Drop

What is drop?

Drop (Dutch: drop) is the setback that can come after an intense scene or after a whole weekend of kink: emptiness, low mood, irritability or exhaustion. The word describes the road from high to low. Drop hits both the person who received and the one who was in charge, and sometimes arrives within an hour, more often only two days later.

What drop looks like in practice

Drop almost always begins with something good. That is the confusing part.

Sprott and Randall open their article in Journal of Positive Sexuality with two cases they describe themselves as composites of several clients, so not as real people. The second belongs on this page. Samuel goes to his first whole weekend at a kink event, takes workshops, meets people and feels for the first time that he belongs somewhere. A few days later, back in his ordinary work and home, he has trouble concentrating, is exhausted and does not feel like anything.

That is event drop, and no scene is involved. Sprott and Randall write that a large event usually produces a peak experience of community, which is not necessarily erotic. What falls away is the place where you were allowed to have a part of yourself out loud.

How drop works: two things under one word

Under the word drop sit two phenomena, and they are rarely told apart.

The first is the dip right after it ends. That fits the exhaustion phase of an acute stress response: the body cannot stay on high alert for long. Sagarin and colleagues measured this in Archives of Sexual Behavior in 58 BDSM practitioners via saliva. Cortisol rose in those who were tied up, received stimulation and followed instructions. In those who gave the stimulation, the instructions and the structure, it did not rise.

The second comes days later, and that is where the usual explanation breaks down. Sprott and Randall establish that the described hormonal changes play out in minutes and not in days. So they propose something else: the late form is grief rather than chemistry, and what you have lost is the peak experience itself.

Honest about the knowledge: the same authors add that no study has ever tested the physiological explanation of the immediate form.

What good does it do to recognize drop?

Knowing the word saves panic. Anyone who does not know that drop exists looks for the cause in themselves or in the other person, and that is the wrong place.

• Did you have the receiving role? Then you have an explanation that does not start with “apparently I am not that stable after all”. That side is worked out under subdrop.
• Were you in charge? Then it drops away that the doubt afterward would be a verdict on the scene. Under domdrop is why that runs differently.
• Did you do it together? Then you can schedule the dip in instead of explaining it afterward.

Sprott and Randall put it most sharply themselves: drop can be a healthy process and need not be a sign of pathology or of a disorder.

A word changes nothing about that. If the dip lingers for weeks, returns every time, or brings sleeplessness and shame with it, then it is no longer drop but something for a person who knows what they are doing to look at.

How people deal with drop

The most common route is also the simplest: aftercare on the night itself, and a message afterward.

What people do beyond that varies a lot. Some arrange the aftercare in advance, including who calls if it turns out badly later after all. Others keep the next day clear. At larger events the reverse plays out: there the setback does not hang on one scene, so no one feels responsible for it and everyone goes back to work on Monday morning.

Misconceptions about drop

“Drop means the scene was wrong.” No. Sprott and Randall link the late form precisely to peak experiences that were good.

“Drop is endorphins wearing off.” That story is everywhere and does not hold for the late form, because those hormonal swings play out in minutes and not in days. What has actually been measured is under endorphin.

“Drop only happens to subs.” The encyclopedia on aftercare states that the need for aftercare is strongly personal and independent of the role as dominant or submissive.

“Drop belongs to BDSM.” It exists outside it too. Schweitzer, O’Brien and Burri found in Sexual Medicine that 46 percent of their participants had at some point felt low, tearful or restless after sex. Sprott and Randall also point to the post-show blues in theater and to what athletes call post-Olympic depression.

What I see of it myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. Drop is the subject I get the most messages about, and almost never on the night itself.

The timing is the strangest part. Wednesday. Not Sunday. Someone goes home content on Saturday night, functions fine for two days, and then in the middle of an ordinary workweek a text comes in asking whether this is normal.

The second thing: people are more ashamed of it than of the session itself. About what we did they talk without batting an eye. About crying at the sink, not. That is why for me the aftercare belongs to a BDSM date, and not only when something goes wrong.

What you can do yourself

• Agree in advance who gets in touch if the dip comes later after all, in both directions.
• Set a reminder for two days after the date. That is exactly when you have forgotten it yourself.
• Keep the day after an event clear, not the day after the last scene; event drop hangs on going home.
• Read drop as information, not as a verdict. It says that something meaningful has happened.
• Find someone who gets it if the dip lasts longer than a week or keeps coming back. That can be someone outside the scene too.

More reading on drop

On this site the receiving side is worked out under subdrop, the side of the person who was in charge under domdrop, and the care around it under aftercare.

Beyond this site, the article by Sprott and Randall is the only one that pulls the four forms apart. Free to read, and written for therapists who know little about this.

Sources

• Black and Blues: Sub Drop, Top Drop, Event Drop and Scene Drop. Richard A. Sprott & Anna Randall, Journal of Positive Sexuality 2, November 2016. Provides the umbrella term x-drop for the four forms, the distinction between the immediate and the late variant, the finding that the physiological explanation has never been tested, the composite examples of event drop, and the comparison with theater and with post-Olympic depression.
• Hormonal changes and couple bonding in consensual sadomasochistic activity. Sagarin, Cutler, Cutler, Lawler-Sagarin & Matuszewich, Archives of Sexual Behavior 38, 186–200, 2009. 58 participants; cortisol rose in those who were tied up and followed instructions, not in those who gave the instructions and the structure.
• Postcoital Dysphoria: Prevalence and Psychological Correlates. Schweitzer, O’Brien & Burri, Sexual Medicine 3(4), 235–243, 2015. Study among female students (230 recruited, 195 in the final analysis): 46 percent reported having at some point felt low, tearful, anxious or restless after intercourse.
• Aftercare (BDSM). Wikipedia. Provides that the need for aftercare is strongly personal and independent of the role as dominant or submissive.

Related terms

• Subdrop. The form that hits the receiving side, with the research into what the aftercare around it also does for the giver.
• Domdrop. The same setback in the person who was in charge.
• Aftercare. The aftercare that drop is the argument for.
• Endorphin. The substance that comes up in every explanation of drop, with what has been measured of it.
• Domspace. The peak that the giving side’s drop follows.
• Frenzy. The rush beforehand, which in the same person often alternates with drop.
• Submissive. The role where drop is reported most often, and why it can come only days later.
• Topdrop. The same side, named after the act rather than after the authority. Scene drop and event drop stay in the A–Z list, and adrenaline has its own page.