r/POIS

Hi! I'm wondering if anyone shares my experience with this. So basically I'm pretty severe and am home ridden most of the time whether I abstain or not and just have different symptoms. But I do know I seem to get better since some people sometimes comment that I look better. One particularly annoying experience I have if whenever I wasn't abstaining for a long time people get very confrontational and on edge around me, I can't explain exactly, but as soon as I basically O + a couple days, it's like I'm living in hell and people around me become crazy assholes too. I do know that as a symptom of POIS I have slurred speech (dysarthria), and somehow my face structure changes and maybe maybe face look like I'm angry or something when in reality I'm not. Also, sometimes I experience extreme levels of anxiety too so I wonder if these things put other people on edge or something. Thing is, there really much changes besides this, so I'm not sure what's going on. I don't become much more active or anything so it must be an unconscious behavior. It almost as if I'm transported into an alternate universe or something, as silly that sounds. Would love to know if anyone else shares my experience.

I have done nofap in the past, and I saw maybe slight improvement. I probably never lasted more than 4 weeks. What if nofap does not work? My brain fog is debilitating alongside daily headaches. Fyi: yes I have all the symptoms associated with this condition. I think I have had this since around age 14.

Life is pointless with this condition. I also feel so much hatred for the bullying I have endured because of this. My experience has been chronic, lifelong bullying.

So to give some backstory, I've been doing NoFap since 2016 off and on. My longest period of abstinence was 183 days. I started doing this because I noticed that when I didn't fap, my social anxiety vanished and I had an insane amount of energy by the 2-week mark. I felt alive again and could enjoy movies, music, etc. more.

Just recently I was asking AI about this and it told me about POIS. I'd never heard of it before, but when I started looking into it, it matched exactly what I've been feeling brain fog, anxiety after fapping. So I'm just here introducing myself. Does anyone have any advice? I just ran at the gym today and took an antihistamine and it seems to have helped a lot.

Thanks

Hey guys, i’ve been thinking about this troubling situation recently.

Every time me and my girlfriend have sex, after it’s finished, I find myself left with really horrible feelings.

First is a pain deep in my lungs, it feels like I can’t breath and it takes at least 30 min of me sitting alone and just breathing for it to go away, this is accompanied by horrible nausea.

Second is just pure confusion. My head hurts, my eye sight is blurry, I find it hard to recal the last hour.

The worst is by far the worst. I get overcome with just a sense of pure dread. I get chills and the feeling that something horrible is about to happen. It takes me out of the rest of the day.

I apologize if anyone is annoyed by this post, I want to make a docters appointment, but I wanted to see if any men on here have experienced these symptoms. I’m sorry, I have work tmr and i’m having all the symptoms right not and i’m really just annoyed and sad.

I don’t like to have sex anymore, my gf thinks it’s because of her but it’s just because of how it makes me feel after. Any feedback would be appreciated.

I have been wanting to write this post for months. I kept putting it off because I wanted to make sure that what I was experiencing was real and lasting before telling other people with POIS that I had found something that helped me.

I am 55 years old, and today I would estimate that I am about 97% recovered from the symptoms I associated with POIS.

Sometimes I actually feel 100% normal after release, with no noticeable symptoms at all. Other times I experience what I would describe as the remaining 3%: a little anxiety, some lethargy, and a slightly edgy or uncomfortable feeling. When that happens, it usually lasts a couple of hours to about one day.

That is dramatically different from what my life was like before.

My POIS symptoms

Before my recovery, symptoms could begin almost immediately after ejaculation or sexual intimacy.

Over the years I experienced:

● Severe brain fog
● Headaches and pressure in my head
● Anxiety
● Depression
● Difficulty concentrating
● Difficulty finding and putting words together
● Joint and body pain
● Flu-like symptoms
● A feeling of inflammation throughout my body
● Shortness of breath
● A hoarse voice
● Eyes that sometimes appeared yellow
● Extreme fatigue and weakness
● Premature ejaculation

I experienced symptoms following my first ejaculation at around 12 years old.

At the time, of course, I had absolutely no idea what was happening to me.

For decades I simply knew that something terrible happened to my body and mind after ejaculation.

I didn’t discover that there was a name for this condition — Post-Orgasmic Illness Syndrome (POIS) — until I was around 40 years old.

By then, I had already lived with it for approximately 28 years.

Finding the name POIS was important because, for the first time, I realized that there were other people experiencing something similar and that I wasn’t the only person in the world dealing with this strange and isolating condition.

Living with it for more than four decades

POIS affected far more than sex.

It affected relationships, confidence, concentration, emotions, social interaction and the way I experienced life.

Looking back, I feel like I missed certain stages of life because of it.

After living with physical, emotional and psychological pain for so many years, I became almost numb to suffering. It was simply part of my life.

Then, at 53 years old, I was diagnosed with blood cancer.

This may sound strange, but alongside the fear of receiving a cancer diagnosis, there was also a part of me that felt relief.

I had suffered for so long that I thought perhaps my suffering was finally going to end.

