Surviving Anhedonia

Surviving seems to be an apt word to describe what living with anhedonia is like. I'm damaged goods unable to feel mental pleasures or depressions. I can feel physical symptoms of happiness and depression though. I mostly feel negative physical symptoms since I can't conjure up happiness like others. I'm always thinking of death and to be honest, it doesn't seem like a big deal because I don't feel a lot of emotions. I haven't felt emotion since I started on SSRI's years ago. I thought coming off lamictal, the last mood drug that I would be on, would bring them back but to no avail, still gone.

My question is, What's the point of life if you can't feel? Spare me the comforting words that have no emotional effect on me, or that love saves all, because I can't feel love, or passion, or music, or any climax in a movie.

Without emotion my days are extremely mechanistic. I do things because I logically should and my living conditions would be worse off if I didn't.

What purpose can there be in life without emotion involved? It's like I have to live an ascetic life devoid of all pleasure towards a purpose which that wont even bring me pleasure or peace.

After being numb after a long day I routinely get frustrated, then fear, then anger, then I start to drink to try and relax.

I can be humorous, which I believe is a shallow human emotion compared to passion and love. It's hard to be sincere and humorous at the same time and I wont feel the benefits of it.

I wont live a happy life so what's the purpose. And since I have no emotions then I don't feel motivations to spread my wings and do things that would create a more complete flourishing life.

So I live the life of austere, stark reason, or the comedian, which as Jungian types go, I have zero aspiration or connection for or with. Yuck.

What's the point of life if you can't feel anything anymore?!

Sorry DT

I'm not sure why you're so affected by anhedonia....I sometimes get to the point where I literally don't want to do anything....I still go into work out of habit but what happens when that wears off? Mine doesn't last more than a week.....I suppose you can still live a life of service? If you can't help yourself you may still be able to help others? I see you teaching....you may not have the same passion you once had but I still see you teaching us and others about philosophy. I'm not sure if you get anything from it now or not but you still do it and sometimes just doing it is enough.

Have you had cbt therapy? Sometimes actions influence how we feel, just the doing stuff is enough to lift us from a pit.

I know you come here to PC and you help us all with laughter and support. I don't know if you get any satisfaction from that but I hope you do.


I think the thing to remember is things can change in the future....I know you've tried a lot of meds but there are always new ones, or supplements. Your brain may heal....You seem to love kitler.....and in that there is hope......

BBC - Future - What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

Have you heard of this...I wonder if you've stumbled into something like this rather than anhedonia?

Upon looking further into this it can occur post pstd....I honestly wonder if the severity of emotions in ptsd could actually change neural circuitry so that you don't feel emotions, like a protective state? Do you get any emotions from anything now....I wonder if due to neuroplasticity you could enhance those emotions you do feel and eventually regain your emotions?

Have you looked into the science of emotions? I wonder.....

The "science of emotions" seems like a vague term that I know very little about except from my own experience. I focus, nay, I meditate so hard on music, on art, on my relationships intensely in an attempt to try and feel something. I look for something good to listen to on the radio I put it on and before I know the song is over because I'm not moved by it. Thefore, I have to force myself to listen to the lyrics to follow along or else it's just background noise. It literally is just noise, not pleasant at all, just sounds in a space put together tha have no effect on my heart chords.

SEX even, SEX use to give me a huge euphoric rush that would help me cope with depression and I feel nothing afterwards, only physical pleasure, not mental pleasure. I can't find a way to pry my emotions open unless I want to try and do illegal drugs but I'm to cautious and careful to try anything like that.

I remember when I was on the SSRI I would tell my psychiatrist that my head feels like its bubbling. Other than bouts of anger I felt NOTHING on an SSRI. NOTHING AT ALL. NOTHING! I begged my psychiatrist for my depression back but he just looked at me stupefied because he was wrestling with either panic attacks or anhedonia and anhedonia in his mind isn't as bad. He was a **** psychiatrist. I screamed at him after he didn't listen to me about how much I hated Risperdal and I think in fear he finally gave me options. But I learned to slowly that there are more than just one med out there for each illness. I was just not aware enough and I followed him like a lemming off the cliff.

I don't want to live the life of service. Even the man who only wants honor gains emotions from accepting honor for honorable people. Existentialism isn't prepared to handle people who live without emotions, even the stoic Marcus Arelius found peace in control and balance and married and felt love even though he had a bastard child.

I've looked up treatments for anhedonia and boy--recovery is nonexistent by and large. People say they think they are starting to feel better only to realize that its physical emotions they are experiencing not mental. the depressionforum has a forum just on anhedonia and its filled with almost zero success stories, one of the two success stories involves a drug that isn't approved in the US so there goes that. I've tried dopamine enhancing drugs and they do nothing but give me physical symptoms of alertness and make me not sleep, sometimes even anxiety if I'm not careful.

The PTSD largely disappeared around the time I got on lithium then lamictal, which happened to be the period I exited school, never to come back so no more triggers. I don't think it was the PTSD, I think it was the SSRI which made me feel ABSOLUTELY NOTHING--NOTHING. I had trouble with even phsycial pleasure on ssri's they were so exstensively numbing ruining my sex life 100% while on them.

