Tod Hunter writes on from www.the420times.com – In the adult entertainment world, Tera Patrick has achieved the kind of stardom that makes her surname unnecessary. “Tera” is all that’s needed to identify her.

Coming from a background as a nurse and a high-fashion model before moving onto the adult scene, she has appeared on the cover of Playboy, been a Penthouse Pet and a Hustler Honey, traded banter with Howard Stern and has appeared in pictorials and on the covers of scores of men’s magazines. She was the first porn star to appear on the cover of FHM magazine, played herself in the animated “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and appeared in the music video for Everlast’s “I Can’t Move.”

In the adult industry, she was a freelance performer before landing a contract at Digital Playground, where she appeared in all three “Island Fever” titles and several of their signature lines before starting her own production company, Teravision, which produced titles including three volumes of “Reign of Tera,” “Test Drive,” “Tera Goes Gonzo” and “Tera Tera Tera.”

In her active performing career, she won five “Best New Starlet” awards (from AVN, the Hot d’Or Awards in France, Genesis magazine, Adult Stars magazine and the X-Rated Critics Association), won “Favorite Female Star” twice at the fan-voted F.A.M.E. Awards and “Best American Actress” at the Venus adult exposition in Berlin. She has appeared in more than 100 adult video productions before retiring from adult-industry performing in 2006. Her memoir, “Sinner Takes All,” was published by Penguin in 2010.

When 420 Times got a chance to interview Tera, we talked with her about the connection between sex — her specialty — and marijuana.

Tera told us that she has been a recreational smoker, and was into heavy use — even in public — earlier in her life.

“I would smoke everywhere; I would smoke in my car, I would literally get up, water my plants, have a gin and tonic and roll what I was going to smoke that day which was usually a lot. [laughs] And I would just walk around and smoke and people would just give me the thumbs-up like, ‘Hey that girl’s just kind of flaking around, chillin’, smokin’,’ but it made me so frisky and I just loved it.

She also drinks alcohol, but she prefers the company of smokers over drinkers.

“I was Miss High Times [for High Times magazine] and I remember, I would say, ‘I would rather hang out and party with a bunch of stoners over a bunch of drunk people any day.’ Because most people who recreationally smoke marijuana are pretty chill, you know. They just like to have a good time and feel who they are and just chill out.”

Nowadays, Tera prefers edible forms (“For me, actually these days I just prefer the lollipops and the brownies. I prefer to eat it.”) but whether she smokes it or eats it, it’s the high that counts to her:

“I truly enjoy just being high; I love just feeling good and feeling how it made my body feel. I personally felt when I was high, I felt heightened in my senses as far as my skin would feel tingly and I would just feel good. I never had any negative feedback from it.”

Sharing smoke, preferably mouth-to-mouth, is a great way to add marijuana to foreplay, Tera says.

“When I smoke with someone and I’m close to them, I like to take it out of their mouth, you know? To me that’s a very passionate sexy thing. That’s trust and that’s passion and that’s hot and that just makes you feel so good.”

Tera emphasizes that to fully enjoy the sex and the high, she has to be confident of who she’s with. Trust is key.

“I’ve always said when you’re inebriated, whether that you’ve been drinking or you’ve been smoking, the number one thing I always stress is that you be safe and that you are with someone that you trust. For me personally, I don’t allow myself to be with someone in that situation who I’m not going to trust because you can melt away your inhibitions and — look, a few of us have woken up the next day and been like, ‘Oh my gosh, what have I done?’”

You need to trust who you’re with, Tera says, because the high lowers inhibitions, bringing out fantasies that people usually try to hide, or don’t even know they have.

“I’ve always said that what a lot of people, men and women, have fantasies and they have things that are deep inside them that they want to act out and that they want to do. I’ve always been like a sexy kind of kitten anyway. Even just walking up and down the street I find myself touching my boobs.

“It arouses some people and just makes them feel really, really frisky. For me it makes me feel very, very frisky and the idea of smoking or sharing it with someone is even hotter. I know that when we’re drinking or when we’re smoking, it just brings out all kinds of fantasies. I mean, there’s people that are truly, I think, frisky on the inside but they don’t know how to really bring it out. And I’ve found that I can smoke a joint or just drink a nice glass of scotch and all of a sudden I’m like, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, you know? [I was with a guy who] said he’d never smoked and then all of a sudden he whips out duct tape and tapes me to the bed. I’m like, ‘Okay, this is cool,’ but, like, it took him a second to get there. So I think it’s very passionate.”

If you’re a guy who wants to get his girl to add marijuana to your bedroom activities, Tera advises: Take it slow, and make it just one of many parts of a sensual mood-setting.

“I’ve had guys ask me, ‘Hey I want to get my girl high,’ or ‘Hey I want to share this with her but she’s not really into it. How can I get her?’ I always say [start with] just the simple things of just putting rose petals on the bed or just lighting candles. If your girl wants to smoke but she doesn’t necessarily want to smoke, just take a hit and blow it in her mouth. It’s very, very erotic and sensual and it’ll make her feel like, ‘Oh, we’re sharing this together and this is amazing.’

“I’ve been with my man where he just blows smoke into my mouth and then that leads to some foreplay and then that leads to some pretty hot sex, hopefully, you know? That’s a really good way to get your girl to just kind of chill and go with the flow and get into it. I think it’s very hot, being with someone that you feel safe with and that you trust enough to get high with.”

When we asked Tera what she would call her personal strain, she said she would adapt her own name to fit it.

“If it was my strain it’d be called Tera-rizer. It would Tera-ize you. Yes, it would. I would Tera-ize you.”