Cannabis, Sex and Television

Surfing the web the other day I noticed news about the study on how sperm get stoned on cannabis. Can you see them sitting around inside a plush prostate gland doing bong hits on a special episode of That 70s Show? The upshot of the study, conducted by researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo (someplace I did a lot of my own cannabis research), was that men who toke as few as four times a week have sperm that are less mobile and thus less able to reach their destination. It causes male fertility issues. Cannabis use also reduces semen volume, which negatively influences fertility as well.

This sounded familiar. Right away I had a theory: it's a xenoestrogenic effect. Researching this I discovered quickly I wasn't the first one with this theory. I am looking at the word "xenoestrogenic" underlined by spellcheck in red; you're probably wondering what the heck it means. So let me go back a few steps.

Scientists have been shocked to see that between 1938 and 1990 sperm counts declined by about half of what today's men's grandfathers were. Men today on average also have lower semen volume than did their grandfathers. According to Dr. Theodora Colborn (and coauthors) in the 1996 book Our Stolen Future, "Medical data also suggested that genital abnormalities such as undescended testicles and shortened urinary tracts were on the rise in young boys." There have also been reports of increased hermaphrodism -- that is, babies born with both male and female genitals. And in nature, many species are experiencing these gender-bending effects as well. From lesbian seagulls to sterile polar bears, the nature of sex, and the sex of nature, are changing as we watch.

There is some powerful circumstantial evidence as to why this is, and some significant scientifically proven evidence as well. Many toxic chemicals released into the environment have the effect of acting like the female sex hormone estrogen. Thus, they are called "xenoestrogens," or estrogens from the outside (as in xenophobic). These chemicals, which include a variety of PCBs, dioxins, pesticides, herbicides, phthalates (stuff in plastic), and heavy metals, all act biochemically in ways that are very similar to estrogen. Most have the added quality of accumulating and persisting in the body, collecting in fat tissue (including the fat content of blood). How bad is the problem? Results of studies published in a 1992 Greenpeace report show that breast milk in the US and Canadian populations contains 65 different kinds of PCBs, 11 kinds of dioxins, 13 kinds of furans and 16 different kinds of pesticides, among many other chemicals. Toxin populations in human fat were similar.

These chemicals move upward through the food chain so that a few parts per trillion in water can become a few hundred parts per million in predatory birds that eat fish from the water. People are predators; we are at the top of the food chain, so much of our intake comes from eating other animals and dairy products. But we also get a body burden of these chemicals just from breathing normal room air, and dioxins are passed along seven generations from the first point of exposure (hence, the dioxin-free toilet paper brand Seventh Generation).

These chemicals are all "gender bending," and also associated with a variety of cancers which are, in part, based on their xenoestrogenic action. The world is awash with artificial sex hormones, and we take them in each time we breathe. The result is a condition of hormone chaos on the planet, chaos which is extremely well documented. As the data collects, the case for pollutants acting like estrogen becomes stronger and stronger. This creates many health problems for both men and women.

After years of observing this issue, I have a sense that this torrent of estrogen is at least in part responsible for the social chaos that so many people experience in the realm of sexuality. It seems so much harder than necessary, does it not? But we need to remember at least two other factors. One is that television and film have more or less colonized our minds. The second is that during the past century the strict rules that once surrounded sex, sometimes enforced at the point of a gun, have relaxed somewhat, which feels to many people like near-anarchy. We have no social structure to cling to, we have xenoestrogens assaulting us from the inside and media images from the outside.

Now back to those sperm cells doing bong hits listening to Pink Floyd. What we call marijuana is actually the product of extremely refined horticulture. It is a plant, but it's not an entirely natural product. Only female plants are used, and they are kept isolated from contact with pollen from the flowers of male plants, often grown indoors. (This keeps them off the Earth, isolated from grounding contact with the mother.) The female plants produce flowers that secrete large quantities of THC-containing resin, the biological purpose of which is to grab pollen from the air. But there is no pollen, and the plants respond by creating more resin to catch the pollen that's not there. That makes for some good bud. No seeds (okay, an occasional seed), very sticky, and creating strains that have names like Train Wreck to describe how stoned one gets. These plants are not reproduced sexually; they are cloned from clippings. Thus, generation after generation of cannabis plant is created from incomprehensibly sex-starved females. It is their way of life.

And, it turns out, ingesting cannabis has an effect of feminizing men. Is it the effect of plant estrogen, as has been suggested? Not according to a study published in the Journal of Pharmacological Experimental Theory, which in 1983 reported, "Cannabis extract in large doses exhibited neither estrogenic nor antiestrogenic effects. Thus, although estrogen receptor binding activity was observed in crude marijuana extract, with marijuana smoke condensate and several known components of cannabis, direct estrogenic activity of cannabis extract could not be demonstrated in vivo."

