Witches, stoners, and sluts – assemble! This week’s guest on The Pleasure Provocateur, Lorrae chats with author and journalist Sophie Saint Thomas, whose work primarily focuses on modern day magic, cannabis and CBD, and all things sex-positivity. She’s written several books about cannabis and CBD in self-care, countless articles answering all of our sex questions, and is coming out with a new book exploring the untold history of abortion, called “Reproductive Rites: The Real-Life Witches and Witch-Hunts in the Centuries-Long Fight for Abortion”.
Sophie and Lorrae dive in headfirst to chat about the importance of knowing the roots of sex magic, how our relationship with cannabis can shift according to our needs, and exactly how ridiculous the history of reproductive rights has been (spoiler alert: always has been, always will be).
Their candid conversation inspires us to take stock of our identity, ensure that we understand who came before us to pave the way, and learn what else needs to be done for future witches, stoners, and sluts – so we can move toward liberation for all.
Cannabis and CBD for PTSD and the Controversies of Cannabis
Lorrae: I would love to start with CBD and cannabis because you’ve written so much on that historically as a tool to reconnect with ourselves, our body, our pleasure and others. People might know that they can use cannabis to unwind at the end of the day or if they go out. But your work really deep dives into how we can use cannabis to improve our lives and our pleasure in meaningful ways.
What are some of the practices that you found or tools that you found? I know that you wrote a journal on actually tracking cannabis use and your pleasure and sexuality. What are some of the things that you found there?
Sophie: Well, my first introduction to cannabis for sexuality actually came from more of a PTSD route researching how it can help sexual assault survivors really enjoy sex again. And there are so many ways THC suppresses dreams, which is helpful for sexual assault survivors. If you’re having recurring nightmares, which I was. It’s interesting.
I actually now don’t really use it. For social events, I’ll use THC sometimes if I’m going out, but I don’t like using it before bedtime anymore because I miss dreaming. I don’t have nightmares anymore and I really like my dreams. THC also for me has always been kind of activating, so it keeps me awake.
My main beef with the cannabis community is that no one says anything bad, which I think is a result of the war on drugs and how criminalized it is, because obviously it should be legal. Obviously no one should be in jail or prison. But as a result, I feel like it’s almost very stigmatized to say things like, “I’ve actually been staying away from THC because it keeps me up.”
I have been using a lot of CBD because I have been anxious lately or stressed with book edits. But if you like THC and it’s not keeping you up or you maybe want to get rid of your dreams, it can really help you sink into your body.
Cannabis is a vasodilator, which means that it increases blood flow. As a result, it can make your orgasms better. It also enhances sensation, which means everything from your physical touch and even some things like smells and just looking at your partner can be really enhanced. And it’s also just, it’s just fun. Everyone reacts differently.
For me, at the height of me being into using cannabis for sex, I would say was not too long after my assault. Getting into my body was more difficult, just relaxing and sinking into the moment was more difficult. For that, I really can’t recommend it enough.
Lorrae: I had smoked for years and then, once I reached like my late 20s and early 30s, it actually started to make me anxious and people would say, “you just have to find the right strain or this and that.” It was actually indica strains and the ones that are supposed to be more soothing that were making me feel so anxious.
I actually wondered if it was that feeling of less inhibition or feeling not as stimulated was almost weirdly triggering my anxiety because I felt less in control, whereas if I was on a stimulating strain, I felt like I could get things done and be motivated and think through things that I needed to do, or if I was going through something, it gave me a different window.
So have you found that as people’s body chemistry changes, as they get older or are going through different things in their lives, that something that might have worked for them doesn’t anymore or that didn’t before now does?
Sophie: Definitely. It’s interesting being a writer because I have written three books on cannabis, plus the journal. So I understand that everyone really associates me with cannabis.
I don’t use it as much as I used to, but I will always be a cannabis advocate because I’ve done a lot of research about a lot of different drugs and I’ve been prescribed a lot of different prescription drugs. And I’m definitely not against prescription medication. But if you want to stop taking certain pills for anxiety and depression, you have to wean slowly under a doctor’s supervision and go through all these side effects.
Cannabis is not side effect free and it is not without some risk, but it’s comparatively and from a harm reduction standpoint, so safe. You wanna stop weed, you just stop weed. You might miss it if it’s part of your social life.
I really don’t wanna sound like I’m hating on Western medicine, but Xanax and Adderall and even opiates you can just get from a doctor but then the people are in jail for weed. It’s so backwards and so messed up. So I am definitely pro cannabis, but I am also pro talking about how your body can change and your relationship with it can change and that’s okay. And we can be able to talk about that stuff without sounding like we’re condemning the plan.
