Swifties find ways to cope with emotional hangover one month after Eras Tour ended

It's been a little over a month since the final confetti fell to the Eras Tour floor, leaving devoted Taylor Swift fans with some extra time on their hands.

"I'm missing the community a lot," says Tess Bohne, a Swiftie who produced livestreams of the majority of the shows from her Utah basement. She donned different Swift-themed outfits and broadcast the show to tens of thousands — sometimes millions — of fans. "I would take 149 more shows if I had the chance. With that being said, I’m honestly grateful for a little bit of a break."

Bohne approached her hobby like it was a full-time, albeit unpaid, job. Oftentimes she made greetings in languages native to the countries Swift was performing in. She transformed a corner of her basement into a broadcast studio and an adjacent area into an outfit crafting station complete with bins of handmade clothing for each of Swift’s eras.

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"The excitement of hearing 'Applause' play at the start of the show, seeing the clock and Taylor popping up is gone," she reflects. "It was like a scheduled dopamine high, having those each week."

Fans logged on to social media to watch the concert for three hours each night. Huddled over their phones, computers and tablets, they played "Mastermind," a global game in which users guessed what outfits Swift would wear. Others tuned in to see her surprise acoustic set. Even though there were two-month breaks between legs of the two-year tour, fans always had a future show to look forward to until Dec. 8 when the final curtain fell in Vancouver, Canada.

The emotional hangover, or "Tay-ngover," is real for some Swifties.

"When you are having an emotional experience — it can be negative, it can be positive — in the case of a Taylor Swift concert it's extremely positive, and that in essence creates a brain state," says Lila Davachi, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Columbia University. Since 2004, Davachi has studied cognitive behaviors and the life of memories from inception to retrieval.

"And the emotional hangover, if you will, is that our brains can be trained," she says. "Fans may have trained themselves to organize their days and experiences around the tour, so they have a structure for something that's now missing, and that could make them feel bad."

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Davachi says the human mind is built on daily predictions. Say you walk to the subway every morning. If the experience getting to the station doesn't change much from day-to-day, that allows you to organize your behavior so you can spend the walk on autopilot thinking about something else.

"So if you spent several hours a day talking and thinking about a concept or idea like Taylor Swift, and sharing about it, talking about it, and now you're getting up and you’re like, 'Where’s my Taylor talk? I’m ready' and there’s nothing to say, that creates a conflict in your brain," she says.  "We've got to fill it. So you might be looking into the world to fill something in that same slot in your brain."

Some fans have filled the time by followng football to watch the superstar at Arrowhead Stadium. They discuss the possibility of a documentary series or the release of a rerecorded album. Maybe the singer has another new project? Fans are also preparing for the upcoming Grammys where Swift is nominated for six golden gramophones.

"I don't think anyone expects her to really disappear," says Olivia Levin, a social media influencer. Her account, @swiftiesforeternity, has more than 630,000 followers on Instagram. "I think she's at a new height in her career and wants to keep it going for as long as she can. I'm thankful she’s dating a football player because we can still see her at Chiefs games. I think it will hit the fandom after the Super Bowl, if the Chiefs make it."

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Levin hopes the singer is taking some time to rest after performing her show in front of more than 10.1 million ticket holders. Meanwhile Swift’s team continues to produce content. On Tuesday, her team Taylor Nation released two heart-shaped vinyls of the singer's "Lover, Live from Paris" concert. The records sold out within an hour.

"We've been looking for a way to bring the type of joy and togetherness that we were able to create during the tour,” says Kyle Mumma, the founder of Swift Alert, an app with more than a million fans from every country on the planet. "We're exploring different ways to do that again."

Swift Alert's "Mastermind" became part of the routine of fans watching the concerts. Mumma is working on another game concept and a possible one-day broadcasting event to bring fans together in 2025.

"We've heard from fans that our game helped fans make new friends or become closer to their daughters or parents," he says. "We heard from someone who lives in Iran who said she felt like there was no one else in her country who also cared about Taylor and she found someone who played 'Mastermind' and they were able to connect over that."

While fans concoct their predictions for the new year, there's a good chance Swift has laid out her schedule for the next couple of years. She started planting Easter eggs for her 11th era album, "The Tortured Poets Department," three years before releasing it.

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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Swifties experience emotional hangover one month after Eras Tour