Psychological complaints
During the comedown, you may experience feelings of depression, mood swings, irritability, difficulty concentrating and nervousness. These psychological complaints are mainly caused by a total depletion of certain chemicals in the brain, such as dopamine and serotonin. The brain needs time to restore balance. The longer and more intense you use, the longer these complaints persist. The degree of combined use and the delivery method also play a role. Slammers, for example, experience a more intense comedown than smokers or snorters. Frequency is also a key factor. The more often you use, the less time the brain has to recover properly.
During the comedown, you may develop a negative self-image. Looking back on a weekend full of sex and chems, everything may suddenly seem much less rosy than it did at the time. Especially if you have crossed your boundaries, it can lead to feelings of regret, guilt, shame or disgust.
Chems and sex are also used to briefly suppress feelings of anxiety, panic or depression. The falling away of these emotions feels liberating during the high, but the comedown afterwards is all the greater. Eventually, your next splurge will aggravate rather than alleviate your psychological complaints.
Be aware that your gloomy feelings are amplified by the lack of dopamine and serotonin in your brain. These negative thoughts are not necessarily true.
Understand that most of these negative feelings will be much less intense in the following days and eventually pass. The comedown is always temporary and clears up again as your brain rebalances.
Avoid the vicious cycle of use, comedown, depression, craving and using again. This leads to a downward spiral of mental dependence.
Ask yourself why you feel the need to use chems during sex. The more often you use them to escape negative feelings, the greater the risk that you will be unable to live without them. Psychological complaints will worsen.
Get outdoors. Take a walk, go for a bike ride, undertake activities, be among people, engage in light exercise. This provides distraction and has a positive effect on recovery time.
Besides chems and sex, make sure you keep doing other fulfilling, energising and relaxing things.
Limit your use of exhausting chems such as Tina, 3-MMC, crack or mephedrone to a maximum of once every six weeks. This gives your brain more time to restore balance. Multi-day or long-term use of these drugs is more likely to produce severe physical and mental complaints.
Consider seeking help if you suffer from anxiety, depression or other psychological complaints even without chems.