Smoking Hot: Weed and Sexual Health
The bulk of this article is actually pretty dry, so just to give you the big picture up front: consuming cannabis is linked to reduced fertility for us guys, mostly likely because it impairs sperm health. On the other hand, it’s tentatively linked to stronger sexual desire and very tentatively connected to reduced erectile dysfunction. This is purely about chemical effects, mind you—it has nothing to do with how it feels to be high, how weed changes our behavior, or anything like that.
On a lighter note, I read through like 500 weed-related puns looking for a catchy title, and this was the best one: “I don’t always roll a joint, but when I do, it’s my ankle.” Relatable, right? No? Only for the over-30 crowd?
Anyway. Back to the serious, slightly-sad stuff.
Fertility—the Big Picture
Our ability to reproduce depends on more than just our plumbing. “Male-factor infertility,” or issues with the dude-focused side of getting someone pregnant, only sometimes has a physical cause. Those causes can be pretty variable: the tube linking testicles to penis, the vas deferens, can just be blocked (which is basically what a vasectomy is.), we might not have enough sperm, or they might be unhealthy and unable to swim.
There are other pieces to the fertility puzzle, though, and psychology and behavior play just as big a role as your spermatozoa’s 0-to-60 time. Being able to conceive isn’t just about the body, after all—it’s about a couple working together in an intensely intimate way, doing something that can be associated with joy and ecstasy or with anxiety and pain. Hormonal health, stress, libido, erectile dysfunction, and a dozen other conditions or plain old emotions can all get in the way, even before we start talking about relationship dynamics.
(Intentionally trying to conceive can be notoriously un-sexy, since it can turn something visceral and exciting into a chore that needs to be timed, planned, and monitored—and where every repetition brings a wave of excited hope that’s often followed by crushing disappointment.)
For all those reasons, fertility is best thought of as a whole-body, whole-person kind of thing. If you want to be a dad, you’ll want to make sure that in addition to functioning equipment you’re mentally and emotionally prepared.
All Things Grow—How Weed Affects Fertility
Drugs in general aren’t great for sexual health. Substance use, and especially substance misuse, has negative effects on our minds and on the regular functioning of our bodies. That goes for all common recreational drugs, legal and otherwise.
Cannabis is no exception, at least on the physical level. Getting a little high can turn us on, help us get off, and generally increases desire and sexual satisfaction for one-night stands and long-term relationships. But that’s about how weed makes us feel. What it does to our bodies, especially over the long-term, is a different issue.
There are basically three kinds of negative effects that weed has on our bodies. The first is obvious to anyone who’s ever smoked: cannabis enhances the “cannabinoid” system our body already has (which is related to relaxation) and makes us clumsier, sillier, and generally out of it. The second is also pretty straightforward: if you consume cannabis in its dried herbal form—as a joint, as a flower, etc.—you’re filling your lungs with smoke. It probably isn’t quite as bad as cigarette smoke, but it’s still definitely bad for your respiratory health.
Then there are the less obvious, longer-term effects. We think that frequent consumption of cannabis is correlated with changes in erectile function, but we’re not sure quite how. Some studies report a negative relationship, with erectile dysfunction (ED) twice as high in regular smokers, while others report that guys who smoke 6+ times per week have an easier time getting and maintaining erections.
This is almost certainly a case where we simply don’t have enough data to say for sure. The effects cannabis has on erections are subtle; there are specific cannabinoid receptors in the tissue that molecules of THC might bond to directly, reducing or preventing erections.
Weed’s Impact on Your Swimmers
There’s one area, though, where the evidence is much less murky. A big review study collected pretty much everything we know about cannabis and sperm, and the news isn’t good for the little swimmers. In both animal trials and human studies, weed:
- Drops sperm count
- Increases the number of messed-up sperm that don’t grow right
- Makes our sperm slower and less able to swim
- Makes sperm more likely to malfunction and fail to activate on contact with an egg
These are standout results. Weed seems to sometimes help, and sometimes harm, erections, libido, and testosterone. For sperm, though, cannabis is just bad news. In terms of practical advice, the take-home here is mostly not to panic. If you are actively trying to conceive, though, definitely put the joints aside for a while.
