What Ashley Manta Got Right About Cannabis and Intimacy

If you read our first cannabis post, you know how we got here. The bong rip in college, the guilt, the thirty years of avoidance, the podcast that changed our thinking, the dispensary that didn't look anything like I expected. That's the origin story.

This post is different. This one is about what I've actually learned, and why Ashley Manta's framework gave us something that went well beyond "cannabis might help your sex life."

When I started researching the connection between cannabis and sex around 2022, I went scouring the internet and found almost nothing. Very little research, very few people discussing it openly and seriously. Ashley Manta was one of the foremost voices I could find at that time, and what set her apart was that her discussions were real and honest. Not theoretical. Not cautious. She was speaking from both research and real experience. 

We All Bring a Script to Bed

Here is something I didn't fully understand until Ashley put language to it.

Every person who has ever had sex brings a framework into the encounter. A set of scripts, expectations, and automatic responses built up over a lifetime of experience, messaging, and in some cases, shame. Most of the time we don't know we're running the script. We just think we're being ourselves.

My wife has an auto-response that I noticed years before I understood it. When I approach her intimate areas, her legs tighten. There is a rigidity that arrives before she has consciously decided anything. When I touch her breasts she struggles to simply receive the sensation. Her instinct is to reach for my hand or my arm, to redirect or manage rather than surrender to the touch. It's not a decision she makes. It's a response that happens to her.

For years I took it personally. I thought it was about me, about what I was doing or not doing. What I eventually came to understand, through the work we've described in the Shame and Desire series and through Ashley's framework, is that it had nothing to do with me. It was her script running. The weight of everything she had been told about her body and her desire, showing up every time we were intimate without being invited.

Cannabis doesn't erase the script. But it loosens its grip.

Ashley is also honest about her own experience with sexual trauma and how cannabis has helped ease the tension around past wounds. That honesty was an eye opener for me. It gave me a framework for understanding something I had been watching in my wife for years without having the language for it.

The rigidity, the redirecting, the difficulty simply receiving touch, these weren't personality traits or preferences. They were the body's memory of something that had happened long before I was part of the picture. Ashley's willingness to speak openly about her own experience gave me a way to see my wife's experience more clearly, and to approach it with more patience and less confusion than I had been managing on my own. 

What Embodiment Actually Means

Ashley Manta and the Sex With Emily podcast both talk about cannabis in terms of embodiment, the ability to be fully present in your body during intimacy rather than watching it happen from a distance. That framing changed how I thought about what we were doing.

We weren't using cannabis to get high. We weren't using it to lower inhibitions the way alcohol does. We were using it as a tool for presence. For my wife that means the automatic tightening softens. The reaching for my hand happens less. Her body opens in ways that her conscious mind has been trained to close. For me it means the mental noise quiets and what's in front of me becomes more interesting than whatever is running in the background.

My wife takes about half to a third of a 10mg gummy, usually the Wyld Pear 1:1 THC:CBG hybrid we wrote about in our first cannabis post. I vape, usually a sativa or hybrid. City Trees is the brand I keep coming back to. Neither of us is chasing a high. We're chasing presence. 

Where the Foria Connection Comes In

Ashley Manta was also the person who pointed us toward Foria. Specifically the Intimacy Sex Oil with CBD, which I wrote about in detail in The Foria Review I Wish I'd Had.

What I understand now that I didn't understand then is how the cannabis and the Foria work together. The cannabis addresses the mental and emotional scripting. The Foria addresses the physical. The CBD oil applied topically increases blood flow to my wife's erogenous zones, heightening sensation in a way that makes exploration more intense and more comfortable at the same time. Less guarding. More response. More of her body available to both of us.

When we get both of those things working together, the encounters we have are in a different category entirely. She is more present, more open, more responsive. I am more focused and more attuned. What used to feel like navigating around her script now feels like the script isn't running at all.

We both love those encounters. That's not a small thing after twenty-seven years. 

What Ashley Got Right About Dosage

The most practically useful thing Ashley Manta has contributed to our practice is the conversation about dosage.

Most people who try cannabis for the first time, or who are returning to it after a long absence the way we were, make the same mistake. They overdo it. They're seeking a high rather than a shift, and they end up too far gone to be present for anything intimate. The experience is underwhelming at best and overwhelming at worst, and they conclude that cannabis isn't for them.

Ashley's framework is the opposite of that. Start low. Go slow. The goal isn't intoxication. The goal is a small shift, just enough to feel more in your body than in your head. That distinction changed how we approached the dispensary and how we've experimented since.

Different strains and cannabinoids do different things. THC and CBD are the ones most people know, but CBG, which is in the Wyld Pear gummies my wife uses, has its own profile, more energizing and clear-headed than the sedative quality some THC-heavy products produce. Understanding those differences, which Ashley explains in accessible terms, made us much better at having conversations with our budtenders and much better at finding what actually worked for us.

Cannabis has become increasingly mainstream as legalization spreads state by state. The dispensary I once dreaded walking into now feels like a wellness shop. The people behind the counter are knowledgeable, the products are well-labeled, and the conversation around therapeutic use has moved into the open. Ashley Manta was ahead of that curve. She was talking about this seriously before most people were willing to listen. 

Are You a Cannasexual?

Ashley coined the term. My wife and I have never used it to describe ourselves. But we've lived what it describes, the intentional, considered use of cannabis as a tool for deeper intimacy rather than as a recreational escape.

If you are in a legal state, if you have been curious, if something in your intimate life feels stuck behind a wall you can't quite name, the framework Ashley offers is worth your time. Start with the Sex and Psychology Podcast with Dr. Justin Lehmiller, the episode called "How Cannabis Affects Sex." Search for Ashley Manta's work from there.

I want to say something about Ashley that I think matters for anyone who dismisses a source because of who is delivering the message. If my wife and I were to meet Ashley in real life, I'm not sure we'd have much in common. Our lifestyles are completely different. I am a monogamous man in a long-term marriage. Ashley's lifestyle is fluid and open in ways that aren't mine. None of that changes what she knows about this topic, which is considerable, both academically and from personal experience. If I had closed my mind because of who she is rather than what she was saying, my wife and I would be worse off for it. Being open to the messenger, even when their life looks nothing like yours, is part of doing this work honestly.

The script you're running in the bedroom was written a long time ago by people and experiences that had nothing to do with what you actually want. Cannabis, used with intention and at the right dose, can help you put it down for a while.

That's worth something.

This post describes our personal experience with cannabis used legally in our state. It is not medical advice and is not a recommendation for anyone else. If you have health concerns, please consult a qualified medical professional before trying cannabis. Know the laws in your state before making any decisions.

If this resonates with you, we put together a free guide called The Five Intimacy Truths Nobody Tells Long Married Couples. It's a good place to start.