I went through chemotherapy and eventually entered remission/recovered from the cancer.

Afterward, I decided to see a therapist for the first time in my life.

My thinking was basically:

If I’m going to remain in this world, maybe therapy can at least help me become somewhat healed emotionally.

I did NOT start therapy believing it would cure my POIS.

In fact, I thought the idea that talking to somebody could change a physical condition I had suffered from for more than 40 years sounded almost impossible.

Therapy

My therapist had never heard of POIS.

I explained the condition to him and told him very clearly that what I experienced was real.

My therapy eventually focused heavily on trauma and the nervous system.

The therapist who has worked with me is Anthony Weeks, a Somatic Experiencing practitioner in the San Diego, California area.

I started with approximately one-hour sessions once a week. As I improved, I eventually moved to approximately one session every two weeks.

The work wasn’t simply sitting in a room having casual conversations.

I began talking about experiences and memories I had spent most of my life avoiding.

That included childhood sexual abuse as well as emotional and psychological experiences involving my mother.

I grew up in what I now understand was an extremely enmeshed relationship with my mother. She was highly controlling and emotionally manipulative, and that relationship continued to affect my life until she passed away when I was 50.

I also experienced sexual abuse as a child.

For decades I carried memories, shame, fear, anger, grief and emotions that I had never fully processed.

In therapy, I stopped hiding them.

I talked about things that were embarrassing.

I talked about painful memories.

I allowed myself to grieve.

I learned to recognize what was happening inside my body instead of constantly fighting it.

For me, Somatic Experiencing and trauma therapy gradually seemed to change the way my nervous system reacted.

And something completely unexpected began happening:

My POIS symptoms started disappearing.

The change

The improvement wasn’t something I noticed after one magical therapy session.

It happened progressively.

Symptoms became less intense.

Then some symptoms disappeared.

The duration became shorter.

Eventually I could have an orgasm and realize afterward:

I’m okay.

No crushing brain fog.

No severe headache.

No days of feeling physically sick.

No overwhelming psychological crash.

Sometimes virtually nothing happened at all.

For someone who had experienced POIS for approximately 42 years, that was extremely difficult to believe.

Even today there are times when I think:

What if this is temporary? What if everything comes back?

That fear probably comes from living with the condition for so long.

But my improvement has now remained consistent for more than eight months.

I am living healthier and with dramatically less pain.
I am dating.

I am learning what normal relationships and intimacy are supposed to feel like.

Sometimes it genuinely feels like I have been given another life.

One important clarification

I want to be extremely careful here.

I am NOT claiming that childhood trauma causes POIS in everyone.

I am also not claiming that Somatic Experiencing or psychotherapy is a scientifically proven cure for POIS.

I don’t know that.

I can only tell you what happened to me.

In my personal case, there appears to have been an extremely strong connection between unresolved trauma, my nervous system and the symptoms I experienced after orgasm.

As that trauma was processed in therapy, my symptoms progressively and dramatically decreased.

Whether the same mechanism exists for other people with POIS is something researchers would need to determine.

There may also be different causes or subtypes of POIS.

No medication caused this improvement

Another reason I’m sharing this is that my improvement did not come from taking a new medication or supplement.

The major change in my life was trauma therapy, particularly talking openly about experiences I had suppressed for decades and working through them physically and emotionally.

Years ago — perhaps around three years ago — I also posted about an allergy medication that seemed to help my POIS temporarily.

It did help for a period of time.

But the improvement didn’t last.

What I’m describing in this post has been completely different because the improvement has continued month after month.

Why I’m writing this

I have spent a lot of time reading posts from people with POIS.

I recognize the desperation in many of them because I lived it.

The isolation.

The confusion.

Trying supplements.

Trying medications.

Avoiding ejaculation.

Trying to figure out what is wrong with your immune system, hormones, brain or nervous system.

Wondering whether you’re ever going to feel normal.

I understand.

That is why I finally decided I needed to write this.
I don’t know whether what helped me will help everyone.

Maybe it won’t.

But if even some people with POIS have significant unresolved trauma, chronic stress, childhood abuse, emotional enmeshment or nervous-system dysregulation in their history, I think exploring that possibility with a qualified trauma-informed professional could be worthwhile.

Not because POIS is “all in your head.”

My symptoms were very physically real.

But the brain, nervous system, immune system and body are not completely separate systems. My experience taught me not to dismiss the possibility that long-standing psychological trauma could have physical effects.

Where I am today

After approximately 42 years of suffering, I would describe myself as approximately 97% recovered.
Most of the time I feel normal.

Occasionally I still experience:

● Mild anxiety
● Mild lethargy
● A slightly edgy feeling

When they occur, these symptoms generally last a couple of hours or about one day.

And there are other times when I have no noticeable symptoms at all.

I never imagined I would be able to write those words.

For decades I thought POIS would follow me for the rest of my life.

I waited before posting this because I wanted to make sure that my improvement wasn’t just another temporary period of relief.

After more than eight months of consistent improvement, I finally feel comfortable sharing my experience.

