Submitted by Dr. Aadesh Kumar on
Do Orgasms Energize You or Drain You? Last year a friend sent me a copy of the book Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow: From Habit to Harmony in Sexual Relationships, which is about making love without orgasm. The book goes into detail about the depleting and mentally unbalancing effects of orgasm (whether solo or with a partner) and presents an approach to orgasm-free sex called karezza. The same recommendation is made regardless of gender.
I’ve also seen lots of friends (almost exclusively male) work on personal growth challenges related to orgasms, masturbation, and porn addiction. Some have found help from the website Your Brain on Porn. A number have undertaken “no fap” challenges with varying degrees of success. Some have sung the praises of going masturbation-free or orgasm-free for months at a time, claiming it gives them more vitality, energy, and/or ambition.
There are also some CGC members helping each other work on various challenges related to this, supporting each other as they go along.
Additionally, from the emails I’ve received over the years, I know that many of my readers struggle with porn addiction and other sexual imbalances, often noting how these negative habits impact their productivity.
I’ve largely sat on the sidelines while watching people tackle these challenges, not feeling like I have much to offer them in the way of help or support. The main reason is that I haven’t been able to connect the dots between such reported experiences and my own sexual experiences. While reading Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow, for instance, I felt disconnected from the author’s words, unable to relate to the negative effects she shared. I’m sure that many people have found this book valuable, but for me if felt like a tedious slog to get through it.
I discussed some of the ideas from the book with Rachelle, my girlfriend and most delightful sex partner of the past eight years, and she seemed to find the ideas perplexing as well. The notion that orgasms were draining or unbalancing didn’t align with our actual experiences.
I often find orgasms energizing and happiness producing for quite a while afterwards. I might find sex slightly depleting if I was really tired to begin with, but if I feel okay at the start then I tend to feel even better afterwards. It’s more pleasurable to orgasm with a partner in my experience, but even a solo orgasm needn’t feel depleting. In fact, it can have a calming, relaxing, and balancing effect that seems to relieve stress and promote well-being.
Maybe our positive sexual experiences have something to do with the way Rachelle and I connect with lots of heart energy… or maybe they’re due to other factors such as both of us being vegan for many years.
I can definitely say that sex feels noticeably better, it’s easier to feel strongly aroused (physically and emotionally), and orgasms have become even more pleasurable after investing in some serious detoxification efforts (i.e. taking a variety of substances to help move toxins out of my body). Alex Bloom wrote about significant sexual improvements on his detox website too. Here’s a snippet from Alex’s section on “Ninja Sexual Powers”:
I suffered from all of the above problems in the past, and they deliberately damaged my sex life and my sexual confidence. I had premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, sex was the very last thing on my mind, and having an orgasm was so depleting and draining to me that it felt as if I just gave birth to elephant triplets. Now, thankfully, I’m walking around with an erection most of the time, and weirdly enough I actually feel better and somewhat more productive after an orgasm, and I sometimes feel sexually turned on just by looking at a mannequin or talking to a female customer service rep on the phone.
I wonder if the draining effect of orgasm may be due to a build-up of toxicity for many people. The reproductive system is particularly sensitive to toxicity, and when people move these toxins out of their bodies, sexual improvements are one of the most commonly reported changes.
I’ve also noticed a positive difference when eating 100% raw. Even if I do so for only a week, having sex as a raw foodist always feels better than having sex while on a mostly cooked food diet. I feel a stronger flow of energy all throughout my body, orgasms feel more holistic and less localized, and the heart connection with my partner feels deeper and more loving. Depletion? Nope!
When I eat as cleanly as I know how, the connection between my sexual experiences and the cleanliness of my body becomes obvious. When I step things back a bit (always 100% vegan still), it becomes a little more difficult to sense that connection on a day-to-day basis, but I see how it plays out over a longer period of time, especially as I continue to invest in further detoxification.
Since we live in a very toxic world these days, vastly different from the less contaminated world in which our species evolved, I deem it essential to continue investing in detoxification, and I expect to continue doing so for as long as I inhabit a human body on this planet. We already know that our bodies contain detectable levels of pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, and various chemicals that didn’t even exist on earth before the last century. What we don’t yet know is how badly these substances are degrading our mental, physical, and emotional functioning.
One way to view sexual problems, including sex-related addictions, is that they’re the canary in the coal mine. You can consider such problems to be your body’s early warning system that something is internally amiss. Now instead of blaming your lack of discipline, perhaps you’d have an easier time making improvements if you cleaned up your hardware first (brain and body), instead of trying to solve such problems at the level of software (mind and thought).
Move some of that toxicity out of your brain, and you may find that orgasm feels much less addictive, and you don’t feel such a strong need to masturbate either. You might also feel more drawn to connect with a loving, low toxicity partner and enjoy more of the heart-centered aspect of your sexuality… with energizing orgasms being the icing on the cake.
If you find orgasms depleting or mentally or emotionally unbalancing, that may be a sign of deeper problems. While you might be able to dodge orgasm-triggered depletion by avoiding or reducing orgasm, and you might feel some relief or an energy boost in doing so, perhaps you still haven’t addressed the underlying physical problem, which could continue to worsen. You may still be experiencing a gradual and cumulative build-up of toxicity in your body that could lead to other forms of physical, mental, and emotional degradation. By avoiding orgasm, maybe you’ve effectively snuffed out the canary, so you don’t have to listen to its anguished warbling anymore. Will disabling your body’s early warning system actually serve you in the long run? Or will you merely be setting yourself up for worse problems up ahead as the cumulative degradation continues?
If you get good results from going masturbation-free or orgasm-free for a while, or if you find such challenges daunting, realize that there are other ways of approaching such problems of feeling depleted, unproductive, or distracted by your sexuality. You could instead regard your experience of sexuality as an important health indicator. And if this indicator is going haywire, then instead of trying to turn your back on it, you could work with that indicator by making deeper improvements to your overall health and detox habits. As part of this process, you could build your capacity to have delightful orgasms with no loss of vitality. In fact, you may eventually find as I do that orgasms seem to increase your feeling of vitality.
I prefer to continue having energizing orgasms that promote positive feelings of well-being, preferably with a loving partner who also likes having orgasms. I don’t believe this part of life has to be a struggle. I don’t think it has to be addictive or unbalancing. I see orgasm’s proper role as an indicator of good health and vitality and as a pleasant experience to share for connection, bonding, and pure pleasure and fun. To continue having such experiences without feeling drained, maybe we must live and eat differently from our peers, but y’know… the benefits are worth it.
Steve Pavlina
https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2018/03/do-orgasms-energize-you-or-drain-you/