Can This Obscure Hawaiian Mushroom Really Make Women Orgasm From A Single Sniff?

Maybe it’s men’s obsession with the elusive female orgasm that suddenly made a small, questionably scientific, 14-year-old study newsworthy again. Then again, if a mushroom really exists that can instantly cause women to climax, that’s something the world should be reminded about.

In 2001, a paper was published in the International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms — the journal loved by scientists with dreadlocks everywhere — reporting the effects of an unidentified mushroom they think is of the Dictyophora species thought to be a powerful female aphrodisiac that grows atop 600 to 1000-year-old Hawaiian lava flows. In all, 36 participants, 20 male and 16 female, were encouraged to smell the strange ‘shroom. Though all 20 men described the scent as “fetid” (a strangely specific word for 20 men to repeat), the women had a slightly improved reaction. Six of the females experienced a spontaneous orgasm, and the other 10 — who whiffed smaller doses — all reported arousal.

Unfortunately, the study has some holes: the small sample size, the lack of replicated results, and the fact that these “scientists” can’t even identify exactly what kind of mushroom they’re writing about. Then again, considering the International Journal Of Medicinal Mushrooms website has crashed due to the sudden interest in this archived paper, maybe they should be cut some slack — they didn’t get into this business to improve your love life, man. They just wanted to expand their minds.

Regardless, until researchers prove with a more thorough analysis that fungi can O-face your lady, you’ll just have to do it the old fashioned way, by talking with her about her feelings.