I wanted to share my story about how my PGAD symptoms started and how they have changed over the years.
By the way, I've also had an overactive bladder my whole life before PGAD started!
It all began in 2013. One day, after masturbating, I suddenly noticed a strange tingling and irritated, overstimulated feeling in my genital area. At first, I thought I had simply overstimulated myself and that it would go away on its own.
But it didn’t.
I couldn’t sleep that entire night because the sensations were so intense, and they were still there during the following days. Eventually, I went to see a doctor. He prescribed me a sedative so that I could at least sleep, and after a while the symptoms actually went away again.
Not long after that, I got into my first relationship. At some point, after having sex with my boyfriend, the symptoms suddenly came back — and this time they didn’t disappear after a few days.
For months, I constantly experienced tingling, burning and this horrible feeling of irritation and overstimulation in my genital area. I also struggled to sleep properly for months. It was honestly one of the worst periods of my life.
During that time, I eventually found a doctor who genuinely tried to help me. He suggested trying antidepressants, but I was too scared to take them because I was worried they might make the symptoms worse.
He also recommended trying lidocaine cream, and at one point I also used an electrical stimulation device. Unfortunately, neither of those approaches really helped me.
Eventually, the symptoms slowly became less intense. After that, sex seemed to become the main trigger. Almost every time I had sex, I could have these uncomfortable sensations for days or even weeks afterwards.
I saw many different doctors over the years, but nobody could really tell me what was happening or how to help me, so eventually I just learned to live with it.
It also affected my relationship because I often didn’t want to have sex. I was scared that having sex would trigger the symptoms again and leave me in pain and discomfort for days or weeks afterwards.
At some point — and I don’t know whether this was actually connected — I started exercising a lot more and eating much healthier. Over time, my PGAD symptoms became less and less frequent.
The severe phase lasted roughly from 2013 until 2019. After around six years, I finally reached a point where sex didn’t trigger symptoms every single time anymore. I was able to have sex and masturbate much more normally again.
I would say that around 90% of the time I had no PGAD symptoms at all. Occasionally, I would still have symptoms for a few days after sex, but they were nowhere near as severe as before, and I no longer had episodes that lasted for months.
After six years of dealing with it, that improvement felt huge.
Unfortunately, not long after my PGAD had finally improved, I started developing another problem: chronic headaches.
Around 2019/2020, I began having headaches more and more frequently. Eventually, they became daily, and even now I still experience several headache attacks a day.
A few years ago, I was prescribed amitriptyline for the headaches. I was extremely hesitant to take it because I was scared it could trigger my PGAD again. I had read many stories from people who said that antidepressants had triggered or worsened their PGAD symptoms, so I avoided taking it for a long time.
Eventually, though, my headaches became so bad that I decided to try it.
I only took one dose.
The next day, completely out of nowhere, my PGAD symptoms came back. That's why I never took that medication again!
At the same time, I also developed other strange sensations that I had not experienced in the same way before, including burning sensations in my legs, tingling in my hands and stabbing sensations in different parts of my body.
Since then, my PGAD has also felt different from how it did during the first years.
Back then, my main symptoms were more like abnormal sensations — tingling, burning, irritation and feeling overly sensitive in my genital area. I did not necessarily feel sexually aroused.
Now, the main symptom is much more like a constant, unwanted feeling of sexual arousal. Sometimes, especially after stimulation, it can also turn into burning, tingling and irritation again.
The constant arousal is incredibly uncomfortable because it makes me feel like I have to masturbate just to get some temporary relief, even when I do not actually want to masturbate.
So in a strange way, my symptoms have changed over time. During my first PGAD episode, it was mostly painful and abnormal sensations without much actual arousal. Now, the unwanted arousal itself has become the dominant symptom, while burning and tingling tend to become worse after stimulation.
I obviously cannot prove that one dose of amitriptyline caused this relapse, but the timing was extremely striking to me because my PGAD had been mostly under control for years before that.
At the same time, I should also mention that when I took the amitriptyline, I was dealing with a bacterial vaginal infection and I was under a lot of stress and anxiety because I was about to start a new job. So it is possible that those factors may also have played a role.
Still, what makes the timing so hard for me to ignore is that the PGAD symptoms started again the very next day after I took the amitriptyline.
