Romancing the stoned: My week of sex while high on every marijuana product imaginable

“It smells like weed down here,” my girlfriend said.

This is not an uncommon olfactory delight in the Bay Area, except in this case, my girlfriend is referring to my vagina.

This article was originally published by The Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow The Influence on Facebook or Twitter.

I have just applied “weed lube” (which is not technically lube, but a topical, coconut-oil-based cannabis spray) on my nether bits and we are waiting the requisite 15 minutes for it to soak in. “A good time for foreplay!” the bottle suggests somewhat obviously. As if you might forget you were supposed to have sex and instead heat up some Bagel Bites and watch 12 episodes of Planet Earth.

The lube is one part of a broader weed-sex experiment I’ve decided to undertake, which also involves an edible granola-chocolate bar, an aphrodisiac tincture called “Love Potion,” and an indica/sativa strain with the unfortunate name of “Slymer.”

Combining pot and sex was a mostly alien concept to me. I’m not exactly a drug virgin, but my knowledge is, shall we say, limited. I can’t take a single puff of anything without coughing like an asthmatic donkey. And the first time a partner convinced me to combine pot with alcohol (my usual aphrodisiac), the sensation I felt was … not what I was expecting. “It feels like my eyebrow is on fire,” I told her in a swimmy, far-off voice.

When it comes to having sex with other people who were high, my experiences have been decidedly mixed. One gentleman I was screwing reached over to the nightstand—mid-thrust—and took a hit from a pipe while inside me, before continuing.

Aside from that, and from occasionally feeling like my face was on fire, historically, pot’s biggest allure for me has been in the realm of knocking me the fuck out. Which doesn’t tend to bode well when thoughtful someones are riding your face.

So why did I want to see if weed could do anything for my sex life?

Like many women, I tend to get stuck in my head during sex. I lose the moment. I lose my body. I get caught in a constellation of mundanity: Did I pay the gas bill? What is Jason Priestley up to these days? And so on.

Because pot is known for its abilities to quell the monsters in one’s head, and to bring users firmly back into the realm of the senses, I wondered if it would work for me.

The first night, my girlfriend shotgunned a hit of Slymer in my direction and that was enough to set off a coughing fit and to give me dry mouth for the next 12 hours. But also I was instantly high. My head felt like a half-filled water balloon, unsure if it should remain grounded or take off into the atmosphere. I felt stone-limbed and mildly stunned, and was thankful I didn’t have to lift my head or, you know, move at all. My girlfriend rimmed me while I jerked off and I came like a kite breaking, like a disco roller skate party. It was intense and swift. My God, Slymer. I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.

It was a good thing I came so quickly because I then fell asleep immediately, without brushing my teeth, and dreamed that I was the lone warden of a prison for cats.

The next night, we christened the weed lube. The bottle is tiny and unassuming; each spray contains 2.5 mg of cannabis. The application of the weed lube is its worst draw—it is not unlike being sprayed with cologne at the mall. Cold, invasive, it smells faintly of flowers dipped in sugar dipped in rubbing alcohol. We applied it several times, shrieking quietly each time the spray struck our skin, and waited.

My girlfriend took a tentative dip in the pool. “Your vag does feel warm,” she said.

“Well, yes,” I replied. “It’s not a refrigerator.”

While she reported that her vagina was immediately stoned, I could barely detect any difference. She rubbed my back with sesame oil as we waited for the lube to kick in. And waited.

I decided to help the lube along and take five drops of the love potion tincture, which promised a “relaxing body high.” The potion tasted less like “love,” however, and more like a soap your mom would sell on Etsy. Which was unpleasant, but it did seem to produce a nice, glowy body warmth.

Suddenly aware that I had just put a foreign substance in my snatch, I expressed a concern about what the weed lube would actually do.

“Are you afraid you’ll get too loose and your uterus will fall out?” my girlfriend asked, which made us both laugh too loud and too long.

Whatever mild wave crested through my body as a result of the lube and the tincture was short-lived. I was still firmly in my head, replaying an interview I’d had earlier that day, wondering about a new acquaintance—generally unsexy thoughts that short-circuited my lust. We switched roles and positions so that I could be on top, and my girlfriend came hard and easy. I had never seen her face snarl quite so brightly and am quite certain all the weed probably had something to do with it. We switched again and this time, with concentration, I was able to get off, but it didn’t feel noticeably different or better than sober sex.

The final night, we pulled out all the stops. Spraying every nether orifice with weed lube, we shared a joint (a house blend), we love-potioned, and we ate part of an edible. We oral-ed, we anal-ed, we strapped-on, we strapped-off—we tried everything we thought might be a boon to our baked genitalia.

For the amount of weed I sprayed on my genitals, I would’ve thought they’d be capable of toting wine bottles around town, but that was never anywhere near the case. Aside from a slight, tingly warmth, any sensation at all was barely noticeable. It was like someone offered my snatch a light jacket that it didn’t need. Mostly what the weed lube did was make us laugh, especially the inevitable small, shrill poot sound that came out each time we spritzed. It was fun to try not to laugh, though it never worked, especially after all the other weed products kicked in.

When my girlfriend’s hair fell in my face, tickling me, I couldn’t find the words that meant “Please get your hair out of my face.” Instead I sputtered and said, “What … are you …. doing to me?”

I also could not remember the word “negate,” (my dirty talk involves PSAT vocabulary) and instead said, “It breaks the point. I mean, you know, it breaks, it makes the thing not.”

Though I no longer had the brain capacity to do long-division, this was precisely the point. It wasn’t consistent, but for whole moments I was able to ride the peculiar rhythms of skin meeting skin, to hear my particles jostle with heat, with amplification. During one particular enmeshed-lesbian moment, she was riding me while I wore a strap-on, and at times it felt like we were an extension of each other and I couldn’t tell who was penetrating whom or if it even mattered. I felt adrift on a stormy sea of sweat and light and movement.

“Did you like it?” I asked.

“I think I just like sex,” she said.

Indeed. The weed-sex experiment may have been a one-hit wonder, but it did offer a nice temporary reprieve from my swirly mind-vortex. My brain was quieter, my O’s brighter. And when I name my first-born Slymer, you’ll know why.

This article was originally published by The Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow The Influence on Facebook or Twitter.