction, and 65% reported an increased intensity of orgasms.

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h there was, uh, including in: 1979

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And we can go over the three different subtypes at some point. I think women. You know, we've been raised, I mean, I was raised in a culture of this is a drug, you know, cannabis is a gateway drug. Stay away from it. I mean, I remember seeing the ads as a, as a kid of, um, I'm aging myself, but, uh, of the eggs frying, you know, there was a frying pan and they'd put the egg in the pan and it'd say, this is your brain on drugs.

And cannabis was called a gateway drug. So if you're gonna use cannabis, you're gonna end up using them all. Was kind of the mindset. So what I'm finding is that women are, um, reluctant, like, uh, any other, are there any other treatments? Like if I, I'm on a thread called becoming orgasmic and I often comment 'cause there's like 40,000 women commenting about their orgasm problems on there.

And when I mention sometimes cannabis, they'll say, uh, okay, well there anything else? Well, the truth is not really, you know. So the first barrier is really helping women understand this is a medicine, I would say versus the way it's been framed for us to believe it's a gateway drug. If we wanna call it a gateway drug, then we call it a gateway drug to the female orgasm.

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In our body. So what happens is that cannabis plugs in this, they're called CB one and CB two receptors, and the cannabis will plug in to these receptors with the CB one receptor being more active. In terms of creating the high with the CB two receptor, not creating the high, you know, so it gets into kind of more of the science of it.

Um, but the cannabinoids when, you know, we're talking about the cannabis plant plugging into our own endocannabinoid system, I think is the, the, the easiest way to kind of understand it is our brain actually receives and plugs into, um. And we can have an in endocannabinoid imbalance. Like we don't really have that, the science around that yet to say, you know what? You need a little more, a little bit of THC. You need a little bit of C, b, D, you need this turbine. We haven't gone to that level to completely distinguish what it is in our own body. That may, I mean, let's just talk about female orgasmic disorder for a moment, and. We don't know what exactly plugs in to We women have to do trial and error to figure it out. That's, I guess that's the, what I'll say about that.

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Buy um. A joint basically, or a cigarette. They're pre-rolls. They're actually called, you know, go buy yourself some pre-rolls at a dispensary. They were $8 each, and I bought a number of different ones and tried 'em out. And uh, now what I will share with you is that interviewing women for my research, I found that the women who didn't know what they were taking because they were taking it in countries where it was illegal or in states where it was illegal, it didn't matter. It did have a different effect, but they still were able to orgasm regardless of what they used, so long as it had the THC

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I can't get outta my thoughts. So in the prefrontal cortex, meaning the part of the brain, the executive functioning of the brain, where we're the control system basically, that wants everything in control, even to the point, like, I've had women tell me, for example, that one woman I interviewed was like her brain would tell her, uh, you know you're gonna be orgasming soon. And uh, what was interesting about that is she would talk to this part of her brain and say, you know, that's, uh, really not helpful. You know, because it really takes her out of her experience. So, yeah. So cannabis can quiet, not just quiet, the prefrontal cortex, this, this part of our brain that, that may be.

Uh, it's trying to help us, but it's, it's kind of more of the ego in the sense it's not really helpful. So it can quiet those thoughts and put the focus more on the sensations and allowing women to get into more of a flow state versus an observation or spectating. Uh.

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The difference is that a woman who would go to a clinician and get diagnosed, meaning it, it creates distress for her. But both the disorder and the, and difficulty are based on self-report. So, you know. The, the point I wanna make is the reason we've been trying, and we may get into this, about making it a, uh, female orgasmic disorder and in Connecticut it's slash difficulty a condition of treatment for medical cannabis is so a woman can be guided in, be in, treating this condition appropriately versus just her own trial and error.

And, you know, if we're treating a condition, we're under the care of a doctor.

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So, he's gonna train the doctors. I'm gonna train the therapist on how to, how to treat women. How to manage the integration, you know, after the use of 'cause other stuff can come up when in using cannabis with intention. I mean, I know for me, I mean, I had a. You know, that's another whole story, another podcast about how I, you know, what I worked on with intention to depa myself with cannabis and it wasn't easy.

I will tell you the first, you know, women are being like, oh, I tried it once and it didn't work, or, um. It's gotta be done with intention. It's kind of like developing a practice. We have a yoga practice in the morning. We do yoga in the morning, you know, and it's the same with a pleasure practice in learning how relearning, retraining our brain on how to access the pleasure pathway.

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It's, we have got to find how much is too much. How much is too little and how much is just right. And that is the, that's our, that is up to each individual person. It, you know, it took me several months to even learn how to surrender into using it. My brain was like, we, we like being in control. We don't really want to, uh, give up the space.

