[x123]

Does anybody else feel hung-over for several days after sexual activity? I used to feel like that for several days after taking LSD or the day after drinking too much.

Sorry if this is a dumb question. I've always wondered if it is just me or if everybody is that way. I've always thought some chemical in my brain gets depleted. I am depressed most days anyway, so maybe my brain chemistry is fragile. To be honest, I'm thinking about being giving up sex. For me without a sex partner, it is boring and empty, and I'm getting so old that it seems more like a chore.

[Webgoji]

No, but I usually feel pretty good for several days since I get a really nice dose of oxytocin and testosterone from sex.

[x123]

Originally Posted by Webgoji

No, but I usually feel pretty good for several days since I get a really nice dose of oxytocin and testosterone from sex.

That's interesting. I'm glad I asked, because I assumed that everybody felt hung-over for a day or so after sex. I don't think I've ever been as horny as most men, but I always tried to limit my activity so I wouldn't feel hung-over on the following day. As I've gotten older it seems like the costs outweigh the benefits.

I probably should give up sex altogether, but I feel like I've been cheated in life. I've never really had a sex partner, and now I'm too old for sex. A lot of things about my life make me feel cheated, but I need to look forward instead of backward.

[Webgoji]

Actually, I wonder if you don't have sex-induced migraines?

https://migraine.com/migraine-triggers/sexual-activity/

Keep in mind that the pain from a migraine ranges from mild to "OMFG!" and often for me, when I get migraines, it's almost like being hung-over and goes on for a couple of days. It might be something to have the doctor check out.

Oh, and you're not too old for sex.

[x123]

Originally Posted by Webgoji

Actually, I wonder if you don't have sex-induced migraines?

https://migraine.com/migraine-triggers/sexual-activity/

Keep in mind that the pain from a migraine ranges from mild to "OMFG!" and often for me, when I get migraines, it's almost like being hung-over and goes on for a couple of days. It might be something to have the doctor check out.

Oh, and you're not too old for sex.

I definitely had one of those a year ago. It was a really bad headache. I thought it might be a stroke or something.

Normally I just have an ordinary headache the next day. When I was younger, one of my friends described the after effect of LSD as "feeling like you only have one brain cell working". That's how I feel a day or two after sex. Or another description would be like having a hangover from drinking too much - nausea, weakness, shakiness. I think it triggers depression in me.

All these things have been getting worse as I age. Maybe I will try to abstain from all sexual activity. IDK The sexual frustration can be exhausting and depressing too. Damned if I do and damned if I don't.

EDIT: Probably abstinence is the solution for me. I've done that before, and the body acclimates over a couple of months so that it isn't as hard. My libido is pretty low anyway.

[Patagonia]

My hubby won't have sex anymore in the morning w/me bec he says it wipes him out for the day. He's exhausted.

[JLarissaDragon]

I do not feel hung over, rather I feel exhilarated. I feel like a complete woman! My husband sometimes wakes me up and we have a roll in the hay before going to work. I suppose people respond in different ways though. When I married my second husband I made up my mind that I was going to enjoy it. Attitude make so much difference

[x123]

Thanks @Patagonia and @JLarissaDragon

I have never had a girlfriend, so it interesting to hear the perspective of women on sex. It always shows me how naïve I am LOL

[BlueCrustacean]

I used to feel relaxed and happy right after an orgasm. Now I have a tiny bit of happiness, followed immediately by depression. Like if I'm feeling full of negative thoughts and I try to distract myself with masturbation, for a quick, fleeting dose of happiness, I come down from it almost worse than before. I wonder if the motivation behind it has something to do with it.

[x123]

Originally Posted by BlueCrustacean

I used to feel relaxed and happy right after an orgasm. Now I have a tiny bit of happiness, followed immediately by depression. Like if I'm feeling full of negative thoughts and I try to distract myself with masturbation, for a quick, fleeting dose of happiness, I come down from it almost worse than before. I wonder if the motivation behind it has something to do with it.

It is often that way for me too.
My go-to cure for depression is exercise, but sometimes I am too depressed for exercise. Sometimes I watch youtube videos of sexy women to feel a small bit of excitement and hopefully lift myself out of depression a little bit. Lately not even that works. I guess I am getting too old to care. I anticipate masturbation about as much as I anticipate cleaning my bathtub. Also masturbation seems to wear me out and depress me for days.

Of course it is different for people who are younger. There is all the sexual frustration to relieve and so forth.

