What Comes After the High

What your brain needs after the peak, and why ritual was made for it

Prologue:

That Strange Quiet

You’ve felt it.

The moment after sex when you don’t know whether to hold or roll away.
The stillness in a kitchen after a slammed door.
The breathless five seconds after a pitch, a performance, a goodbye.

The climax has passed, but your body hasn’t caught up. You’re suspended—buzzing and blank.

In French there is a phrase for it: l…