[Dave55522]

I think i have depression because i feel flat emotionally and don't have any interest in life.Things that give most people pleasure like socializing or hobbies do not interest me.All i do everyday is watch TV,play video games and go online and read stuff and even that is kind of boring to me but i do it anyway because them three things are the only things that i'm a little bit interested in.

I never feel happy or sad or excited and i never feel empathy or sympathy.i just feel dead inside.I was not like this years ago, i had a personality then,i laughed,i smiled,i joked around,i got sad,i got angry and i had an interest in life and socializing with other people,i was always introverted but i had some interest in socializing,now i have none at all,now i don't want to be around people and i don't want to talk to people,when they talk to me i have no interest in what they are saying and i just want them to shut up and leave me alone.

Sometimes i wish i was dead because i'm sick of living like this.I have been living like this everyday for the last 8 years and i want it to end.But i wont kill myself because of my family and because i have a tiny bit of hope that someday i will be happy and i will live a normal life with a job,a girlfriend,a few kids and i will go out and enjoy my life traveling to other countries and stuff.but that probably wont happen,i have been like this for 8 years and i don't think its just gonna go away someday.

The best years of my life have been wasted.While everyone else in their twenties were out enjoying themselves,going to parties,going on holidays with their friends to other countries,getting into relationships and having one night stands i was stuck at home watching TV..I'm afraid that i'm going to grow old without having lived my life,i'm 28 now,those 8 years flew really fast,this scares me a lot.

I wish there was some pill i could take that would cure my anhedonia and give me my emotions back.I have tried SSRI's and SNRI's and either they did not work or they made me even more zombie like.Unfortunately
you cant get stimulants prescribed for depression in my country only SSRI's and SNRI's.Can SSRIi's or SNRI's help with anhedonia and emotional numbness ? Maybe there is one that would work for me i dont know.I only tried about 4 different kinds.Did they help anyone here with emotional numbness or anhedonia ?

[MommaD]

Sometimes it takes a lot of tries to get the med that's going to work for you so please don't give up yet. There's also counseling and even ect so you haven't exhausted the possibilities.
I don't know if you would find anything useful in it, but a book called the Upward Spiral helped me and my daughter climb out of some really dark places (along eith ghd right meds and a great counselor). You might give it a try. No one thing--just a group of small steps that together helped lift us up.
Sending positive thoughts your way

[Rose76]

Sorry, Dave. You're pretty obviously depressed . . . and have been for probably quite some time . . . so it's become an entrenched condition. The SSRI's and SSNI's didn't help me, when I was really down for prolonged intervals. Stimulants gave me a tense, anxious feeling. Amitriptyline (Elavil) - a tricyclic antidepressant - has been what's actually made a difference. Doctors avoid this old-fashioned med, but it's probably the mist effective anrudepressant ever invented.

I guess my main point is that I think I'ld advise you to let go of "the medical model" that says this is a "brain disorder" and the fix might be some drug. (Oh, there are drugs that could definitely make you feel a lot better . . . for a while. That would be - like - opiates. You could get some euphoria from abusing drugs, like narcotics or heroin. But I take it you're not looking to become a skid row addict.)

If there really were these great psych meds out there that fix depression, modern medicine would have rid the world of depression. I part company with a lot of my fellows here at Psych Central, in not being much of a believer in medication for the problem you describe. I always say, "Give it a whirl." But you have, and it didn't really help. Neither do I think visits with therapists get you anywhere, really.

I was introverted, and I always saw that as a major part of the foundation of being depressed. Without meaningful engagement in the world of human affairs - I don't think you can get much out of life. Humans are social creatures. It's in our DNA.

I don't want to sound like I'm blaming you. However this disengagement got started, I totally believe it was not your choice. In no way do I blame you for being where you are at.

I do believe the following: You've got an approach to life that us not working for you . . . but you're sticking with it - come heck or high water - because you sincerely believe to change your approach would be futile.

I believe that it would not be futile . . . but it would take patient persistence at a new approach before you would see a pay-off. Depressed people have zero patience sticking with anything that - for a while - seems to make no difference. I know. Been there.

Is there a reason why you're not working? (if that's the case.) I'm not saying that only people with jobs deserve to be happy. But there's a rule of the universe that says if your not engaged in getting to a goal, you are going to be miserable. Somewhere within 100 miles of you is at least one person who get's up in the morning and goes out to steal stuff. That person is happier than you. He (or she) is on a mission. That person doesn't deserve to be happier than you, but he is.

You need a "mission." You need an agenda. My guess is that somewhere along the line what you were about got subordinated to someone else's "agenda." When you were born, you didn't get dropped into a void. You dropped into an existence controlled by other people. You didn't navigate your way out of that. You didn't know how.

Just a theory . . . something to think about.

I believe you deserve and can have better for yourself.

[MtnTime2896]

Keep in mind, I'm not a MH professional, but have they ever tried an anti-psychotic? I mean this in no way to allude to you being psychotic, because I don't believe you are, but I read somewhere that they are another treatment for anhedonia.

[Rose76]

I see some stuff on the Net about Seroquel supposedly helping to reverse anhedonia.

I took Seroquel, and it just made me sleepy.

Seroquel is being prescribed, sooner or later, for just about any and every psych problem.