[Patagonia]

I do feel hungover after heavy bdsm play I have with my partner.
I know one issue is lack of sleep but also the release of chemicals during the bdsm feels awesome, but the withdraw is heartbreaking. Then the wait for the next interaction plays on my MH

[x123]

Originally Posted by Patagonia

I do feel hungover after heavy bdsm play I have with my partner.
I know one issue is lack of sleep but also the release of chemicals during the bdsm feels awesome, but the withdraw is heartbreaking. Then the wait for the next interaction plays on my MH

Maybe something similar is happening to me. I wonder if the chemicals in my brain are so unstable that a small bit of sexual activity throws them completely off balance.

[BlueCrustacean]

Originally Posted by x123

It is often that way for me too.
My go-to cure for depression is exercise, but sometimes I am too depressed for exercise. Sometimes I watch youtube videos of sexy women to feel a small bit of excitement and hopefully lift myself out of depression a little bit. Lately not even that works. I guess I am getting too old to care. I anticipate masturbation about as much as I anticipate cleaning my bathtub. Also masturbation seems to wear me out and depress me for days.

Of course it is different for people who are younger. There is all the sexual frustration to relieve and so forth.

I wonder if the attitude towards masturbation may be the culprit. After I posted my last comment, I decided I accomplished a lot that day and that I'd reward myself with masturbation, while I was already feeling good about myself, to feel even better- like drinking to celebrate rather than drinking to drown your feelings. I had a MUCH better experience, although I still had some angry, obsessive thoughts coming back that I was thinking before I started.

[x123]

Originally Posted by BlueCrustacean

I wonder if the attitude towards masturbation may be the culprit. After I posted my last comment, I decided I accomplished a lot that day and that I'd reward myself with masturbation, while I was already feeling good about myself, to feel even better- like drinking to celebrate rather than drinking to drown your feelings. I had a MUCH better experience, although I still had some angry, obsessive thoughts coming back that I was thinking before I started.

That might be true. I was a loner growing up, and I was slow to hit puberty. I didn't know that masturbation was common, so I felt very bad about it. Even after a psychologist told me that masturbation was common behavior, I continued to see it as an addiction or a necessary evil.

LOL I was thinking about a positive experience I had watching a porno. It was a couple of women in lingerie working on crafts - gluing things and adding glitter. It brought back memories of being in elementary school and making things with Elmer's glue and construction paper. That is how I am now. I watch these pornos and my attention goes to pictures hanging on the wall in the background instead of the pretty women frolicking around in the foreground.

I can't decide how I feel about this low libido.

[Webgoji]

Originally Posted by x123

I can't decide how I feel about this low libido.

Personally I would offer that it's less about whether or not a low libido is good or bad, but just accepting that it may be just part of who you are. The only time libido is something to be concerned about is when A) there is a sudden change which could indicate some other problem or B) when you and your partner are on two ends of the spectrum in terms of sex drive.

Not everyone is crazy excited for sex every minute of the day. The important part is accepting who you are as a person and being honest and working together with your partner so that you both are on the same page.

No, but I think I know what's going on. Within a few minutes or maybe an hour or so, I just go back to normal. I think that's how most people are. If you've took acid a good amount like I have, this is probably psychological. You somehow have formed the connection between sex and that distinctive day after acid feeling. The thing is psychologically, you can bring back the day after acid feeling sort of at will if you've tripped a lot. I'm speaking from experience, once you've tripped a number of times, sometimes you can psych yourself into vaguely psychedelic feelings when sober.

[x123]

Originally Posted by Steve223

No, but I think I know what's going on. Within a few minutes or maybe an hour or so, I just go back to normal. I think that's how most people are. If you've took acid a good amount like I have, this is probably psychological. You somehow have formed the connection between sex and that distinctive day after acid feeling. The thing is psychologically, you can bring back the day after acid feeling sort of at will if you've tripped a lot. I'm speaking from experience, once you've tripped a number of times, sometimes you can psych yourself into vaguely psychedelic feelings when sober.

Interesting... I only took acid about 10 times, so it might be something different for me. I didn't like the way acid made me feel, and I especially didn't like the zombie feeling on the next day. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't remember how much I disliked the experience, because it was so alien to normal experience. So I kept taking acid again, and then after it started to affect me I would remember that I didn't like it, but it was too late by then.

But I'm glad you know what I'm talking about when I describe the day after taking acid. I remember the first time I took acid, and the group I was with went to I-HOP for breakfast the next morning. The pancakes tasted like saw dust. I guess I don't feel quite that bad the day after sex, but it is similar. LOL

Yeah, it sounds like that's what's going on. It's just psychological though. The psychedelic state is a strange thing to say the least. That's very true what you say about not knowing that you "disliked" it, because while on it concepts of "like" and "dislike" can go out the window to some degree. The thing is 10 trips is definitely enough to cause the effect I'm describing. Not only have I done acid myself, but a lot of my friends take it on a regular basis.

