Connecticut Officials Vote To Add Female Orgasmic Disorder And Autism As Medical Marijuana Qualifying Conditions

Connecticut is on track to allow access to medical cannabis for the treatment of female orgasmic disorder (FOD) following a decision on Friday by the state Medical Marijuana Program Board of Physicians.

Doctors on the state panel unanimously agreed that cannabis is more likely than not to have a beneficial effect on FOD, which they acknowledged as a debilitating condition. Orgasms in people with FOD are delayed, infrequent or entirely absent.

The body also signed off on a separate proposal to add autism spectrum disorder as a qualifying condition for Connecticut’s medical cannabis program.

The push to add FOD as a condition for marijuana access stems from a petition submitted last year by Suzanne Mulvehill, a clinical sexologist who’s working to expand access to cannabis for people with FOD.

The executive director of the Female Orgasm Research Institute and the related Women’s Cannabis Project, Mulvehill has published research indicating that cannabis use increased orgasm ease and frequency in more than 70 percent of patients with FOD. Her study also found that marijuana improved sexual satisfaction in about two thirds (67 percent) of those with FOD.

Despite the promising results, Mulvehill told the panel, discussing women’s sexual satisfaction still carries stigma.

“We rarely talk about this topic, but I think it’s time,” she said, “because up to 41 percent of women suffer from it, and that statistic has not changed for more than 50 years.”

Referencing drugs for erectile dysfunction, such as Viagra, Mulvehill argued that “there is a solution for men, you know, but there really isn’t one for women.”

“This can be that solution,” she said of medical marijuana.

“When a woman can actually overcome a problem that is stigmatized and shamed, and no longer carry that around as a burden,” she added, “there’s a there’s a dimension of confidence.”

After a few questions from members of the board, the body approved adding FOD to Connecticut’s list of qualifying conditions.

One member asked about dosing, wondering whether effects were observed “only at psychoactive doses” or also when lower doses of marijuana were administered.

Mulvehill replied that women she’s talked to “knew exactly how much they needed to use.”

“Some women said, ‘I take one hit.’ Some women said, ‘I use a quarter of a brownie,’” she explained, noting that lower doses are typically recommended at first.

“If we were to approve this, then a doctor was going to say, ‘Listen, yes, how do we start?’” Mulvehill said. “We start with small doses, very small doses. And it’d be recommended that they would start on their own.”

Pressed on whether she was able to ascertain what dose was typical for patients in her study, Mulvehill replied: “Not specifically, other than saying what the research across the board has said: low doses.”

Another board member asked Mulvehill how patients with FOD would go about obtaining cannabis given that therapists aren’t authorized to recommend marijuana in Connecticut.

“Typically, a woman would go to a therapist first,” Mulvehill replied, explaining that marijuana would be “an adjunct to therapy.” They would then go to a doctor, ideally one with an understanding of therapeutic cannabis.

The board was clear that it was approving medical marijuana as a treatment for FOD specifically—not, as one member put it, “someone who just wants to use marijuana, you know, for pleasure or for intimacy.”

The vote to accept FOD as a qualifying condition doesn’t itself enact the change. The recommendation will be reviewed by the commissioner of the Department of Consumer Protection to make a final determination.

Mulvehill has been one of the leaders behind state-level efforts to recognize female orgasmic disorder as a qualifying condition for medical marijuana.

Connecticut was in the first group of states where she and others tried to add FOD as qualifying conditions. In March, officials in Illinois voted in favor of the addition, she told the panel on Friday.

Ohio officials, meanwhile, rejected the addition of FOD—along with autism spectrum disorder—at a meeting last month.

As for how marijuana might benefit people with FOD, a report in the journal Sexual Medicine by Mulvehill and Jordan Tishler—a doctor at the Association of Cannabinoid Specialists and the company inhaleMD—identified a few possible theories.

Among them is dishabitation theory, the idea that cannabis “lessens the routine of habits, such as cognitive distraction, a known FOD cause.”

Neuroplasticity theory, meanwhile, “proposes that some women learn to orgasm while using cannabis, as seen in comments in this study and anecdotally.”

“Cannabis and endocannabinoids, the cannabinoids created by the human body, are increasingly recognized for their roles in neural development processes, including brain cell growth and neuroplasticity,” the study says.

The research found that cannabis use did not help all women orgasm. “Among survey respondents,” it says, “4% reported never having an orgasm, even though they used cannabis before partnered sex.”

There’s growing evidence that marijuana can improve sexual function, regardless of sex or gender. A study last year in the Journal of Cannabis Research found that more than 70 percent of surveyed adults said cannabis before sex increased desire and improved orgasms, while 62.5 percent said cannabis enhanced pleasure while masturbating.

Because past findings indicated women who have sex with men are typically less likely to orgasm than their partners, authors of that study said cannabis “can potentially close the orgasm in equality gap.”

A 2020 study in the journal Sexual Medicine, meanwhile, found that women who used cannabis more often had better sex.

Numerous online surveys have also reported positive associations between marijuana and sex. One study even found a connection between the passage of marijuana laws and increased sexual activity.

Yet another study, however, cautions that more marijuana doesn’t necessarily mean better sex. A literature review published in 2019 found that cannabis’s impact on libido may depend on dosage, with lower amounts of THC correlating with the highest levels of arousal and satisfaction. Most studies showed that marijuana has a positive effect on women’s sexual function, the study found, but too much THC can actually backfire.

“Several studies have evaluated the effects of marijuana on libido, and it seems that changes in desire may be dose dependent,” the review’s authors wrote. “Studies support that lower doses improve desire but higher doses either lower desire or do not affect desire at all.”

Part of what cannabis appears to do to improve orgasms is interact with and disrupt the brain’s default mode network, Tishler, Mulvehill’s co-author, told Marijuana Moment in an interview earlier this year.

“For many of these women, who cannot or do not have an orgasm, there’s some complex interplay between the frontal lobe—which is kind of the ‘should have, would have, could have [part of the brain]’—and then the limbic system, which is the ’emotional, fear, bad memories, anger,’ those sorts of things,” he said. “That’s all moderated through the default mode network.”

Modulating the default mode network is also central to many psychedelic-assisted therapies. And some research has indicated that those substances, too, may improve sexual pleasure and function.

A paper earlier this year in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, which purported to be the first scientific study to formally explore the effects of psychedelics on sexual functioning, found that drugs such as psilocybin mushrooms and LSD could have beneficial effects on sexual functioning even months after use.

“On the surface, this type of research may seem ‘quirky,’” one of the authors of that study said, “but the psychological aspects of sexual function—including how we think about our own bodies, our attraction to our partners, and our ability to connect to people intimately—are all important to psychological wellbeing in sexually active adults.”

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Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.