[DechanDawa]

Originally Posted by Rose76

Sorry, Dave. You're pretty obviously depressed . . . and have been for probably quite some time . . . so it's become an entrenched condition. The SSRI's and SSNI's didn't help me, when I was really down for prolonged intervals. Stimulants gave me a tense, anxious feeling. Amitriptyline (Elavil) - a tricyclic antidepressant - has been what's actually made a difference. Doctors avoid this old-fashioned med, but it's probably the mist effective anrudepressant ever invented.

I guess my main point is that I think I'ld advise you to let go of "the medical model" that says this is a "brain disorder" and the fix might be some drug. (Oh, there are drugs that could definitely make you feel a lot better . . . for a while. That would be - like - opiates. You could get some euphoria from abusing drugs, like narcotics or heroin. But I take it you're not looking to become a skid row addict.)

If there really were these great psych meds out there that fix depression, modern medicine would have rid the world of depression. I part company with a lot of my fellows here at Psych Central, in not being much of a believer in medication for the problem you describe. I always say, "Give it a whirl." But you have, and it didn't really help. Neither do I think visits with therapists get you anywhere, really.

I was introverted, and I always saw that as a major part of the foundation of being depressed. Without meaningful engagement in the world of human affairs - I don't think you can get much out of life. Humans are social creatures. It's in our DNA.

I don't want to sound like I'm blaming you. However this disengagement got started, I totally believe it was not your choice. In no way do I blame you for being where you are at.

I do believe the following: You've got an approach to life that us not working for you . . . but you're sticking with it - come heck or high water - because you sincerely believe to change your approach would be futile.

I believe that it would not be futile . . . but it would take patient persistence at a new approach before you would see a pay-off. Depressed people have zero patience sticking with anything that - for a while - seems to make no difference. I know. Been there.

Is there a reason why you're not working? (if that's the case.) I'm not saying that only people with jobs deserve to be happy. But there's a rule of the universe that says if your not engaged in getting to a goal, you are going to be miserable. Somewhere within 100 miles of you is at least one person who get's up in the morning and goes out to steal stuff. That person is happier than you. He (or she) is on a mission. That person doesn't deserve to be happier than you, but he is.

You need a "mission." You need an agenda. My guess is that somewhere along the line what you were about got subordinated to someone else's "agenda." When you were born, you didn't get dropped into a void. You dropped into an existence controlled by other people. You didn't navigate your way out of that. You didn't know how.

Just a theory . . . something to think about.

I believe you deserve and can have better for yourself.

I like what you wrote. I just posted something very similar to this thread in another forum. I am trying to pull out of a two-year depression. I felt everything this poster felt. I started a new job last week. It fills me with dread and anxiety when I am not there. When I am there I am just trying to survive...because the job is so fast-paced and intense. Sometimes when I am there I still feel like I am dying...only in a different way. I know that getting a job is always cited as helping to pull someone out of depression but right now I am freaked out in a very big way. It is such a change from how I have lived for two years. The one thing is I notice on the job when people are nice. And where I work the customers and those who serve them are all pretty nice. It is a more gentle world than I remember. Right now I am pretty confused. I liked everything you wrote, so thank you.

[Fuzzybear]

[Rose76]

I'ld be the last person to claim that employment is a wonderful antidote to depression. I've toiled at jobs I hated that made me feel trapped and miserable. At some jobs, I felt inadequate and the resultant anxiety was one of the worst things I've ever experienced. On the other hand, unemployment, at times, has brought be close to homelessness. Plenty of people have been driven to suicide by loss of a job. (My cousin was.)
Therein lies the huge dilemma. Humans need to have work to do that earns them the necessities of life and freedom from dependence on others. However, a lot of jobs can be miserable experiences. That choice between dependence and what can seem like wage slavery has driven plenty of unhappy people over the edge.

Getting a job is absolutely no guarantee of recovery from depression. But hanging around the house in bed, on the couch or in front of a screen is pretty much a sure-fired way to stay depressed.

The point is - you gotta do something. If you sit around waiting to figure out a perfect plan, you'll never do anything. And you'll sink deeper into the pit.

I'm sorry, Dechan, that the job is stressing you big time. I've been there. One thing I discovered is that, after a whike, you might feel differently. A long time ago, I took and quit/lost six jobs in one year. I disliked every one of them. I decided that I would stay with the next job for six months, no matter how much I hated it. At first, the job felt uninteresting. And I felt great anxiety or resentment about the interpersonal aspects of dealing with co-workers. That changed radically after six months. Opinions I had formed of people during the first few weeks of work turned out to be wrong. People who had seemed nasty, when I started, ended up not being so bad at all. I even started to have fun with these very individuals. Some of the people whom I got along with, at first, came to strike me as weasles that I wouldn't trust much, once I knew them. It astonished me how six minths into the job, it seemed like a different world. Also, the job, which seemed like something I just couldn't quite do well at, turned out to be something I could do as well as the next person. We tend to have more ability than we realize . . . sometimes.

I was in and out of schools and jobs. I won't say that, eventually, I found the career of my dreams. Actually, I didn't. But I did keep trying things. When you rack up failure after failure, that gets awful hard to do. But trying anything was better, to my way of thinking, than hanging around my parents' house. (And they weren't the type to let me feel too comfortable hanging around.)

You never know what's around the next corner. You never know! I moved from place to place. After one move far from my origins, I failed and came back to my home territory. But I came back with a gun. I wanted to have a total escape plan, if I ended up broke and homeless. It so happened, I landed in a nice job. That was eventally followed by a crappy job. I've alternated between jobs I liked and jobs I didn't. But it can be amazing what's around the next corner, if you just take the trouble to go to the end of the block and hang a left, or a right.