You know what I think? I think ejaculations are wrecking society worse than Goldman Sachs and high-frequency trading combined.

Why do I say this? For starters, according to Stanford U. biologist Robert Sapolsky’s “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,” the ejaculation of male primates is triggered by the sympathetic nervous system, a group of nerves known primarily for eliciting the “fight-or-flight” response.

Here’s an example. When Suzy the sophomore and Jim the junior start rolling around in the sack, nerves from Jim’s parasympathetic system release nitric oxide, which causes the smooth muscle in the blood vessels in Jim’s penis to relax. This, in turn, allows for more blood to flow into the penis and for Jim’s little friend to get harder than a final exam on Aristotle’s “Metaphysics.”

However, as sex wears on, Jim starts breathing faster and his heart rate speeds. Jim’s body gradually takes on the tone of the aforementioned fight-or-flight system. And though Tom fights to hold on, the parasympathetic tone gradually leaves his body, terminating at the penis, and Jim has an … um … enormous sympathetic response.

So, that horrible feeling guys have after sex? It’s not just because you slept with your best friend in a drunken stupor… it’s because you slept with your best friend in a drunken stupor AND your blood is flooded with enough hormones to raise Godzilla’s blood sugar to diabetic proportions.

What does it matter? At best, this situation means that over a male’s lifetime he has thousands — or in Wilt Chamberlain’s case: millions — of deciliters of circulating stress hormones that our female counterparts don’t. What’s more, the intensive sympathetic response makes it hard to produce another erection… thus leading to males’ lack of stamina.

More concerning, however, is the effect of male ejaculation on dopamine levels. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that, although originally associated with reward, is now equally recognized as a molecule of reward anticipation. It’s dopamine, it seems, that keeps us going through college, grad school, slavery to corporate America, and finally, as Sapolsky suggests, belief (and reward) in an afterlife.

However, according to researchers, modern society is overrun with high levels of dopamine. High levels of dopamine are consistent with personalities that lack empathy and extoll conquest and aggression rather than nurturing and communality.

What’s more, as Harvard professor Emily Deans indicates, males in particular are at a higher risk for dopamine-related disorders like schizophrenia and sociopathy. As Dr. Deans states, although she qualifies it as an oversimplification, males are “dopamine dominant” in contrast to females.

So, it seems the male external ejaculation, through sex and masturbation, further intensifies dopamine dominance in males by two mechanisms. First, dopamine is a precursor to certain stress hormones, and so it’s needed in large quantities to sustain repeated ejaculations during which these molecules are released. Second, orgasm itself perpetuates a large release of dopamine in both sexes, and consistent high levels of dopamine are correlated with a greater desire to orgasm or anticipate various other dopamine-producing situations.

I am not, by the way, committed to the view that people become addicted to sex specifically because of dopamine. Dopamine released during sex is released through a different pathway than dopamine released during drug addiction. I am only suggesting that male ejaculation habitually raises dopamine in males.

Readers may scoff at the idea that something like the male orgasm could have these effects, but the view is conventional among non-Western spiritual traditions such as Daoism and Tibetan Buddhism. In some Daoist traditions, for instance, male external orgasm is known as the “tiny death.” It’s believed that ejaculation depletes a man’s “jing,” or life force energy, which can lead to complications like baldness, disease and other bodily malfunction.

Now, here in 2011 at a research university, we might not believe in “jing,” but scientific evidence does show that, upon ejaculation, males have a significant increase in hormones implicated in downers like male pattern baldness and prostate cancer.

So what do we do? One solution may be celibacy, such as that practiced by full-haired pugilists Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee. But who wants that, particularly when there lurks another possibility that is so much more strange and interesting?

In a 2004 study by the Rutgers department of psychology and New Jersey College of Medicine, magnetic resonance imaging demonstrated that females with spinal cord injuries were able to climax through the vagus nerve, or the nerve that runs from the viscera to the brain.

Now, I won’t touch on the varieties or complexities of female orgasms, but we ought to consider that this particular sort of orgasm avoids the male stress response and is incredibly similar to the “internal orgasm through the neck” expounded in various Daoist and Tantric texts.

Would it be possible for males to climax internally through the vagus nerve, rather than externally through the fight-or-flight response, as ancient traditions suggest? Perhaps surprisingly, the answer may be “yes.”

According to the polymath and U. Minnesota alum Drew Hempel, the vagus nerve climax can be achieved by male practitioners of meditation and Qigong. According to Hempel, these practices can ionize neurotransmitters in the gut — our body’s largest repository of serotonin — which can then travel through the vagus nerve and cross the normally prudish blood-brain barrier, thus giving neck-pulsing, orgasmic-like sensations written about in Daoist texts. Qigong and meditation, Hempel said, are the opposite of dopamine obsession: they focus on present awareness and a lack of anticipation for future events.

However, though pulsing necks and Hempel’s experience are commonplace among esoteric traditions and monasteries, to my knowledge there are no controlled studies to corroborate his claims. And so, as a scientist I remain skeptical, particularly of the idea that certain neurotransmitters can be ionized and cross the blood-brain barrier.

So, if you are male and don’t believe in the efficacy of Qigong, I only suggest you do what you can to avoid the dangers of dopamine: go to sleep as soon after as possible.