You've heard of cotton mouth, the parching dryness that afflicts the pie holes of pot smokers. Well, meet cotton vagina. It's the same affliction, only way down yonder.
And yes, it's real. It's been popping up in urban dictionaries, as in this example from UrbanDictionary.com:
Cotton vagina.
When your vagina gets too dry for sex after smoking weed.
Very similar to "cotton mouth" (lack of saliva) but affects the vag in the same manner.
A) "Sorry babe I'm not up for sex at the moment... Cotton vagina problems"
B) I am hesitant having sex after smoking a fatty with my boyfriend... No matter how turned on or stimulated, the vagina refuses to wetten sometimes after a huge smoke sesh. Which sometimes can lead to a rather unfortunate amount of friction
Urban dictionary entries can be the stuff of urban myth, but now a health expert has weighed in. The bad news is that the cotton vagina issue is real in the context of penetrative sex; the good news is that there's a fix.
Dr. Julie Holland, author of Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You're Taking, the Sleep You're Missing, the Sex You're Not Having, and What's Really Making You Crazy, shares her expertise. In a recent interview with Vice, she explained that vaginal dryness can be caused by marijuana use.
"Exactly like dry mouth. It's the same thing. It's the drying of the mucus membranes," Holland said. "Now not all pot is going to give you dry mouth, but if you have had a strain that is giving you dry mouth, it will also make you more dry [down there]."
While pot can contribute to the arid condition, it's not the main factor, Holland said.
"In general the thing that makes women dry is the pill. Because there's all this different mucus that happens throughout your cervical cycle," she explained. "As Mother Nature designs it, when you're fertile, you're wet. But if you're on the pill, you don't ovulate; you don't get that mid-cycle wetness."
The solution to "cotton vagina" with penetrative sex is really no surprise: lube it up! Coconut oil or other lubes are the thing, Stewart said, and even when cannabis is part of the problem, it can also be part of the solution. The cannabis lubricant Foria could help, she said in response to a query.
"Foria? I've heard of it," she said. "I haven't tried it and don't have any data, but here's what I will say that's very important: I believe it's in a base of coconut oil and I think that coconut oil is excellent for lubrication."I've had patients tell me, I've had friends tell me, it is better than any other lube they've tried."
To paraphrase Homer's Simpson's famous aphorism about alcohol ("the cause of and solution to all life's problems"), when it comes to cotton vagina, cannabis may be the problem, but it can also be the solution.
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