[x123]

Originally Posted by Steve223

Yeah, it sounds like that's what's going on. It's just psychological though. The psychedelic state is a strange thing to say the least. That's very true what you say about not knowing that you "disliked" it, because while on it concepts of "like" and "dislike" can go out the window to some degree. The thing is 10 trips is definitely enough to cause the effect I'm describing. Not only have I done acid myself, but a lot of my friends take it on a regular basis.

It is strange that I can't remember how many times I took acid either. Maybe it was only 3 or 4 times. It always seemed to be the same. I would be around some friend and take acid, then I would remember how much I hated the feeling, I would be miserable and bored for hours and hours, and then I would be trying to go to sleep the next morning with the resolution that I would never do that again. But I kept forgetting and doing it again.

That is very unusual to say the least. I literally have not once heard anyone say that acid made them bored. Acid and bored are two words I've never heard in a sentence together. For most people an acid trip either feels profound at the time........ or terrifying to the point of nearly going utterly nuts on it. The latter is something I've unfortunately experienced, and it's a dangerous state to be in to say the least. What you describe makes me wonder if you were taking any medications at the time that could have altered the effects. Were there any other unusual factors in your life at the time? I have never heard of anyone experiencing any degree of boredom with that stuff.

I wonder, x123, if your hung over feeling is actually a psychological issue and not related to physiological chemistry. So, you say you have looked negatively at masturbation - any chance you have some deep-seated, maybe even subconscious, negativity toward sex in general? Or, could it be perhaps be something as simple as a lack of sleep?

[x123]

Originally Posted by Steve223

That is very unusual to say the least. I literally have not once heard anyone say that acid made them bored. Acid and bored are two words I've never heard in a sentence together. For most people an acid trip either feels profound at the time........ or terrifying to the point of nearly going utterly nuts on it. The latter is something I've unfortunately experienced, and it's a dangerous state to be in to say the least. What you describe makes me wonder if you were taking any medications at the time that could have altered the effects. Were there any other unusual factors in your life at the time? I have never heard of anyone experiencing any degree of boredom with that stuff.

I'm glad you mentioned that, because I have wondered about it too. I have never taken medications in my life, so my uncommon response to acid was completely natural for me. It wasn't the acid, because my friends took the same stuff and reacted more normally.

Another interesting thing is my reaction to ecstasy. It did absolutely nothing to me. My friend took the same stuff and said he felt like kissing me. I couldn't tell I had taken anything.

Finally, my reaction to antidepressants seems uncommon. I tried to take them about 15 years ago, but they made me feel so terrible that I had to stop. Everything smelled and tasted sickly sweet like molasses or something. Normally the only thing that gives me relief from depression is the good feeling after cardio exercise. The antidepressants made it where exercise was total drudgery with no good feeling at the end. I finally stopped taking those antidepressants, and the exercise started working again, and I started feeling 100 times better.

These things might be clues to somebody who understood brain chemistry. I think there is something strange about my brain chemistry, because I respond in uncommon ways to drugs.

[x123]

^ When I took acid, I think my senses reacted normally. My eyes got dilated, and I would see tracers, and hear details in music. I was more impulsive. Like I remember standing in line to pay the cover charge for a club, and I suddenly decided to try to go past the bouncer without paying to enter. When I am in high places, I often imagine myself jumping off. Under the acid, when that thought came to mind, I instantly began to climb onto the railing of a balcony.

Mostly I just wanted the acid to wear off, so I could go home and go to sleep. It was like being in the waiting room reading magazines for hours and hours. I would see weird cartoon people morphing and so forth when I closed my eyes. I never felt enlightened or frightened. It was just "yep, I goofed up and took this again, and now I have to wait hours and hours for it to wear off." (Also time seemed to pass VERY slowly sometimes due to the drug - LOL - that made it even worse.)

[x123]

Originally Posted by Onward

I wonder, x123, if your hung over feeling is actually a psychological issue and not related to physiological chemistry. So, you say you have looked negatively at masturbation - any chance you have some deep-seated, maybe even subconscious, negativity toward sex in general? Or, could it be perhaps be something as simple as a lack of sleep?

Probably both of those are likely explanations. For me, sex is simply masturbation, and I felt a lot of shame about that most of my life. Also, I notice that I can't get into a normal deep sleep after sex. It's like I am cat-napping all night. I don't do well when I lack sleep.