I try to meditate while listening to highly euphoric music to catch some glimmer of emotion and hang on to it but to no avail. However, I can feel the chills, which is a physical response, from music. It's just like me feeling the physical symptoms of depression where my head feels like it weighs a ton. I am completely unable to tie emotions with ideas. I've got a lobotomy going on that completely severed my emotions with ideas.

I've tried Effexor which can boost dopamine, I've tried Wellbutrin twice which can boost dopamine but that doesn't work at all either. Most antidepressants dampen emotions unfortunately. I could try something like concerta though but I'm skeptical if that would work and id only take that if it worked as therapy to eventually get my emotions back, as if it could pry the jar open so that I could eventually wield them myself. But they act as stimulants so I doubt they would work at all. I could also try ketamine but lol good luck in finding a psychiatrist who would give me special K and its administered in shots so no thanks.

It's been years since I've felt a positive emotion. It's been two years since I've been off antidepressants, which I believe caused it. It's been three months since I've been off Lamictal completely. I feel so ****ing numb it's unbelievable, and I drink alcohol for its sedative effects that make me feel relaxed. Interestingly, previous to all medications, when I would drink alcohol I would feel immense joy and my face would rush with emotional chemicals making it feel numb. Now I don't get that sensation when I drink because my chemistry has changed so much.

DT I'm really concerned about this.....I'm going to look into some stuff when I get into work on Tuesday I don't have the access now.

Question have you ever tried Abilify? All the anhedonia stuff has to do with dopamine...if you're having issues a partial agonist might help more than a blockade.....just wondering.....

Have you ever tried an maoi? They are an older class of ADs but also impact dopamine......

No I haven't, but I'll do some research on both and ask my doctor about both options. I wish she was more accessible. The net available appointmentment for her, which I have, is in January. I asked her office if she is healthy, and she said shes in good health. I then asked if they could give a referral and the place they reffered me to was out in Chelsea far away from Ann Arbor. She knows how important this is so she told me to see her in a month and she's making that impossible. Ill call the doctor's office again and hopefully the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

I'm going to keep looking...thing with the maois is you have dietary restrictions...no drinking for example because it can kill you that's why they've fallen out of favor. But they work for treatment resistant depression.

Wow January is crazy...I see mine every six months too...she has clinic only once a week....but she's good so it's worth it.

My cousin and his wife live in Chelsea it's like farmland...they actually have a barn. Incidentally he's a doc but in family med residency so he couldn't handle this unfortunately.

Yes be the squeaky wheel

My stimulant is a releaser of dopamine norepinephrine and serotonin and inhibits it's reuptake at the same time.

It's an overkill. In small doses I noticed a drastic change in anhedonia so maybe an MAOI could work for you or even myself once I stop taking this horrid drug.

I posted some on roll call that has to wait to be approved.

I plan to write more about this anhedonia thing.



I've been switching through these 7 basic states of mind and more all month..

Makes me realize that I'm more lost about anhedonia than I already am.

I feel very obsessive and compulsive right now and irritable so I feel like I have way less serotonin right now with less empathy and feeling. Last week I was tripping with the amount of serotonin I think I've had.

But SSRI's I've noticed only numb me. Although the week before that week of emotion I took a popular primarily serotonin releaser and was getting brain zaps too so maybe serotonin depletion increased my dopamine with the other stimulant idk. That's why it's soon going to be used professionally by psychologists in the US for therapy once every 3 months or something for PTSD.

It's a huge balance thing in the brain. I preferably like to be slightly unbalanced on the higher serotonin side which is why I like psychedelics and empathogen stimulants and hate opiates because opiates make you feel nothing much and I've felt that way for long enough now.

Balance is the key really. If you feel too much from higher serotonin, you'll get upset, impulsive and want less feeling because less dopamine. Feel nothing because of less serotonin, well you'll feel really frustrated and angry about it because of too much dopamine. That's a good understanding right there. I've noticed that too much serotonin can make me unbearably depressed to the point where I'm screaming out for death to take me away. Then on the other side, it can be so much but not too much to be perfect for a while.

Even though these are basic simplifications of how the brain can be interpreted into emotions and whatever, I feel like humanity - scientists etc can use it as a language in a way to have a better understanding before it's decided that it should be just ditched all together and brought back to the drawing board so it's important to not talk about it too much in that way I guess and use both equally.

If you're looking for a MAOI without dietary restrictions, there's Moclobemide, though I don't know if it's available in the US? It's a reversible MAOI. However, I really couldn't recommend it personally because, when I took it, it did literally nothing. No benefits, but no side effects either - may as well have been placebo!! But obviously YMMV.

I've also heard that MAOI skin patches, like ensam, on the lowest dose are fairly lax about the dietary restrictions, but not at the higher doses. The dietary restrictions are very important thought because, as Sometimes said, you could die if you don't stick to them.

Anyway, definitely keep shouting until you get an earlier appt because Jan is far too long to have to suffer in this way.

I hope you find something that helps

*Willow*

I was going to keep looking in general but this is great info

Ironically, Moclobemide the VERY drug I mentioned that is not approved in the united States that has helped with anhedonia.

Maybe tweaky could hook you up?

I'll ask him now.

lol I like your sense of humor.

I saw that picture of Tweaky. He is a nice lookin' guy.