Does This Mean A Lot Of People Are Having Sex At 4:30?

In her latest post, Calico examines the results of a new study which suggests frequent users of marijuana have more sex than non-users. This intriguing result has raised a number of questions for Calico, including whether potheads can be trusted to remember what part of their bodies the condom goes on, whether people are horny because their high, as opposed to getting high because they’re horny, and – most importantly – does this mean she should keep a bag of Doritos on her nightstand?

Read all about it Calico’s new article: “Does This Mean A Lot Of People Are Having Sex At 4:30?”  Read on…

by Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com

I don’t read of news on the CNN website, but every so often they cook up a headline I can’t help but click on. One such recent headline reads “Regular marijuana users have more sex, study says.”

Just in the time it took for me to click on the link, my head had already filled up with questions. What about exceptional marijuana users, I wondered? Does “regular” refer to potency of the weed, or the nature of the user herself?

As it turned out, by “regular” CNN meant habitual or frequent marijuana users, people who (perhaps contrary to what a lot of people who don’t smoke pot might assume) apparently also have a lot of sex.

Finding this out only raised more questions for me, though – including how reliably potheads remember to put on condoms, or remember where to put them on, for that matter.

Also, does this mean a lot of people are having sex sometime around 4:30?

Let’s Not Put The Weed-Cart Before The Sex-Horse… Or Something

Before sifting through the theories concerning why frequent marijuana users have a lot of sex, separating out the potentially explosive seeds of thought, so to speak, it’s important to fully ingest (or perhaps inhale) the researchers’ conclusions.

“A positive association between marijuana use and sexual frequency is seen in men and women across all demographic groups,” researchers Andrew Sun and Michael Eisenberg wrote in their paper, “Association Between Marijuana Use and Sexual Frequency in the United States: A Population-Based Study.”

Eisenberg said the results of their preliminary research into the relationship between smoking dope and getting it on were both surprising and encouraging.

“Usually, people assume the more frequently you smoke, the worse it could be when it came to sex, but in fact, we learned the opposite was true,” Eisenberg said. “We were surprised to see the positive association between users. This was across the board; marital status, race, none of that mattered.”

Still, Sun and Eisenberg cautioned that while the results of the study were “reassuring,” they weren’t entirely conclusive.

“The effects of marijuana use on sexual function warrant further study,” they noted.

The good news is, if ever there was a clinical study which should have no trouble finding willing volunteers and test subjects, a follow up to this one should be it. In fact, as I type this, my husband is already trying to secure time off from work to assist in this important area of study…

Are We Horny Because We’re High, Or Is It Just A Happy Coincidence?

Eisenberg and Sun’s study may have found this correlation between pot use and sexy time, but it doesn’t do much to explain the connection – and some other experts are cautioning not to read too much into their results.

Smoking weed “can have a different impact on different people,” noted Joseph Palamar from the Department of Population Health at New York University.

While Palamar conceded the research represents a “cool epidemiological paper” which “did the best it could with the data” he was also quick to note the limits of the data collected.

“It’s unclear from the data if people had marijuana in their system before or during sex,” Palamar said – a point to which CNN added a very questionable assertion.

“Someone could smoke in the morning but not have sex until the evening,” CNN added, “when it wouldn’t be in their system anymore.”

Uh, CNN… Marijuana doesn’t leave a person’s system in a matter of hours; it simply doesn’t work that way, especially with the sort of regular users at issue in this study. Among other things, if marijuana did exit our systems that quickly, something tells me there’d be fewer NFL players on suspension this season.

So, Should I Keep Some Doritos On The Nightstand, Or What?

Palamar said it’s important to consider when people are smoking pot in relationship to when they’re having sex, because there are certain common effects of weed which might be antithetical to enjoying sex while high.

“If marijuana makes you paranoid, as it does with some people, it could really, pardon the pun, screw your ability to have an orgasm,” Palamar said.

He makes a good point – and if there’s anything I don’t need, it’s a paranoid guy on top of me when I’m trying to reach orgasm. He already freaks out every time a coyote howls; if he starts getting stoned before we have sex, he might become convinced our neighborhood has werewolves hanging around, too.

In any event, Eisenberg said one impact of the study on his interaction with pot smokers who experience sexual dysfunction is he’ll tell them weed “may not be the culprit.”

“For most people, we tell them instead to go to the gym and lose 20 pounds,” Eisenberg said. “We always talk about anything that can be good for your heart can be good for your penis. For a lot of guys, hearing that is an amazing motivator.”

So, that’s a no on my Dorito/nightstand question, I take it?