But it appears to act on the male reproductive system another way. According to Dr. Colborn, writing in Our Stolen Future, "The same compound that makes a pot smoker high also acts on the testicles to reduce the synthesis of testosterone and on the brain to suppress lutenizing hormone, a key hormone [secreted by the pituitary gland] that cues ovulation in females and testosterone production in males. Studies have reported that marijuana feminized men who smoked it heavily." So pot appears not to be an estrogen producer but rather a testosterone blocker. But it also has effects on women, and cannabis may also block their reproductive ability as well.

It has other effects on females as well. Dr. Claud Hughes, a reproductive endocrinologist (hormone specialist), studied the way marijuana interferes with the production of prolactin, a brain hormone that signals the breasts to produce milk. "Mother rats given marijuana produced no milk and their pups died of starvation," Colborn wrote of Hughes' work. So in more ways than one, marijuana acts to control the population and mingles with the whole reproductive process.

Now, it's significant that marijuana is an important drug among adolescents, who are coming of age sexually and dealing with the implications of their sexuality on their social experience. They usually discover cannabis the midst of their hormones coming into full rage. This may have helpful implications, since once boys hit puberty their blood seems to be made of half testosterone and their sexual feelings can be so strong, with so few outlets for expression, that they don't know what to do. Cannabis likely provides a balancing effect and, however it works, it seems to ease social tensions among that age group. (Many girls experience that beyond-horny feeling at this age, though I can't speculate about the effects of cannabis on them.) And if cannabis helps quell reproductive power in both males and females, birth control could be an important and useful effect of the plant at that age, or any age.

I believe that cannabis provides an important folk-remedy for a number of personal situations as well. It is very effective as a temporary stress reliever, when used in moderation (rare enough). It can work as an antidepressant, again, used in moderation. It seems to help many people with creative blocks, but once again, moderation appears to be essential. It is absolute necessity for cancer patients, who need to keep their appetite up and their minds in a creative space to deal with their ordeal.

One source that's rarely looked to for information about cannabis is the homeopathic literature. Homeopathy is a branch of Western medicine that was well respected in the 18th and 19th centuries. Through the 20th century, as its own organizations languished and it was attacked by the allopathic medical establishment (in particular the AMA), the art was preserved and developed in India and, to a lesser extent, in Europe, and in recent decades has begun making a comeback in the United States.

Cannabis is an important drug in the homeopathic pharmacopia. Like other substances utilized by homeopathy, cannabis (usually cannabis indica) is used in highly diluted form, such that the normal properties of the substance are minimized and certain deeper properties are brought out. How this works is the subject of another article, but it works. The process of dilution (which homeopaths call potentization, because the remedy becomes more potent through successive dilutions) allows the use even of extremely toxic source substances (such as arsenic) with no side effects, since the substance has been diluted tens or hundreds of thousands of times. (Needless to say, most scientists think homeopathy is a joke, but the practitioners and people they help don't particularly care who is laughing.)

So, what do the homeopaths have to say about cannabis? It has been studied mostly for its psychological and emotional effects. One important use of the remedy is treating the adolescent identity crisis as it manifests in adults. Many adults never quite grow up, and remain in a perpetual search for who they are. Personally, I have long associated the development of the personality with the development of sexuality. The two seem to run in a parallel spiral like the threads of DNA. People who tend to suppress their sexuality also suppress their personality development. Oppressive institutions have long counted on the fact that if you can crush sexuality you can keep people from mustering their adult will and their adult independence. One priest can do the same work as a regimen of the army.

Dr. Dieder Grandgeorge, a fine, funny pediatrician homeopath from France, describes the cannabis type as being afraid to drown in the sea of experience, and suggests that we look for fear of drowning and related fears as clues that this is the correct remedy to treat the psychological state. [Note, homeopaths refer to types of people by their remedy, like astrologers use signs. The cannabis type of personality does not necessarily use cannabis. They merely need to remind the homeopath of the characteristics of the substance as defined by homeopathy.]

Dr. Rajan Sankaran, one of the great homeopaths of our day, based in India, has taken an interest in cannabis and conducted his own proving, or test of the remedy, and has developed his own interpretation. In The Soul of Remedies, he writes, "Like other plant remedies, cannabis has over-sensitivity. It also has a sense of isolation and other symptoms common to the group of 'drug' remedies."

Many remedies in its group (miasm) come with the quality of needing to hide a weakness from the world. "The perceived weakness is actually an inadequacy in facing the threats, dangers and risks of the outside world. The cannabis person feels unequipped to face them directly and hence observes the world from inside the safe confines of a 'glass cage'."

