The menstrual cramp pills I bought at the dispensary didn't work.
The weed tampons didn't work.
The veritable pasture of weed I smoked to try to kill my period pain didn't work.
Neither did the CBD oil. Or the brownie. Or the fucking THC pesto ravioli I made myself because I was hungry but also hurt-y.
When it comes to female pain, nothing works.
Thousands of women before me have attempted to use weed to relieve menstrual symptoms, yet a near-equal amount of women have had zero luck with pot pain relief. A smaller, number of ladies, myself included, also get no relief from pot for things like migraines or muscle pain.
Now, we finally have an answer as to why.
Earlier this month, Dr. Ziva Cooper, a researcher with the Columbia University Medical Center, published an analysis of two new studies that add some clarity to the way weed affects women's pain levels. The double-blind studies confirmed a very interesting effect — that there are measurable differences in how pot affects each gender. Specifically, it reduces pain much more effectively in men than it does in women.
Riiiight. Because men have an excruciating and debilitating abdominal event every month for the majority of their adult lives …
Even crazier: the analysis also found that after men smoked weed, they were more able to tolerate pain than they were sober. Women who smoked the same type and amount of weed as these men had no change in their pain tolerance whatsoever.
Please join me in uttering a collective "motherFUCKER." I mean, being a woman already comes with a Rolodex of unfairness, but this is just cruel.
So, does this mean there's no hope for women who want to use cannabis as a medical alternative for their smarting uteri?
Not entirely.
Dr. Cooper explained to Broadly that she thinks this effect is due to women just having a higher tolerance for weed than men do. In animal trials, female mice appeared more sensitive to the effects of cannabis than male mice do, but paradoxically, the more sensitive they initially were, the greater tolerance they built up to it over time with repeated treatments.
"We think the reason why we're seeing this differential effect, where males in our lab see this pain-relieving effect and females didn't, might be due to the fact that we're dealing with really heavy cannabis smokers," she said. "Another thing to keep in mind that this is not a blanket statement about cannabis or cannabinoids, or their pain-relieving effects in women."
What does it all mean?
"Our study indicates that future research should really make a strong effort to include females," Dr. Cooper said. "There's evidence that they do differ in this respect, and it's important to understand the variables that contribute to their differences." In particular, it would also be beneficial to look at how different modes of weed ingestion — oils, edibles, dabs, vaporizing, etc. — influence how females respond to cannabis pain relief.
These findings are particularly relevant in light of the DEA's recent (stupid) decision not to reschedule marijuana. Because so little research on weed can legally be conducted, it'll take a long time for trials that specially look at female tolerance to weed to be completed. Get cozy with that Midol/vodka cramp killing witch potion, I guess ..
Even if these kinds of trials are approved, however, these studies still highlight how important it is that some people be able to access stronger strains of weed. Some experts predict that if weed was federally legal, it would lead to low standardized dosing, kind of akin to 3.2 beer. This would benefit the FDA and the government because the THC dosage would be low enough to keep most people safe and under control, but they could still profit from sales of the hypothetically legal low-dosage bud.
That would be terrible news not just for women, but for people who rely on high-THC Hulk weed for a variety of medical reasons chronic pain, cystic fibrosis, cancer, seizures migraines and more.
That's all far off in the future, though. So right now, until someone figures out how to either strengthen weed tampons or why my uterus is immune to pot, I'm just going to be over here boofing Midol and window shopping for hysterectomy surgeons. Fun!
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