People Who Do THIS At Least Once A Week Make Love More

Marijuana may not just mellow you out. It may actually rev you up—at least in the bedroom. People who use marijuana tend to make love more 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 made love 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 made love more often than those who never used the drug. (Add something extra to your love making life with the JimmyJane Form 8 vibe from the Women's Health Boutique.)

And the more often they smoked up, the more love making they reported. In fact, women who used marijuana daily reported making love an average of 7.1 times during the past four weeks, compared to just 6 times for non-users.

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

So what might be behind the love making spike? The researchers don’t know for sure, but past research may provide some clues about how pot affects your love making 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 making love],” 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 making love. But when alcohol or cocaine use was not linked to any more love making. So if a lack of inhibition was driving the results, they’d probably see the same love making spike in people who used other drugs as well. (Here's why pot makes you anxious—but mellows out your buddies instead.)

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

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 make love more, your answer probably isn’t in smoking up more often. Try these ways to initiate more making love.