Apprentice comments on Humans are not automatically strategic - Less Wrong
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I apologize in advance for the long-shot other-optimizing but, well, here goes.
Something that has repeatedly worked for me to move from a lethargic, somewhat depressed state to an active and happy (if restless) state is to deliberately refrain from sexual release while not refraining from exposure to sexual stimuli. I came upon this independently but I've since found the same basic idea in Taoist literature and in femdom literature. It could also easily be pitched as an evo-psych idea.
Uh, what's the mechanism there?
Presumably sublimation. At least, Freud's sublimation reminds me a heck of a lot of the Tantric Buddhism and Taoist ideas of collecting ch'i from sexual activities (or lack thereof) and using it for other purposes.
I'm not aware of any research on this exact question so what literature there is is mostly religious or pseudo-scientific. What I do think is fairly well-established is that lack of sexual release makes men restless. Why 'restless' in my case translates to "active and happy" rather than, say, "aggressive and abusive" I don't exactly know. Some factors that may be relevant (but I had not thought of before now): a) My baseline personality is quite docile and submissive, b) Like many people here, I enjoy toying with self-hacking, c) I have lots of projects to pour extra energy into, projects that are satisfying intellectually and status-wise.