Pleasure Peaks CEO Antuanette Gomez is using weed to lead women to happier, healthier sex lives.
Like most of us, cannabis enthusiast Antuanette Gomez, founder and CEO of Pleasure Peaks, first smoked weed in high school…just because. When she was nervously taking a hit of a joint, she never imagined that the psychoactive plant would someday become her bread and butter.
“I usually ended up being the one who got too stoned or would just eat everything in the fridge,” the 24-year-old Canadian recalls. “If you would have told me I’d have a successful career in cannabis back then, I’d say you were crazy.
Hailing from Toronto, the entrepreneur, who first trained as a holistic nutritionist, has dedicated herself to enhancing women’s sexual pleasure and health by using the world’s favorite wonder weed. Before launching Pleasure Peaks, Gomez cut her teeth as the executive director for the Canadian branch of Women Grow, an international organization focused on female leadership in the cannabis industry. While there, she mentored various cannabis startups seeking guidance on navigating the legal side of the industry.
Last year, Gomez was named a Forbes Under 30 Scholar, a program recognizing young entrepreneurs, and in 2017 Toronto Life magazine saluted her influence shaping the new pot landscape. These days, with her career soaring and life on the move, she is gearing up for the spring 2020 release of Pleasure Peaks products in the U.S. and Canadian markets.
At its inception in 2015, Pleasure Peaks used cannabis to help patients at a local chronic pain clinic dealing with endometriosis and cervical cancer. Four years later, Pleasure Peaks now offers cannabis education; workshops to help couples bring cannabis into the bedroom; live programming on their YouTube channel; and “Pampered Pussy Spa Days,” complete with hemp oil manicures, mimosas, and CBD detox teas.
The time seemed right to catch up with the dynamic Gomez, a pioneer in a rapidly expanding world where weed, women, and sexual health come together.
What inspired Pleasure Peaks?
I was a student of holistic nutrition, focused on how natural ingredients heal various ailments. When I began learning about cannabis, I realized Health Canada had already been using cannabis as a medical treatment for over 20 years. As a result of my work in a chronic pain clinic, I became increasingly curious about how plants, and cannabis in particular, could be combined with other modalities to treat chronic pain. I wanted to make people’s lives better through cannabis, because I saw from experience the positive impact it had on patients who were able to access that type of care.
The more I learned about chronic pain, the more I became aware of women who suffer from sexual pain. It also became evident that this experience is common for women, and that treatment resources are limited. Women have been suffering in silence for too long due to the stigma surrounding female sexual health and pleasure. I realized a huge gap existed in the market for medical products to help women manage sexual pain, and so it became my personal mission to fill that void.
It takes a certain type of courage to advocate for women’s sexual health within the context of the cannabis industry, but I’m determined to see how far I can go.
How do you see cannabis impacting the future of healthcare?
Cannabis has so many amazing medicinal properties and we’re just scratching the surface. I’m a cannabis geek and always interested in the latest technology and research. Sexual health is the least studied and funded area when it comes to the human body.
What’s the biggest misconception about the cannabis industry?
That cannabis is simply recreational. The general population still thinks that users just want to get high, but our job is to show them a different perspective on cannabis consumption. People are using cannabis in their sex lives to mitigate sexual anxieties, to push past sexual traumas, and increase trust and intimacy in relationships. We believe that cannabis can help us redefine the peaks of pleasure.
In America, there will always be certain states resisting this changed perspective. Why do you think Canada has been so supportive on a governmental level?
To put it simply, cannabis is part of Canadian culture, and we are super proud of that. In Canada, cannabis has been legal for medical use for over two decades. Canada has been at the forefront of cultivation and genetics, and we plan to keep it that way. With federal legalization in October 2018, we have seen Canada make major plays in international cannabis trading in Europe, Australia, South America, and the Caribbean. Cannabis is the biggest industry of the millennial generation and every country is trying to get a piece of the pie. Luckily for us, Canada is leading the way.
Why does cannabis make so much sense for the female body?
There are innumerable ways that cannabis can be used to improve sexual health and pleasure among women. Cannabis is a vasodilator for women just like Viagra is for men. Cannabis can be used topically to achieve similar effects, like increased blood flow to the genitals and greater sensitivity—these benefits are unique to women. Cannabis also helps to relax vaginal muscles to make it easier for women to achieve orgasm. It can help with sexual anxiety, especially when smoked or inhaled with a vape. Cannabis helps to lessen menstrual pain and general vaginal discomfort, and also manage pain from endometriosis. Perhaps most profound, cannabis can assist with the complex forms of pain inflicted upon survivors of rape. We have developed 16 different products to help ease these types of pain.
You can find Antuanette Gomez on Instagram at @antuanetteg, or check out Pleasure Peaks at pleasurepeaks.com.
