If you’ve ever had a perfectly nice night with friends and still woken up feeling like you got hit by a small bus, congrats. You’ve met the friendship hangover.
I’m not talking about regret. I’m talking about the physical stuff. The lingering headache. The tight jaw. The weird stomach. That “please don’t make me talk to anyone” feeling, even though you love these people and you genuinely had fun.
Part of it is basic logistics. Social plans often run long. Dinner becomes “one more drink,” and before you know it, you’re home later than you meant to be, your sleep is wrecked, and your body spends the next day trying to catch up. Add alcohol, and you’ve got the obvious explanation. But plenty of people report the same wiped-out feeling after a sober coffee date.
Here’s where the science gets less mystical and more annoying. Socializing is work for your brain. You’re paying attention to faces, tone, timing, jokes, boundaries, and whether you’ve been speaking for too long. If you’re meeting new people, or you’re in a setting where you feel judged, it can push your stress response.
Stress is a whole-body reaction that releases hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which can raise your heart rate and tense your muscles. It can also screw with digestion; when fight-or-flight kicks in, digestion can slow or stop so your body can divert energy elsewhere.
There’s research backing the “I need to lie down after being charming” experience. In an everyday life study, people who acted more extroverted reported feeling more tired two to three hours later. That dip showed up even though the behavior itself often feels good in the moment.
And for some people, the hangover hits harder because the whole night is a performance. Neurodivergent folks talk about “masking” through social events, then crashing afterward. One widely shared Instagram reel calls it an “ADHD social hangover,” which sounds like a meme until you recognize the pattern in your own life.
So what do you do with that, besides cancel the next brunch? Treat social plans like you’d treat training. You don’t stack hard workouts with no recovery and expect your body to clap for you. Build a buffer. Eat real food. Hydrate. Pick a reasonable end time and protect it. If you need 20 minutes of decompression in your car, take it.
Friendship shouldn’t feel like dread, but your body keeps a running tab on stimulation, sleep, stress, and effort. Sometimes the bill comes due the next morning.
The post The Friendship Hangover: Why Some Hangouts Leave You Physically Wrecked appeared first on VICE.
