r/POIS

First ever reddit post...

I’ve had this issue for almost a year, and it’s just getting worse. Right now, it’s 8:49 AM, I haven't slept since I ejaculated 4 hours ago, and I am about to crash out.

The Fight or Flight Experience
When I’m alone and I get horny (knowing I’m about to masturbate), my heart starts beating insanely fast. Gemini (AI) said it’s adrenaline.

And I get this urgent need to go to the bathroom and take a shit. I get anxious but my horniness overpowers it. I think it might be fight or flight.

My dick gets really hard at first and my whole body gets tense. But then, after just 1 or 2 minutes, it just goes soft like 50-60%. The stimulation just dies.

Lately, my body has even started finishing on its own while I’m edging, and it’s not orgasmic at all. It just happens.

Post-Orgasm Crash
About 5 to 10 min later, the "blues" and anxiety hit.

After 30 min, my stomach goes crazy. I get insanely gassy and I can't stop burping.

I’m super tired, but every time I’m in that phase between being sleepy and actually falling asleep, my body jolts me awake.

My brain starts racing with random thoughts (cortisol), making me so anxious I stay awake for hours or just don't sleep at all.

My Hypothesis:
I used to edge for hours as a teen with no issues.

But then I got into a "self-improvement" phase and did 7 months of semen retention. I started basing my self-worth on my "no masturbation streak."

Now, every time I scroll through X, see something suggestive, and end up on a porn site, I hate myself. I feel like "I shouldn't be doing this," and I believe that guilt has turned into a physical "fight or flight" response.

I’ve read Daoist bedchamber arts books that say you have to "warm up" your energy through foreplay. When I’m with a girl, I do that. But when I’m alone, I just whip it out and start jacking it.

I think I’m shocking my nervous system while simultaneously feeling like I’m doing something detrimental to myself.

Personal Information:
It doesn't happen when I have sex with women, No symptoms during sex or after sex. Erection is hard. I can go for 45 min avg. I can control when I ejaculate. And I feel absolutely wonderful.

Currently, I only masturbate once or twice a month to check if my penis still stays at 60% hardness and to see if I still experience that fight or flight response.

I’m fairly healthy, I hit the gym 4 times a week, eat healthy food most of the time, and maintain a high-protein diet (about 70%). My supplement stack includes (off for 1 month to see if supplement is the issue)  Vitamin D3 + K2, Zinc Glycinate, Magnesium Glycinate, B-Complex, Thiamine (B1), L-Theanine, Gamma E Complex, Selenium, and Taurine.

I’ve been an entrepreneur for 2-3 years now, which comes with its fair share of stress and cortisol spikes. I suspect I might have a thyroid issue (self-diagnosed). Lately, I’ve also suspected my hormones are off because I’ve been dealing with jawline acne for the past six months. Despite my healthy lifestyle, I’m not sure where things are going wrong.

How do I stop my body from reacting like that?

Please answer fast I might have a surgery this friday. Has anyone been put under general anasthesia and how did it go? Im not in a POIS flare because I have been abstaining, not even had a wet dream and I have been controlling myself very well but Im still terrified because I dont know if I should tell the anasthesiologist since my family will be with me and I still havent told them about my POIS. Im actually so terrified please answer to my question I promise I'll do lots of research for POIS I just want to make sure there will be no complications dont let me die

Hi! I learned about POIS because of my boyfriend and I have a few questions.

What’s life like for you all?

I imagine many of you have a long history with masturbation, but he experiences itching all over his body after orgasm and has to take antihistamines. His eyes burn and get red, his skin changes and looks strange, he feels extremely weak, and he also reports a burning sensation around his prostate, maybe in the prostate itself, after orgasm.

He even starts showing flu-like symptoms, sneezing for example, just from producing pre-ejaculate. He says he gets terrible neck pain that spreads to his head, shoulders, and even makes his legs weak. He feels completely drained, depressed, and unmotivated. He has had this since early adolescence and says POIS has really ruined his life because it affects so many areas.

Do any of you have similar symptoms?

I would also like to know if any of you have tried eating really well and exercising, like swimming, going to the gym, basically living an active life.

He says he really needs activities that move and strengthen his whole body. He suffers so much and I feel a lot of empathy, plus I love him so much. I want to marry him and it breaks my heart to see him like this.

He even gets red skin if he comes into contact with his own semen.

He has read everything he could.

Please, has anyone tried living like an athlete, for example, to strengthen their body and try to live away from this really sad reality?

For those who have cognitive impairment like logic, memory, social awareness etc, what medications have helped treat or fix those symptoms?

