Swimming and medical marijuana are what I do for chronic pain.

Medical marijuana . . .
I had been given a lot of medications for pain and the side effects were as debilitating as the disease. They made me fat, sick, unhappy, angry and depressed. That is a great combination for a dismal sex life, well a dismal life overall. The narcotics were so disruptive and so broad spectrum that they disrupted my ability to feel sensations, not just sexual sensations, but everything. To add insult to injury they were marginally effective at best for pain. I was having sex once a month at best and even then it hurt too much. Sex exacerbated the pain.

Med MJ worked but is very limited in how I can use it. Mostly at night when I know I can let my cognitive facilities down somewhat. My partner is gracious about my use prior to sex, she knows that it had gotten painful and that med mj provides relief.

CAVEAT – I could not stand anything else. My sister and my partner both cannot stand marijuana. They both tried and hated it. My sister said it was like painting herself into a corner and having to breath turpentine for hours. It may not work for you. You may not want it for other reasons or it may not be effective for you. Honestly I am not trying to sell you on mj, only to say that it worked for me.

And there are other alternatives, but talk to your doctor.

Swimming . . .
I used to walk and as the pain progressed my walking decreased and that caused the pain to worsen. Swimming restored my ability to move and to feel pleasure in my body. Over the course of time it helped immeasurably.

Here a big CAVEAT – I swam distance for years, almost 20, so it was still second nature for me. But with that said it still took 18 months for my stroke to come back (swimming stroke, you perves) and it was hard hard hard to keep going when the results were so slow in coming. But I had a faith that the only equivalents are what Russians have for Vodka or Rastafari for ganja. And I swim distance now several days a week. A friend called it brutal, but he cannot swim.

And I need them both. With out one or the other there is a slow erosion and a steady ramping up of pain.

I’m sorry your are in pain that is affecting your life, I hope you find the tools you need to manage it well. If this thought is any consolation my life in general and sex life were non functional. It is much better now and I enjoy life and sex again.

Good luck,

Ahh, I honestly have no idea. My husabnd has recent lost a leg arm and a few broken legs, needless to say hes in pain. He is on painkiller but it still hurts. A while back when I orginially left the military with honorable discharge from 3rd degree burns and a few bad cuts scrapes and well it was a tad painfull. So ime gona speak from expiernce what worked/worked for us.

At the time I came back he was still oversees, alot of time along at home. I would be home with my silicone freinds and well.......it was hard at first. Once I got horny I was liking it. I didnt squirm as much as I would of use to but it wasnt bad. I found having a few pillos on both sides so I dont move alot helps. Once I had pillows on my sides so I didnt move to much It took a few mintutes to start likeing it. I would initianny insert a toy and it just be like watever ime horny but it doesnt really feel good. After a few minutes it made it all worth it. The hardest part for me was the initial orgasm. I love to squirm in an orgasm. I however had to try not to move around alot.

So now when it comes to my husabnd having sex, right now were not having much vaginal sex more boob sex and handjobs along with toys. It isnt as good as it use to be but its better then nothing. I sort of move around him and well fromg there you can picture the rest. Ive also found that if you can "face sit" for him to give you oral its great.

I also have saw several products such as a sex swing or a stool that you can use.

This is Gabee again and I thought a lot about what I had said to you. That was bad advice because I do not know anything about you or your condition. Chronic pain can disrupt most of parts of a life and desperation lead me to take cannabis to treat pain. BUT I am not a doctor and nothing I say should be construed as medical advice. But with that said rather then retract the statement I explain the steps that went into making this decision. You can make a decision, hopefully in concert with your doctor.

To start:

I have tried all other treatments offered to me and they failed. The pain I was in had was appearing to be untreatable and was becoming unbearable. You might not be in this group and I imagine it is a pretty small group. Good for you if you are not.

Research
1. I did a litterateur search at PUBMED and when the articles were not available online I got them from a medical school library.
2. Marijuana and medicine : Assessing the science base (Joy, Weston and Benson editors, 1999.) Probably superseded by later research. It may have come out in a new edition.
3. (Sorry I will have to provide the book later, the SFPL search site is down and I can not check the reference title, publication date and authors. will give it later) Best general work that synthesizes the research into intelligent articles by other researchers and experts in the field.
4. Lastly I also talked to a pharmacist about cannabis and was told that it had excellent anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties.

For you to consider:

Marijuana has been implicated in causing brain diseases (IE: schizophrenia) in some young populations. Varying interpretations suggested that marijuana use was either co-morbid with or causative of serious brain diseases. You are young and I am not. That cannabis may cause schizophrenia should be of concern to you. It was to me and from what I read I am out of the age range where this occurs. You may not be.

I considered Marinol, synthesized THC. But have since decided that while the pain reductions caused by Marinol was roughly equivalent to narcotics and tolerability studies suggested a lower drop out rate, suggesting a higher likelihood of compliance with a course of treatment, almost every post I read subsequent to reading these studies had everyday patients complaining that they could not titrate their medications appropriately. Patient posts complained about long onset times, much too high a dose for what was required essentially leaving the patient entirely wrecked for hours. Me like Brain. So it was not worth pursuing as it was delivering a much higher dose than appeared to be necessary for management of pain.