I am not promising anyone a cure.

I am sharing one man’s experience after living with this condition for more than four decades.

If you’re suffering from POIS, please don’t interpret my story as proof that your condition has the same cause as mine.

But I also wouldn’t automatically dismiss trauma therapy simply because POIS feels intensely physical.

I once thought exactly the same thing.

I could not understand how talking about something that happened decades earlier could possibly affect the physical nightmare I experienced after ejaculation.

Yet here I am.

At 55 years old, after experiencing this since approximately age 12, I am finally learning what life without severe POIS feels like.

And life is much more beautiful from this side.

If my experience helps even one person begin asking a new question about what might be happening in their own body and nervous system, writing this was worth it.

From my usual pespective, POIS is often associated with ejaculation or orgasm. So I often have non-ejaculative sex with my wife. But after sex I usually experience extream tiredness, brain fog, seems like my IQ drops 20 points. And sometimes irritability.

Hello!

I've been living with POIS since my teens (I'm in my 30s now) and as many of you know, it's absolutely horrendous. Not having a healthy relationship with sex has been devastating. I've ended up avoiding long-term relationships altogether due to a lot of the complications I've experienced. I don't need to explain further how devastating this condition is.

However, I've never been the type to give up easily and as such I've tried several methods and remedies to reduce or attempt to eliminate the symptoms from orgasms/ejaculation.

I've tried the following:

- No-fap: The longest time I went was a little over 40 days. I exercise regularly and my hormonal levels are good so obviously fighting against natural urges to fuck everything walking is a battle in and of itself. Helped a bit but clearly not sustainable for anybody that wants to have a healthy sex life, at least not for me.

- Supplementation: I still do this and it helps a lot with reducing the severity of the symptoms. I usually experience brainfog, itchiness of the skin and fatigue that lasts for days. When I started supplementing with Zinc and Vitamin B-complex it helped reduce the severity. The symptoms don't last long, I tend to recover a lot quicker and can have several orgasms without being completely obliterated for days on end. Still experience the symptoms but they're very mild in comparison to how it is without the supplementation.

- Antihistamine (Allegra): I've tried antihistamine medication as well. I wouldn't say it doesn't work but I just don't notice that significant of a difference in comparison to the vitamins and minerals supplementation.

- Diet: I quit dairy products but that's more related to me being lactose intolerant. I don't know if it's reasonable to attribute any of the alleviating effects that I might experience to the change in diet, especially in regards to dairy.

My question to you all is if you've experienced the same symptoms i.e. brainfog, itching of the skin & fatigue. And what have you done to remedy these symptoms by either eliminating them completely with treatments/cures or reducing them to a negligible level?

Appreciate all answers/feedback that might help 🙏🏾

I’m a 24 year old male that’s trying to understand what I’m experiencing is full POIS or something else.

Since I was younger I noticed that whenever I masturbate that when I stop any friction movement during it before the ejaculation and orgasm that my body gets a lot of cognitive and physical symptoms like my body feeling like it’s crashed with an ill feeling stemming from my area, hard to concentrate on anything, being uneasy, my body in other people’s perspective being awkward on how I move, awkward body movement, awkward running, awkward walking, deeper voice, look sluggish, maybe depression that comes along with the masturbation. Like everything I do becomes off. My uncomfortableness of my body made me have social anxiety/anxiety/depression so I became isolated more rather than being outgoing out peers.

I’m not sure if abstaining for days helps my situation at all.

As I got older I realized that when I masturbate fast without stopping that I break away from the ill feeling and symptoms. I’d go months without masturbation but I do sometimes experience brain fog because of pre cum or arousal but not like I feel really sick.

It seems to me that my body is in some glitch from the masturbation. When I stop any of the movement that my body feels more relaxed and drowsy but when I masturbate fast without stopping that my body feels tight and connected. This is something I don’t want to believe but from my experiences of how people can see me or just me noticing the patterns.

I apologize this is a long read but praying for anyone going through these types of symptoms. I get confused a lot on why body just has these symptoms. Here to ask what I can do for my weird situation.

Hi, about three weeks ago I started having headaches that I believe were related to muscle tension. I had sex, anheadached at the moment of orgasm I suddenly experienced a very severe headache—the worst headache of my life. This happened three times. After the third time, I decided to go to the emergency room. They did a CT scan, and everything was normal. They prescribed anti-inflammatory medication and a muscle relaxant. That helped, but I had another headache during orgasm again.

The pain starts at the back of my head/neck and radiates up to my right temple. Has anyone else experienced something similar? Did you find a solution?

I got recommend the below tests from a user here in another post I made.

According to ChatGPT the first line tests for inflammation which must be done during a flare are CRP + ESR + CBC. To investigate autoimmunity they might add ANA, rheumatoid factor, anti-CCP, or complement C3/C4.

Do these tests need to be conducted during a flare? I wd really like to avoid that. It’s a very painful experience as you all already know. Is anything missing? Are any of these wrong? What else do I need to know?