Currently I'm facing chronic and severe cognitive impairment and other symptoms that all came from POIS, so I'm wondering what could possibly treat this.

Hi again! Do you feel like your body is always tense? Like constantly having to relax your shoulders, your jaw, your pelvic floor, or even your legs?

Do you think that being constantly tense could trigger some kind of sensitivity or disorder that might contribute to POIS?

Hey again! I came across a post recently about pelvic floor muscles and it really clicked for me. I’ve noticed that my boyfriend seems to have this area a bit weak and sometimes even painful, and I feel like it could be connected to his POIS symptoms.

Do any of you feel like your pelvic floor muscles are weak? Have you noticed that your ejaculation feels weaker, or even painful or burning sometimes?

Did POIS trigger after you started consuming artifical sweeteners of some kind? Maybe Coke Zero, maybe whey protein (which usually has this), maybe ORS or maybe just some other soft drinks?

Got this idea after noticing this pattern in 2 places.

I don't know I feel like a disabled person everysingle day I

I woke today feeling like my old self for the first time in 9 years after even though I masturbated yesterday. I can't cause a big pois flaire up even I'm really trying. All I can cause is a mini pois attack that last less than a day or two. I only have couple physical symptoms left (muscle pain, slightly achy joints and forehead/facial pressure).

My method I've been using over a year: Cause a pois flair up by masturbating gently (avoid edging!, this will just cause a giant flair), survive the symptoms (the sucky part, my lasted 7-10 days), abstain until you start to feel normal, repeat for a long it takes.

"We have recruited and run most (80%) of the planned healthy control participants and begun recruitment of patients with POIS. Even at this early stage, we have generated some novel findings - never before documented in the scientific literature - about the physiology of orgasm that will guide future research on the causes of POIS. One such finding is that in healthy men without POIS, sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity (the "fight-or-flight" stress system) is elevated during arousal, but substantially declines in the period of time preceding orgasm. This is particularly true if the person is actively attempting to move from high arousal to climax. If POIS patients do not show this same pattern and instead continue to experience high SNS activity from arousal to post-orgasm, dysregulated autonomic function would be a strong candidate mechanism for many of the core POIS symptoms such as fever and cognitive dysfunction."

https://poiscenter.com/forums/index.php?topic=3006.0

https://www.reddit.com/r/POIS/comments/1nmvzkf/what_pois_actually_is/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridatism

https://www.youtube.com/@limbicrecovery/videos

Hi everyone! I wanted to ask if you feel pain in your cervical area. If yes, do you think the pain starts there and then spreads to your shoulders, head, and even affects other parts of your body?

Does it leave you extremely weak with burning muscles, burning eyes, sensitivity to light, irritability, depression, anxiety, brain fog, or even flu-like symptoms like sneezing, congestion, or fever?

Did your POIS start after any of these incidents?

View Poll

Hi again! I’m back with another question about my boyfriend’s POIS and I wanted to hear from you all. I’m really curious about your bodies. Are you thin, overweight, or athletic? Did you have a history of being sedentary or have you always been active in sports?

With POIS, I imagine gaining muscle is harder and things like poor sleep or not getting deep, restful sleep probably affect all of this too. I watch my boyfriend closely and I think it’s really impressive how people still manage to get up and do their things despite all the challenges POIS brings.

So my basic question is: are you below, above, or around a healthy weight?

I ended up here while searching for the cause of symptoms that have been bothering me for over 10 years. Since I am not good at English, I wrote this using a translator, so the grammar may be awkward. Before I explain, these are the symptoms I experienced after my situation.

I am not joking; I have confirmed for 10 years that it is indeed caused by circumstances.

1. Body odors such as bachelor smell, bad breath, and gas smell worsen.
2. All athletic performance decreases. For example, maximum push-up performance decreases, climbing stairs becomes more difficult, and overall performance—including explosive muscle strength and endurance—clearly declines.
3. Orthostatic hypotension develops.
4. You feel lethargic all day, your emotions become dulled, and you procrastinate more.
5. Unexplained itching occurs behind the knees; touching it with your hands intensifies the itching, while scratching provides a refreshing sensation.
6. Severe keratosis pilaris develops on the outer upper part of the forearms.
7. Social phobia develops, you have difficulty making eye contact with people, and even when with close friends, you struggle to think of what to say and feel awkward.
8. There is a very high probability of diarrhea immediately after the event.
9. Concentration decreases, leading to a significant decline in efficiency in any task that requires brain power.
10. Hair falls out more easily from all parts of the body.
11. Beard stubble on the chin becomes darker and messier.
12. Dry eyes develop.
13. The voice becomes thin and weak, and shouting from the throat becomes much more difficult. Rest
14. I feel a decrease in confidence and a weakening of energy.
15. My face is falling apart. By "face falling apart," I mean that first, the glow in my eyes becomes faint and dull, and the areas around my eyes, nose, and cheeks swell noticeably. Consequently, my lower face widens, and the skin texture becomes uneven with rough, unsqueezable, millet-like blemishes appearing all over. My complexion also becomes dull and earthy. Additionally, when I dry my face with a towel after showering, clumps of white dead skin cells float all over my face.
16. My head stings particularly when exposed to sunlight.
17. Normally, my back muscles feel a slight pull, allowing my shoulders to naturally straighten. However, immediately after the incident or until about 30 days have passed since the incident, that feeling disappears, and my shoulders roll inward like rounded shoulders.