Lorrae: And especially with psychedelics, people talk about that as well, that there’s no bad side effects, where people can have bad experiences. And if we can’t be open about that as well, then it’s limiting our ability to make the right choices and learn what’s right for our body and moderate ourselves and really take this slow approach.
I’ve also struggled with medications that are kind of traditional Western medicine. They just haven’t really worked well with my body, but things like psychedelics and microdosing and ketamine have really helped to soothe my nervous system and give myself a deeper understanding of who I am, who I am in the world, and my trauma and unraveling that in a safe way.
Psychedelics as Trauma Healing Tools
Lorrae: You speak up to that in some of your writing as well that these other substances, both psychedelics that are dissociatives like ketamine that might be made in a lab and MDMA, but also psychedelics that are more plant-based can really help us as a tool, not just for our own healing, but also for connection and pleasure. What has some of your research lended to you or brought to you regarding that?
Sophie: I want to be careful because I’m not a medical doctor. I personally used ketamine infusions after I grew up in the Virgin Islands. I live in New York now, but I was down there in 2018 after there had been two category five hurricanes and the island was just a mess.
Everyone was fine, but there was a drive-by shooting that we were in, and my therapist suggested ketamine infusions to me after that. It’s really, really good at trauma, especially if you do it right after, as close to the trauma as possible.
I always describe it as like taking an elevator. I was messed up in the basement and then I was on maybe not the penthouse, but up in the high floors and just felt like myself again. But I started having, unfortunately, negative side effects from doing ketamine, too. So I don’t use ketamine infusions anymore.
There’s research on this, but people don’t really talk about it. I was getting a lot of recurrent UTIs, and there’s a whole thing called ketamine bladder syndrome, how it can mess with your endocrine system. And thankfully I didn’t have any permanent damage or anything. Everything was fine, but it was irritating my urethra and giving me UTIs. And it’s a shame, it really, really helped my depression and anxiety. And it’s really fun, I can’t lie about that part.
Lorrae: Yeah, it is really one of these interesting things where we try something and it can work for a little bit and then it stops working or something else pops up.
Wherever we are on our healing journey, I always just hope to find this one magic thing that’s going to work. But it’s really this combination of all of these different elements that starts to create a big puzzle piece picture that you really need to wade through over time. And the healing journey can be so tough.
I was in a horrible depression, gosh, like a year, six months ago, and finally started to get out of it thanks to microdosing. I did TMS, which I don’t think really worked for me. I had to stop a third of the way through because I was having really severe migraines. But I finally found an anti-inflammatory that helped me so much. And I think a lot of what I was going through was brain fog and chronic fatigue and chronic pain that I was interpreting as depression because I’d been through so much trauma.
And it really reminds me of The Body Keeps the Score, which has its own issues in the literature. But our bodies hold on to so much and that different things can help to alleviate what might be stuck in ways that we didn’t expect it to get stuck.
Sophie: Once, a doctor I interviewed from a sexuality article told me that everything bad is because of inflammation. You know, it’s all tied together. So that doesn’t surprise me.
Lorrae: Yeah, I feel like even when we go through trauma, whether it’s physical or mental, it’s causing some kind of inflammatory response, your body’s just freaking out about it.
Quickie Orgasms with Magic Wand
Lorrae: So we were talking about how pleasure can really be this tool for self-care and connection and really connecting to ourselves.
For me, the Magic Wand has been my number one go-to favorite thing, because it really is such a powerful tool. My brain isn’t on anything else except the sensations in my body. And I’ve used it for sex magic, which I think is just so funny, because it’s called Magic Wand. And then you had shared that you have an experience with Magic Wand as well, in your pleasure. So if you are open to sharing, I would love to hear.
Sophie: Yeah, I love the Magic Wand. For me and my fiancé, our sex life is really important to us. We are both very sexual people, but we’re also both total workaholics. He’s a business owner and I basically am, as a writer. And we’ve been both working all hours, but we still try to get quickies in.
We’ll meet up for just enough time to have dinner and a quickie some nights if we’re both working. And last night we did that, and we just pulled out the Magic Wand. And it’s amazing because I can come in less than a minute. There are a lot of good ways to use the Magic Wand, but if you are trying to keep an active sex life while writing a book that covers 4,000 years of history, I would recommend the Magic Wand for all your quickie needs.
Lorrae: Sometimes you just don’t have the time for all the like sex magic tantra candlelight, like I just need to orgasm and have it be done with. I always say that the Magic Wand is the only vibrator that can make me come from over my pants so that is true to the quickie spirit.
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