Surviving Anhedonia

**** then I would need a special drivers license that I don't have thanks to President Bush's new restrictions, right?

It's easier to order online anyway but ask tweaky which ones are legit.....I have no idea......why drive if you don't have to?

Yes it would have been funny if I meant it that way , but I was trying to help actually....

I gatcha SP!

I gave some informations to DT but idk which pharmacies are legit that's why I never used them they look like complete scams.

I've never been scammed though lol even when some try to scam people I can see right through them.

Thanks for the info, Tweaky. I really appreciate it. I know it's not approved in the United States but maybe my pdoc knows something I don't and can get it through anyway. Hmmph. As for Wellbutrin, I feel the physical effect of dopamine from it, which is alertness, but that's it. I can barely sleep on it. Plus it gave me panic attacks for 3 years when I went up to 300mgs, which isn't an unreasonable dosage. Starting dosage is 150mgs, and then 300mgs, and then I think the highest is 450mgs.

It's weird, Lamictal, if I recall correctly, is what "corrected" my panic attacks for good. I remember I kept on trying to ween off it slowly but I always ended back up on it because the panic attacks would start again. I go off it this last time and I can't even get panic attacks. I mean, that's great news!!! But how thorough was its effects on my emotions? Can they be corrected at all?

Why can't I summon up any trace of mental euphoria, I mean even a mild bit?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27752140

apparently increasing working memory by using the dual n back can help----makes me wonder whether supplements like NAC that also increase working memory might work as well but those were only studied over a 6 month span and only with regard to memory and not anhedonia......

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25540902

Have you ever tried anything that impacts NMDA like sarcosine----its supposed to help with the negative symptoms of sz

a lot of what I'm reading suggests that the thoughts that occur before pleasure are disrupted but not the actual pleasure itself....ie anticipation rather than experiential pleasure is what's messed up.....this seems counter to what you're saying though

The NMDA seems to be about memory and learning. I have no memory or cognitive decline whatsoever. I've fully recovered my cognitive capacity thanks to treatment from antipsychotics, primarily Geodon. It took about 6 months to gain my memory back after first round of treatment, then about few months after I was introduced to Lamictal. That gave me brain fog, but as I said it lifted after some months.

When reading a book, I know when something has hit me emotionally when I feel goosebumps are followed by alertness. I get the physical symptoms of pleasure (dopamine) but not the mental pleasure (any whiff of euphoria). My mind is blank. It's like sex for me. I feel all the physical pleasure down there but none in my head, no euphoria at all, only physical.

I've tried my damndest almost every day to evoke it consciously, and sometimes I can turn on a song and wait for it's climax (for example Sia Chandelier) and I can evoke the goosebumps once in a great while but no mental pleasure from it. It's just like it gets cold lol. a big popcorn fart.

Hmmm so what i'm specifically suggesting is your cognition with pleasures is off, something In the processing....in the case of nmda there is known to be hypo function so less signal in sz...it has to do with cognition and working memory but also anhedonia....if you ramp up one you can ramp up the other. All it takes is four weeks of dual n back which is challenging but if it helps then hey cool right. I was sort of mixing in some other cognitive enhancers both because I'm interested in them and sarcosine combats negative symptoms. Not sure if they would work or not but also relatively easy to try if you can't see a doc for a while, plus tbh I was wondering about myself with those....dual n back is hard and I am currently lazy.

So there is a woman Barbara arrowsmith young who had severe mental defects and she corrected them by learning clocks.....it's a neuroplasticity thing....find what stimulates a certain region of the brain etc and stimulated with repetitive learning and you strengthen it....sometimes an indirect approach will work where direct will not. She actually has a limp arm and regained function with this type of learning. So what I'm saying is find and try the dual n back for a month.....be your own gunea pig and see if it helps, if not all you've lost is a few minutes a day.

Quotes from Wiki:
I get the gist of it, but I don't know how to start with emotions. It's as if I would need pictures of things that cause emotional responses, and play the game with those as symbols, but i'd have to show the pictures a moment longer to stir the emotions. Does this sound right?

No what I'm saying is playing the dual N back as is for 1 month it might help with emotional response....just find an app. I'm saying it likely exercises the same part of the brain, that cognition and emotion are related....

I.e. How did memorizing clocks help with a sense of direction and a limp arm for arrowsmith.....same part of the brain. I could be wrong since it's based on one paper but the worst case scenario is you get a little smarter.....better working memory.

Seriously though it's incredibly difficult, at least for me to play this particular game.

Stopped by my father's today. He's been living in a delusion since 2001, treatment resistant. He was on an antipsychotic for a month and then said hell no. I asked him questions about anhedonia, how music effects him since he's a music buff, about pleasure, about if he ever feels lonely, or has trouble attaching ideas to emotions at all and he has no problem with any of it. These meds I've taken...

I really vacillate between blaming the meds and blaming the illness....keep in mind you are genetically distinct from your dad....what impacts him might not impact you in the same way, no one in my family has exactly the same outcome.

It's a striking coincidence that I go on a med, two weeks later it takes away my panic attacks and my emotions never to have them back even when I go off them. There wasn't a steady decline, it was like a light switch, with a subtle difference when I switched from ssri to lamictal. My emotions were all over the place before meds. Me and my father may be different, but we're a hell a lot of alike, genetically, humor, looks, he has psychosis, persecution, delusion. His and my trigger for how it occurred are almost identical even

Hmmm maybe you and your dad are more similar than me and my relatives...so you're saying it was lamictal?

I felt nothing--nothing on the SSRI Lexapro except manic anger, and then when the depressed and manic episodes started to occur I was then immediately put on lithium, where I still felt anhedonia but I still felt more emotions, even though they were negative emotions like fear and angst, lamictal was more of the same of lithium without the tremors and blood tests. So I never had a chance to tell whether it was the SSRI or Lamictal because the lithium acts quicker than most drugs.

There are a lot of anecdotal reports of lexapro doing this......but it's few and far between....I don't think there is research into it yet......

I was just reading about Lexapro and anhedonia just now and it's honestly common among nearly all SSRI's I tried Prozac before that and felt the same way. That's what my doctor said. That's why he was reluctant to take me off it. A google search is riddled with connections of ssri's with anhedonia. Interestingly though, I found this random post suggesting that a hyperactive NMDA can cause problems when introduced to an SSRI. It was just a single post and that's all it said. I wonder why that person has that theory...

So I need to do dual n back for 20 minutes a day for at least 19 days. I wonder if there is a game that already mimics it so I'm not staring at dots on a screen.

What would the behavior of a hyper NMDA person be I wonder.

It kills neurons with too much stimulation.....but sz is supposed to have hypofunction so I doubt that's it.....

Lumosity has something but it's pay and not much better.....