Bear with me if this topic is beating a dead horse; I’m trying to limit my mortequine flagellation during the holiday season. 
I’m wondering if the term “OD” is serving this forum community well.
I don’t know if we can dig down a bit into what events / experiences we are lumping into this label? I’m curious to know if there are multiple kinds/modes of OD, and what happens when they overlap:
- Incongruency. Suppose that the pheromones I’m signalling (very strongly) don’t match the way I am behaving, the way I am dressed, the occasion, or the mood of the group, etc., or that the pheromones themselves conflict with each other … and I’m being “edited out” of the reality of people – too “weird”, therefore “denial.” (Negative Hallucination.)
- Novelty. Perhaps the people I’m signalling to have never before experienced this (level of) (mix of) pheromones in someone before. They’ve backed off to covertly “watch what happens” – and in respect of genuine curiosity they don’t want to interfere, so they act like they aren’t paying attention while they monitor and try to calibrate their models. (Peripheral Focus.)
- Fear/Flight or Fight. The pheromonal message itself is strong enough (and not mitigated by other messages) and specific enough that it produces non-cognitive, neurological level behaviors of withdrawal, seeking security, avoiding threats or combatting such threat. (When they realize they’re afraid, it’s another story – they might become angry because they were afraid and approach to combat, or they might try to approach and appease, withdraw and analyze, etc…) (Direct unconscious response to the content of the chemical message, not to the situation.)
- Internal Expectations. This could be a ‘sorry-go-round’ starting when someone wearing what they consider to be a strong dose of pheromones, but then don’t get responses they expect. Maybe people are drunk, tired, or distracted, maybe ventilation patterns make it hard to trace the pherosignature to that one someone, whatever … but then some combination of self-absorption and petulance begins to be displayed, which distances people (physically or mentally) and further diminishes/muddles the chemical responses. (Self-fulfilling prophecy.)
I guess I could try to flesh this out further, but hopefully this is enough to get across the gist of what I’m trying to say: OD might not be as simple as it sounds. Dosage of chemical may or may not be the controlling factor in some kinds of OD.
If you’re aware of other OD modes, I’d be very curious to learn more, please do tell. I’d like to define an “architecture of pheromone OD” Or if you can validate / expand / tweak any of the modes I touched on above …
Or Not … perhaps this sounds more like nitpicking better left to academics.
?)
