CBD Lube: For Pain, Sex, or Both?

After launching a line of CBD-infused products this month, Kim Koehler is making her debut at the Indo Expo in Denver on Saturday, January 27. Her star product? CBD-infused lube.

Koehler says she was inspired to create her brand, Privy Peach, to empower women after dealing with pain and trauma in her own life. After experiencing a sexual assault and living through an abusive marriage, she faced pain and anxiety during sex. Her doctors recommended physical therapy, but she didn’t feel comfortable with that.

“I basically suffered with pain,” she says. “There are a lot of people who deal with that." Nearly 75 percent of women experience pain during sex at some point in their lives, whether it’s short-term or long-term, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Vaginal pain can be caused by emotional and/or physical problems, including trauma, ovarian cysts, endometriosis, vulvodynia and pelvic inflammatory disease.

Koehler, a photographer for eighteen years, saw a potential solution after learning more about CBD and its benefits while working with people in the cannabis industry. “Everyone was telling me how much cannabis and CBD had changed their lives,” she says.

She had tried products with THC in the past, but found that they only worsened her anxiety. CBD is a non-psychoactive component of cannabis, however, and has been shown to help ease anxiety and paranoia as well as inflammation and pain. In 2017, CBD even passed a clinical trial funded by GW Pharmaceuticals showing that it reduced the number of seizures in children with epilepsy.

Privy Peach's CBD lube is anti-inflammatory and uses a natural coconut-oil base to prevent irritation; so far it has been a great success for her and her friends and family members who have tried it, Koehler says. She tests all of her products for three months to measure efficacy, she explains — except the newly released “Dude Balm,” an erectile-enhancement balm infused with CBD, watermelon-seed extract and citrulline.

To help with anxiety, Koehler also sells hemp-derived CBD oil. She tried it before a date, and it was “literally life-changing” for her anxiety, she explains. Most novice users don’t love the earthy taste of cannabis and hemp, though, so she plans to make a capsule form of the oil. For now, she sells cotton candy infused with CBD to sweeten things up.

Koehler also sells CBD lip balm, body butter and scrubs, and a hair-regrowth mask, among other infused products. The CBD products, which can be moisturizing and regenerative, have also improved her skin. “All of the products are designed to make people feel good, smell good or have a higher quality of life,” she says. “Sex and cannabis is kinda taboo still, especially for women.”

Koehler gets the cannabis oil to make her products from Vapor Distilled extraction in Boulder, which extracts the oil using heat and condensation to make CBD distillate. For now, she's creating the end products at home and running Privy Peach business operations — along with her photography studio and fitness travel company — by herself. She’s funding Privy Peach entirely on her own through her other businesses, she says.

Aiming to provide a sense of comfort to an industry that “is targeted more toward men,” Koehler plans to donate some of the revenue from her products to a different nonprofit each quarter, including domestic-violence charities that helped her when she was in need.

While she knows there may be risks to telling her story, she decided it was time to go public to start a dialogue with women in similar situations. “I want people to realize that they’re not alone," she says. “Some of these products are so dear to my heart because of what I’ve been through.”