The following are my other features.

1. Most symptoms are felt to occur a few hours after the event rather than immediately after, peaking the next day.
2. Symptoms of feeling awkward and uncomfortable just having someone nearby improve on the fourth day after the event has ceased, regardless of the intensity of the event.
3. Symptoms of weakened vital energy (feeling empty even in normal times, and feeling like being suppressed by energy when near people) occur after the event.
4. Most symptoms disappear around day 30 to 40, provided no additional events occur.
5. When all symptoms disappear around day 40, the muscles throughout the body feel firmer, vital energy feels stronger, and all facial symptoms disappear; the left and right sides of the face become symmetrical and smaller, the eyes become prettier, and the lips become redder and more vibrant.

While other symptoms feel like they improve gradually over time, facial-related symptoms feel like they improve to some extent, but once a certain threshold is crossed while the event is stopped, they feel like they improve explosively.

6. Taking Vitamin B Complex a few hours before or immediately after the event alleviates the symptoms of a shattered face the next day to some extent, but continuing to take this does not... The effects of the 40th day do not return quickly.

7. Even if all effects have returned and energy has strengthened by the 40th day, if you take Adpion, Ephraim tablets, Abilify tablets, or Inderal tablets in that state, one or a few of these will cause energy to temporarily weaken.

8. I tried taking Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin B, Magnesium Glycinate, TMG, Alpha GPC, Milk Thistle, Arginine, and Zinc, but they did not significantly shorten the time it takes for the effects to return. Even when I took magnesium glycinate and went to sleep, my face improved to some extent, but my energy actually weakened.

9. When all the effects returned on the 40th day, I no longer felt significantly pushed aside or burdened when around people; my self-love increased, my desire for self-development grew, and I actually wanted to meet people.

10. High-intensity and low-intensity exercise, aerobic exercise, alternating hot and cold showers, cold showers, and sufficient nutrition did not bring back the facial-related effects quickly.

11. During that 40-day event-free period, regardless of how much stress I was under, how good my mood was, whether I slept well or poorly, or whether I received sufficient nutrition, the effects always returned around the 40-day mark without being shortened or significantly prolonged (especially the strength of the face and the whole body).

12. If an event occurs once after not occurring for 3 months, there are almost no symptoms; however, if it continues to occur at intervals of less than a month or if it occurs consecutively within a short period, symptoms appear or worsen.

13. The term "event" refers to "ejaculation." ...says that if you ejaculate without watching pornography, general weakness and symptoms of social phobia rarely occur,but peculiarly, your face gets shattered just like when you watch pornography and ejaculate.

14. The above symptoms appear just by watching pornography, but the peculiar point is that if you do not ejaculate, it recovers in 4 days instead of 40.

I have used numerous AI tools to track the cause of the symptoms for hundreds of hours based on those characteristics.

I tried so many methods, but I felt there were only two that were meaningful in alleviating the severity of my symptoms after ejaculation.

The first is ejaculating by relying solely on stimulation, without visually viewing pornography or having any erotic fantasies at the time of ejaculation.

The second is a 'method of ejaculation' that I discovered quite by chance.

1. Inhale as deeply as possible and hold your breath.
2. With your mouth closed, smile by slightly raising the corners of your mouth (you don't have to smile excessively; just feel the very slight sense of happiness you get from a light smile).
3. Ejaculate in this state, and once ejaculation is finished, slowly and leisurely release the two states mentioned above.

The causes of symptoms I found after ejaculation are as follows.

Receptor adaptation and downregulation (receptors that accept dopamine or some other hormones are all broken down)

Ejaculation is triggered by powerful electrical signals generated in the spinal cord near L3 to L4; it is easiest to think of this area as roughly where the buttock crease ends and the back begins. If the impact of these strong electrical signals traveling up to the brain could be attenuated, theoretically, there is a possibility that side effects during ejaculation could be significantly reduced.

