The Post-Party Blues

A few nights ago, I was coming home from a party—a holiday gathering of my beloved writing group. We are six women in the prime of our lives, who’ve known each other so long there are very few things we haven’t shared: primal heartaches, stellar victories, the indignities of aging, the miracles of survival. These are my very best friends in the world—the people I turn to when I can’t face life alone. They are the family I would have chosen if I’d been given the chance.

The party itself was fantastic, the food a tribute to domestic prowess, the conversation so deep and easy it flowed like an endless river. After three hours, sated in every sense of the word, I finally left to go home. I practically floated out the door, borne on a wave of love and admiration for these women I’ve come to know so well.

And then it started.

My car was only a few streets away, but with every step I could feel myself coming down, and down, and down, and down. Unshed tears burned behind my eyes. What the hell? Just 15 minutes ago I’d been laughing so hard my sides hurt; now all I could feel was an ache in my heart, an emptiness that threatened to swallow me up.

I tried to shake it off. Maybe something I ate (and I ate a lot) hadn’t agreed with me? But no, every bite was delicious and I’d noticed nothing amiss during the party. So what was going on? I couldn’t remember ever feeling so alone. I was going home to no one and nothing except the same old same. Where was joy? Where was nourishment? I’d left it all behind me.

I’ve learned in my years of mental health advocacy that the feelings I think are most inexplicable are often shared by others—but maybe not given voice. So the minute I got home I Googled the phrase, “feeling lonely after a party.” And sure enough, article after article popped up, detailing the reasons behind this phenomenon I thought was strictly my own neurosis.

A psychoanalyst, F. Diane Barth, explained that there are actually sound scientific reasons for the post-party blues. Sharing something wonderful and special raises the levels of “feel-good chemicals” in our bodies and brains, which then become depleted. As Barth describes, “We feel a natural sense of exhilaration in reaction to the flow of hormones and chemicals that our bodies produce in these moments. The ‘high’ feeling colors our expectations. And then reality happens. The endorphins and other feel-good chemicals stop surging through our bodies, the high wears off, and we start to feel a physical letdown as well as a psychological one.”

That was exactly how I was feeling—as if I were sinking into an abyss. I could understand being tired; parties, even good ones, often wear me out. But my body was more than just weary, my mind was more than overwhelmed. This wasn’t fatigue. Barth was right: It was depletion.

I also liked the explanation provided by psychologist Richard Solomon. In 1980, he came up with an idea he called the “opponent process theory of emotion.” This theory contends that one’s initial reaction to an emotional event will be succeeded by an opposite, secondary emotional state. Essentially, whenever you feel one emotion, you are due to feel its opposite next. So after experiencing joy, you then feel gloomy; after being happy, you start to feel sad.

Sad. The word stuck in my head, and wouldn’t go away. Was that really what I was feeling? If so, it wasn’t that bad. Sadness, fortunately, is not depression. This wasn’t the harbinger of worse to come; rather, what I was experiencing was a perfectly natural letdown from an unusual degree of high.

As always, realizing that other people had felt the way that I was feeling somehow made it OK. I wasn’t experiencing some bizarre new manifestation of bipolar disorder. It was simply a happiness hangover—and wasn’t I lucky to have one?