According to a case report that was published in the Journal of Cannabis Research, a man sustained a 12-hour long erection after he had smoked cannabis.
A painful erection that won’t go away for up to hours, known as a priapism, has many possible causes of which most are linked to medication. The fact that marijuana has a reputation for causing erectile dysfunction proves what a rare occurrence it was for this man to suffer an erection this long.
According to doctors at the Coliseum Medical Center in Georgia who detailed the story of the patient, the 32-year-old suffered from priapism on multiple occasions, and each time it happened after he’d been smoking weed. The man ended up at the emergency room twice over two weeks with erections that would not come down for hours.
The first erection lasted 12 hours while the second lasted six. The man was given injections of phenyleprhine to relieve the swelling.
“He admitted to smoking cannabis several nights per week for the past six months, including within the two-hour period prior to each presenting episode of priapism,” the doctors write in the case report.
“During this time, the patient had four or more episodes of a persistent erection lasting close to four hours that were self-resolving.”
“He admitted a history of cannabis use at age sixteen and seventeen, during which time he had recurrent priapism lasting less than four hours and never requiring medical treatment,” the team also wrote.
“He quit cannabis use in his twenties, and during this period did not have any episodes of priapism.”
The man started smoking weed again six months before the unwanted erections returned.
