We got in a low speed buffet in an MD 80 when my captain decided to get clear of turbulence by climbing faster seeing the blue sky above in the clouds and his speed got slow. I told him he was too slow so he hit alt. hold at 365 climbing to 370 but it was too late and even with max power we couldn't get out of it. I told center we needed a lower now but we had opposite direction traffic 12 oclock 5 miles so they couldn't clear us lower. The opposite direction traffic was at 350 1500 ft below us so we never had legal separation back then in the 80's. We selected 500 fpm descent to keep from going into a deep stall with the plane buffeting even with the 500 fpm descent. I figured we needed 20 seconds to pass him in the clouds so once we were clear ATC let us continue our descent to got full control back.
I hope when the final reports come out we will understand what made the PF think he had to pull back instead of push forward. If we had pulled back we knew what the results would be. A deep stall and total loss of control. I am not proud of what we did that day because that is the only time in my life I felt out of control of our aircraft because we weren't paying close enough attention. It never happened again and that was over 15,000 hrs ago.