It is an interesting association that in the sexual chaos of our times, many people feel too threatened by sex and sexuality to talk about it or engage with others in a direct and passionate way. It is 'safer' to have sex through the computer, or to see it on a television screen in the form of pornography. When we do have sex, it's often through a barrier. I'm all for condom use, but I understand that looked at from the Tantric perspective, Yin and Yang must mix or there's not a full meeting.

Many people, both men and women, also feel terribly sexually inadequate, which is not an accident in a culture that withholds all meaningful information from us about sexuality. We must really go looking for accurate information about sex if we want to find it, and if you ask me only truly brave people engage others in real discussions of sexuality.

Sankaran explains that a cannabis individual often "stays within the house fearful of the dangers outside, and he makes up for the lack of stimulus by building fantasies and viewing things in a far more exaggerated form than they appear in reality -- his sense of proportion becomes exaggerated." He associates this condition of "overstimulation without risk" that is common to cannabis with television and cinema, both of which are products of California, where cannabis is extremely popular and much of it is grown.

"Everything -- both the beauty as well as the dangers -- is exaggerated in films and television programs. Interestingly, television too is an addictive habit and I believe that somewhere the themes of cannabis indica and television are similar."

Much of what we learn about sex we learn from TV and movies, and of course, most of it is wrong. ++


Birthdays This Week
Can you say money karma? I bet you can, and I bet you're sick of it. It has been a shockingly complicated set of circumstances that has led to what appears to be the inevitable conclusion that you need to pluck up some confidence when it comes to supporting yourself. Confidence around money, though, will come from getting back on the horse you fell off of in a financial arrangement with another person, or perhaps in a series of such mishaps. While part of the game is regaining your confidence in financial relationships, the first move is yours, and it's an inner move.

Unless you decide you are worth the bother, worth working with, worth working for or worth being of service in a way that compensates you, the game can't even begin. There is significant confusion around the issues of "mine" and "yours" in your life right now, which is all the more stressful because the only way resources grow is if they move, and movement means some kind of sharing or transaction. This seems to contradict your urge to independence, but really, you are going to learn how to sort out boundaries, sort out accounts, and make sure that what's yours is yours and what belongs to the other guy belongs to him.

Don't blame yourself for your questions. Instead, conduct an investigation. Take the big picture; this is not just about you. Start with your great grandparents. Even though you may only be able to recite exactly one-third of a fact about their economic life (though who knows, maybe somebody wrote a book about them) put that third of a fact on paper. Then work your way down the generations and see if you can tell yourself a story about how you got into your current situation. Who were these people, what did they face, and how did that shape what they believed? How would they react under your current circumstances?

It's just a story, but you can assess it and sense how you feel about it once you've got a version of it together. Then you can revise it. Pay particularly close attention to what you think of as the financial legacy of your parents, how they valued money, what they valued instead, and what their insecurities were. Part of this story involves the issue of money as power, and relationships where money is involved as situations that automatically turn into power struggles. This is not your belief. It belongs to someone else, and you have inherited it.

I have a hunch that you're going to learn a lot about your intimate relationships in this process, since so many of them are economically based. This is actually quite a problem, because it commingles the theme of survival with the themes of affection and sexual pleasure in ways more harrowing than are necessary. And it mixes the theme of power with the theme of pleasure, which is not good for pleasure. There is more than enough pressure on affectual relationships in our culture, but as anyone who has survived a marriage and its aftermath knows, they become very complicated where emotional dependency is mixed with financial security and sex. I recognize there is a lot of material going on in this region of your chart; it will take some time to sort out, but I assure you that it will be worth the effort.

What I see you striving for is that measure of autonomy that allows you to have honest relationships that are based on who you love and how you feel and not so tainted by what you need to get through the day. Remember the key ideas: "mine" and "yours." This includes hang-ups, real estate, mineral rights and your favorite stuffed animal.

The theme of sexual self-discovery continues be valuable area of discovery. Venus, your ruler, is currently transiting your second solar house (Scorpio) and that says give yourself what you need, begin to get a feeling of what it would feel like to be sexually self-sufficient, and then experiment with what you know in your intimate partnerships. They will be a lot happier for it.

Happy birthday, Libra.

For a full solar return (birthday chart) reading, you can call the office to make an appointment at (877) 453-8265.



Aries (March 20-April 19)
The Mars retrograde is not over until Nov. 8 (when Mars moves into new territory for the first time since late July). Until then, you are still in a review phase of your life, even though you are obviously eager to push forward into new experience, and to live the new vision for yourself that has been fermenting for so long. Bide your time, which is to say, abide in your time. These are some of the most sensitive days of your life and will offer you rare views of your most hidden inner spaces, the psychic and emotional rooms to which for years you've searched for keys and secret entrances. You are here now; be here now.