So, I felt that the 'method of ejaculation' I came up with significantly relieved this electrical shock traveling from the spinal cord to the brain.

I am aware that this method may seem a bit ridiculous and absurd, but I am posting it in the hopes that it might be helpful to those who are desperate. The Korean NOFAP community is too small, so it is difficult for my information to be of much help in resolving this symptom called POIS.

The supplements I tried to shorten the time it took for my symptoms to subside are as follows: Curcumin, TMG, Astaxanthin, Alpha-GPC, Vitamin D, Phosphatidylserine, Ginkgo Biloba Extract, Vitamin C, High-dose Vitamin B, Milk Thistle, L-Carnitine Tartrate, Forskoli, Zinc Picolinate, Magnesium Glycinate, and Theanine.

Among these, taking Magnesium Glycinate and Phosphatidylserine almost immediately relieved my persistent headache—one of my symptoms—and somewhat prevented the facial discoloration; however, this was not very effective in accelerating the full effects that typically return around day 40. Vitamin B was also effective in alleviating facial swelling, but that was about it. You can assume that the rest did not have a significant effect on my symptoms.

I also underwent a health checkup, but all my values ​​were normal.

First of all, it is absolutely not the case that this is caused by nutritional deficiencies, at least not unique to me. Furthermore, if receptor downregulation were caused by dopamine overproduction, these symptoms should significantly occur even when watching pornography continuously and intensely without ejaculating. However, in my case, while symptoms did occur when watching only pornography without ejaculating, I fully returned to normal by the fourth day of abstinence without a single exception. Considering that it takes 40 days when ejaculating, it is safe to say that the impact was almost negligible. Therefore, I proposed a hypothesis that the cause of dopamine receptor downregulation is the sudden switching of the autonomic nervous system or the electrical shock from ejaculation signals originating in the spinal cord, which strikes specific parts of the brain and is judged to be an excessively severe stimulus.

Im already abstaining, but wet dreams cause symptoms for me. So i want to have something in case i get hit by a POIS episode on a important day.

I think the positive thing about this type of medication for me is, that i’ll only be using it once in 10-20 days, just when i get a wet dream.

Im personally not a fan of long term medications, like SSRI’s. So i thought this could be a good alternative.

Please, share your experiences.

The only way I know how to deal with POIS symptoms is abstinence. I would rather avoid ejaculating at all costs to stay symptom free. I have gone a year on end without ejaculation before, and I am happier when doing so.

Recently, after going 7 months without ejaculating, my silly self thought that maybe my issue would be resolved, it's been so long how could the symptoms come back right? Well I was wrong. Almost immediately after, I switch into a state of extreme brain fogginess (all of the sudden I can't form sentences or socialize with people effectively), my social anxiety gets really bad, I get a headache on the top of my head, and I just feel like sleeping and doing nothing. These symptoms last for approximately 3 days, and then it is like a switch is flipped, I can feel the pressure on the top of my head slowly disappear, and I'm back to my normal self. All I can think about during these 3 days is how I would do anything to feel normal again. It's almost as if my life is on pause, because I'm a complete incompetent version of my former self.

I know people have mentioned before that a carnivore diet could be a great way to cure POIS, and coincidentally, I happened to be on a carnivore diet during this recent time I ejaculated. From my experience, I definitely felt less physical symptoms. I'm a soccer player, and prior to the diet, and I would feel so slow and fatigued while playing when dealing with POIS. However, with the carnivore diet it was actually pretty manageable playing soccer, which was interesting. The mental symptoms pretty much stayed the same for me, though.

It could also just be my OCD bringing on these symptoms. When I do ejaculate, my brain pretty much expects the symptoms to come on, and I start to panic realizing I will be in this state for at least 3 days. I have pretty extreme avoidance OCD, so I get stuck in loops of completely avoiding things. Somehow I convinced myself that looking at a girl would put me in this state of symptoms, that I only experienced from ejaculation. So any time I would see a girl, my brain would go in a fight or flight mode, and I would bring the same symptoms on to myself, without even ejaculating. This obviously caused a lot of problems for myself, and I was pretty much avoiding girls at all costs. Luckily, I have overcome this. Just wondering if my OCD is the reason I feel the symptoms or if I really have POIS. I have experienced "POIS" symptoms since I was about 13 in 2020, so I'm pretty confident that there actually is a problem there, my OCD just makes it worse.

But yeah, not really sure where i'm supposed to go from here. Don't really plan on ejaculating any time soon because I feel great and I know how quickly that can change. Let me know your thoughts