So when I would quote, get high, uh. You know, my body and brain did not like it. I'd be like, how long is this gonna last? You know? Like, seriously, like I had to train myself that we're gonna do this and yeah. So, so yes, finding the right amount. I mean, I had, when I interviewed 40 women for my dissertation, 20 with orgasm difficulty and 20 without.

The women, I would say the large majority of them knew their sweet spot. Like one woman would tell me, I take one quarter of a homemade brownie, about an hour before we have my, I have sex with my partner. You know? Um, interestingly, the women who didn't have orgasm difficulty didn't take it with the intention of having sex.

They just took it. And if sex happened, sex happened because. That, but, but some women who did have orgasm difficulty would only take it before sex. Like that's the only time they used it because they had orgasm. One woman who was raped as a teenager, for example, who we may talk about a bit later, but she had never had an orgasm in her life.

And, um. Told her partner, Hey, you know, before they had sex, Hey listen, you know, I just want you to know I've never had an orgasm. I was raped as a teenager and not from my not solo sex or partnered sex. And he said, try this. And he handed her a joint. And, uh, she took it, you know, I don't know how much she took, but she took the cannabis and she orgasmed for the first time in her life that one first time.

And they're married, they now have teenagers. So now they're very discreet. And she says, you know, we lose a little of the, uh, spontaneity because we always use cannabis before sex, but as a responsible parent of teenagers not wanting her teenagers to see her high or anything like that.

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And the doctor had said to her, you know, you might need to accept that you're one of the 10 to 15% of women who are never gonna orgasm. And I will tell you, this woman was. Furious. Like, how dare somebody tell me this? So it affects women's quality of life. Being a woman who had this problem for, for a long period of time, and no place to no outlet.

Like even when I would see therapists, it affects therapists. I mean, because sometimes my orgasm problem had, I wouldn't even feel pleasure, which now is called pleasure dissociative. Orgasm disorder. I mean, you can have an orgasm without pleasure and, and either therapist would be like, um, I dunno what you're talking about.

al Disorders, the new edition: 2022

Now it's similar. If you research male erectile dysfunction, you can see something similar. So that is how serious of an issue it is. That it affects not just the quality, but the, the sense of self, the feelings of worthiness, the feelings of, I mean, I would stay out of relationships for long periods of time because I didn't wanna bring this problem, you know, I don't wanna deal with it.

I couldn't solve it, you know, and that's, that's, that's the magic I would say the mystery of this female plant. ] It's the female flowers. The irony about growing cannabis is you can't have a male plant around. So if you have a male plant around, because I had to kill my male plant, unfortunately, it was very difficult for me.

'cause it says you can't have a male plant around, or it could still fertilize. Like it can go still and fertilize the female, even if it's. 30 feet away or whatever, and I still like this little plant, right?

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It's, it's not new information. Uh, there were rituals that were used. For example, even in Pompeii, I was in Pompeii for the first time a few months ago, and there's part of Pompeii called the Villa of Mysteries. It was my last day there. I was there for four days. Hi, you know, and I hired a guy to take me around and as he's saying goodbye, he says.

I, I see a sign for the Villa Exit this way, Washita and Villa of Mysteries. This way. I'm like the Villa of Mysteries. Like, what is that? Well, let me tell you, have you ever been to the Villa of Mysteries?

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And in the ritual of marriage in this one. Room. Um, the woman goes through, uh, a ritual, through a God called Dion Isis to basically access altered states. She does this dance. There's some flagellation apparently in this. And then she goes through this ritual and then there she's seated having her hair combed, prepared for marriage.

What is the mystery and why it's called the Villa of Mysteries is because there used to be rituals for women learn to teach them how to access these altered states because we do know that in one agreed upon definition of orgasm for women, not for men. For women is that orgasm is an altered state. And women were taught how to access this altered state, which has been completely eliminated out of our culture through. I am afraid to say it. Uh, mainly religion. So,

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That is three quarters, up to three quarters of the entire female population worldwide. And have you seen that anywhere in the newspaper?

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% in the: 2013

So in nine years there was a new, they didn't cite that research in the DSM five, but when it's in the DSM five, it's, it's like the, the manual of, uh, of, you know, it's the diagnostic manual of mental health disorders. It's the main MA manual that is used by psychiatry and psychologists and therapists.

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We haven't done a study exactly to say, are you orgasm? And that women asked me that question, actually af you know, when I asked them that, my last question in my research was, is there anything you wanna say about future research? And they said, yes, get clear about what kind of orgasms are you talking about? You know, did you mean clitoral orgasm, vaginal orgasm, blended orgasm. I mean, nipple orgasm. You know, there are many types of female orgasm that are not quote unquote recognized.

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People who choose to use cannabis need to be aware of what they consume. This podcast is intended to make users better informed about cannabis and its effects. The information shared on this podcast is meant as current opinion in science and should not be considered medical advice.