Taurus (April 19-May 20)
Do you feel like the hunted one, or the hunter? Pursuit is an ancient game, but after a while it's not that interesting. You have moved into territory where you are being compelled to reconcile certain elements of your past and the effect they have had on your most intimate relationships. It is likely that though you've had many chances to embrace this information, you've felt a need to get away from whatever it is that happened. You could, with great effort, do that again. But there is no point when freedom can be obtained for the mere cost of total honesty with yourself.

Gemini (May 20-June 21)
This would be an excellent time to assess the effect you're having on someone in your life, a person who may well be responding to you in what seem like strange ways. Although we are all responsible for our reactions to others, a reaction is often part of an energetic bond that requires two people to be what it is. The best thing you can do in the process of seeking clarity is to ask. The second is to observe, and look for patterns. You know yourself better than most people, well enough to understand how you might respond if under similar circumstances. Small changes you make can greatly improve the situation.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)
Think of the changes in your life as being about an equalizing effect. Clearly some people in the world have too much power, and plenty have not enough. Events of the current phase of your journey on the planet will put you in a position to see who falls into which category and, better still, to experience some tangible shifts in your own life. Track carefully who has power over you and how they got it, and notice how impersonal that process is. For your purposes, this whole matter is extremely personal. It is about you negotiating an appropriate role in the world, which means noticing and remembering what you discover about yourself so you know what appropriate really means.

Leo (July 22-Aug 23)
You need space; that's for sure. Primarily it is emotional space, the freedom to feel what you're feeling without accounting for the details. If you let go into this process you're likely to drop into one of your more introspective states in many moons. If you can do that, you'll notice that your life, and particularly your professional life, takes you for an upward ride on the wheel of fortune. The message of this experience is that your emotional process is directly linked to your state of affairs in the world, and the results of working through your feelings consciously can be quite dramatic. You've never been one to do things in small ways.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
In a recent proposal to The Mountain Astrologer magazine, I described the Virgo-Pisces axis as being about balancing craft and art. You are the master craftsman of the zodiac, the keenly aware technician who is one with your product or medium. Yet your life is becoming an evermore artful experience. I would say that one expression of this is learning from your personal struggle for growth and healing in a highly unusual way, one which raises your emotional sensitivity and leads you to embrace the most subtle levels of beauty without the need to assess or analyze. Childhood cannot happen twice, but you are very close to that perception, and the freedom that it offers you.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
Every decision you make stems from what you think you are. So says A Course in Miracles. The marvelous simplicity of this formula for choosing is easy to miss, because we almost always see choice as being something outside or beyond ourselves. Yet the options we see in the world will just as surely point to a set of values that we possess inside ourselves, and we're in fact unlikely to see any choices that don't exactly match a potential we feel inside. Your friends can also help you by telling you about the possibilities they see for you. Ask for explanations; they know what they're talking about.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
In the modern world, in which one is said to be either "dating" or "involved," we have an image of civil certification of relationship that has little to do with the inner erotic life that most of us live and feel. Almost any natural desire immediately clashes with the spoken and unspoken rules of the world. That often leaves us in a quandary that is, in theory, best resolved by keeping mum with our partner on what we really feel. If you happen to notice that your sex life is not what it could be, speak up and it will get a lot better. Remember to use the word "curious."

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 - Dec. 22)
Notice how you treat men and women differently. Two qualities come to mind. One is your sense of how one sex or the other triggers you; the other is the sense of threat that may be buried within that reaction. This is old material; it comes from some situation in the past. Becoming aware of it means you're growing healthier even though it may be irritating. You are presently in a unique position to suss out just how it comes to pass that you lose faith in the people you love, and why it sometimes happens that, when presented with a universe of possibilities, you can easily lose your breath.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
It is unfortunate when a relatively normal situation is made into a pathological condition, in this case 'codependency'. People do depend on one another, and there are healthy and unhealthy ways this may be expressed. One interesting thing about codependency is that it involves a third party, which can be anyone (such as a parent, a child, another lover or a friend). Are there any third parties who seem to be hanging around, and if so, who are they, and what exactly is their role? Look for a victim in the situation, but best to question whether it's true.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
One theme for this astonishing season is readiness, in particular, readiness to bring your awareness to a new level and to take on a different role in life as a result. I'm speaking of a feeling inside yourself that's likely to defy description and may be the one thing you're not saying to your friends. There are, however, certain people you would benefit from discussing this with, who are likely to be part of what you might call your 'soul group'. You will recognize them because they are doing similar work as you are at this time in history. You don't need to find them. They are more likely to find you.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
I feel like I keep reminding Pisces to take aspiration gradually, and to remember how much power you have to shape your world. It's very important that you make certain changes over the next two months because they will prepare the way for even greater changes to come. Think of the physical plane as being a conduit for energy from other levels. The dense world of this level is like a canal system for energy pouring in from other levels. You need to clear the way for that influx of energy, and you have special tools in your possession to do that work. They're power tools. Gently, decisively and steadily is the way.