There is a drug called Savitx that is supposedly formulated to be non-intoxicating. But I do not believe that it is approved in the USA yet. The last time I looked it said that they were going to take applications for compassionate use cases. What you should probably read is that they are going to look at cases like mine with a lot of medical documentation for failed treatments and make it available for use on off label uses in very select cases. My understanding is that it is in FDA testing for cancer and cancer related pain.

But be forewarned, since it is a new drug being introduced into the American market it will probably be expensive and both controls from the insurance companies and from the federal government will probably place a very high bar to its availability. Also developing a narcotic without intoxicating properties has apparently been a goal of the pharmaceutical industry for 50 years (sorry, I can not provide the reference at this time, I will later). It has not happened and probably will not happen. So don’t expect a completely non-intoxicating drug derived from cannabis. Which will leave cannabis medications suspect for many medical providers. This is my first, but currently unavailable choice.

Your profile said northern California. If you have insurance there should be some sort of clinic in the bay area, big teaching hospital or large spin off practices from that institution, which should have some expertise and can help you more.

There are no exercises that I am aware of which will help with chronic pain during sex, other then as fundamentals, which are good for everyday living. BUT I do not know your condition. The only real suggestions I have are around management and chronic pain can be effectively managed. Talk to your doctor for alternatives.

For a 19 year old this advice probably blows. When I was 19 I would have hated it if someone told me that the only way to have good sex was to plan ahead and limit the things that were counter productive to it. Yea right.

What has helped are the everyday kinds of things that any therapist or sex therapist will tell you to do: more time in foreplay, relax, communicate and if something does not work out do something else. I know, pretty unfair when everybody else gets friction, heat, sparks and combustion. But really: tired, frustrated and in pain, take some time and try a softer direction. You might find that the roundabout will get you to the same place.

Bottom line:

My sex and intimate lives are good now, again, thankfully. But for about five or six years it was really painful and only getting worse. I was hating sex and my partner when we were intimate. One night I gave her head and I resented it the whole time. That was when I knew something was wrong, very wrong. I have always loved getting my partners off and I love giving head, everything about it. Pain made sex hard to do. The medications made intimacy even harder if not impossible. Marijuana gave me those parts of my life back.

Soooo . . .

Try what your doctor offers first. If the protocol creates problems, be honest with your doctor. If you do not tell them they will assume that everything is good for you. YOU must bring up sexual issues or they may be not be considered. From my experience it appears medical providers treating pain may well consider a degraded sex life or even a nonexistent one to be the course of a disease and a reasonable trade off for controlled pain. That may be a trade off you are unwilling to make. That sort of mindset is not unreasonable, particularly at your age.

Good luck,

Gabee

PS: I did not give you the research I did, not only because it was not on point for your condition, but because it is not a simple decision. I am deeply thankful for medical marijuana. But it is, at least for me only part of the puzzle, a necessary one, but a small one in the long run. And it is a lifetime of being on this medication to manage pain. Given all the problems I had taking standard pharmaceutical medications and how sick they made me even when taken as directed it is impossible for me to tell you or anyone to blithely go forth and light up. I tried to make an informed decision and seem to have succeeded. But it might not be right for you. Informing yourself and struggling with the information may be the single most important thing you can do. I wish you well.

PPS (I do not smoke.)

i have a bad back, spine injury in the neck area, torn rotator cuff, and lower back injury. sex for me always represents a certain amount of pain. we have done a lot to utilize different positions, furniture, pillows, etc...to make sex more comfortable for me.

it's not very sex but i'm also religious about icing affected areas afterwards to save myself some pain and cut down on any swelling.

I was injured in the army and I had to have most of my guts removed, so I had a colostemy bag for a little while. I thought that it was the nastiest thing in the world, but my wife didn't mind it. We would clip the bottom part of the bag so that it would stay out of the way, and I would where a t-shirt or something so that you couldn't see that nasty thing. My wife continued to have sex with me during that painful and nasty part of my life. She was amazing in how she took care of me. A couple of years later and you really don't notice much. I can go without a shirt and you can only really notice one of the scars (only because it looks like I got stabbed by a really big knife or a sword) and the others are hidden in my stomach hair. Long story short, if you have the right partner you can get past anything and still have great sex.

I would love to be in a state where I could get medical MJ, right now I take a lot of OTC pain pills (because my dr is evil and only gives me 20 narcotic pain pills with no refills!). I also swim to help keep my joints and muscles moving without causing extra pain on them.

I agree with previous posters, communication is key with that you can get through a lot. My husband is extremely supportive of me and my limitations, and we have worked out ways that work for us (and are still discovering more).

I suffer from Fibromyalgia since.. a very long time, in fact. I recall having symptoms at the age of 5. I'm an untreatable case (in fact, even synthetic THC was a failure on my case), who rely on opiates to go thru the most awful phases of my life. Oddly enough, or maybe not, I've always been a very horny person ever since childhood and I think the endorphins and every "feel good" hormone I can feel kills the pain, at least for a few minutes, or a few seconds. Yes, there are days where I'm so tired I'm atrociously passive, but it doesn't mean I don't enjoy myself (and my husband enjoys it anyway). It's almost an addiction...