Postcoital Dysphoria

I woke up around 6am feeling very gloomy. I wasn’t sure why; Dakota and I had a pleasant albeit uneventful evening, Ryan and I hadn’t gotten into an argument before bed like we had quite a bit this past week, and I couldn’t remember any of my dreams but I don’t think they were particularly sad. Just a heavy fog of dread about starting another day. I was able to go back to sleep for a bit but that didn’t help much.

Why did I feel like this? Was it because I had too much sex over the weekend?

Now you might wonder why that would possibly be the hypothesis I came up with. Let me explain:

One time in college Dakota fucked me so well it sent me into an existential crisis. And no, I’m not exaggerating. I genuinely don’t remember much about the sex that happened like eight years ago or something, I know that it was really good, but the overpowering memory of the experience was the come down. I was upset sex had never been like that before and worried it would never be like that again. Admittedly, I’m not sure it has been…but I’m okay with the level of sex I’m having if it doesn’t end up sending me into a depression.

I never bothered to look into this because it was obvious to me that lots of brain chemicals do lots of weird things while having sex and clearly it just got my wires a little crossed for a bit. After a few hours I had returned to a relatively normal state. But after waking up this morning feeling down I decided to see why intense orgasms might lead to depression.

Almost half of people experience postcoital dysphoria at least once in their lives. I would say previous to today it had happened twice for me, the second one also after a very good round of sex, but noticeably less extreme than the first time. And yeah, essentially the reason is what I said before. We don’t know a ton about why it happens other than lots of chemical changes happen and the sudden spike and drop of serotonin and dopamine might mess with you a bit. But according to Healthline this lasts a relatively short amount of time, usually clearing up within a couple hours.

That sounds a lot more like the specific time I described with Dakota. Versus this seemed to have a slow onset that got worse, and wasn’t from one specific session of sex. Within roughly 36 hours over Valentine’s Day weekend I had sexual contact five times (actual PIV four of those times) resulting in 15+ orgasms. My theory before doing any research was that I had depleted my serotonin over the weekend. After a bit of reading, although it seems like there’s still a lot of mystery around it, from what is known about postcoital dysphoria I’m not sure that’s the case. So what else could it be?

I did get drunk both Friday and Saturday night. I have noticed in the past that if I am drinking or getting high multiple days in a row it can make me feel a bit down so I typically don’t do it back to back days. It’s possible this is a contributing factor, although that seems like a delayed reaction. I would’ve expected to wake up Sunday feeling crummy rather than today.

I also had a bit of a flare up with a chronic health issue and when that happens I tend to get pretty shit sleep. Add that to the fact that the previous night I was up past 5am getting fucked… maybe my body is just a little worn down. Who knows.

At the end of the day bodies are weird and I in particular have some fucked up hormones. Brain-wise, sexually, and endocrinologically. Is that a word? It is now. I think it’s time to lock Dakota back up and not let anyone touch my vagina for at least a few days. And probably take a nap.