Anhedonia

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definition: the inability to feel pleasure.

A key part of depression, at least in degrees. But most of my life that I've had depression, I always used to say that I'd never kill myself because even when I felt bad, I thought, I can at least enjoy say, the taste of ice cream.

But this past year I experienced a complete and utter anhedonia. Where I could not enjoy even the taste of ice cream. It makes you feel like you are losing your mind because you have no way to judge what's true or not if your brain is not registering feelings in response to things in your environment. You literally forget what it feels like to feel pleasure, because when you remember a feeling or even that triggered a feeling, your brain produces the good feelings as if it was happening. That's why we can enjoy thinking about good thing without having them at the moment. But if your chemicals are not working, you physically cannot recreate that feeling.

You also lose the comprehension of cause and effect---because you no longer have feelings in response to a cause. So you can't do anything over a period of time.

I learned over time to at least remember FACTS---fact: I HAVE felt pleasure before. Fact: I have had break throughs in which I felt pleasure after a period of anhedonia. Therefore, it may happen again. Yesterday my brain started working again. And then I realize how abnormal the feelings (or lack) I had were.

Anhedonia is HELL. It would however be a great name for a rock band. or a song. I actually kind of like the word; at least in the moments when I don't have it. When you are in complete and utter anhedonia, it's impossible to actually like anything. It would also be a good name for a country in a mythical novel. Or how about a region of hell from a story a la dante's inferno (or is it already?)

Actually there is a rock band called anhedonia...



I know what You mean - I'm passing through it at the moment. It's horrible

Last edited by ReGiFroFoLa on 15 Dec 2008, 1:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

When I was severely depressed, I experienced anhedonia. But for me it wasn't that severe for that part of the depression. It was limited anhedonia. I didn't feel interested or pleasure in my art, playing video games, watching movies, and things like that. I was just too down to be interested or feel pleasure. But now is the complete opposite. I am manic and have millions of ideas racing through my head and feel pleasure in everything to the extreme. Everything is exciting. Like you, most of my life I have had depression but in the last few months (since August) I have been more manic than depressed. The only part of mania that I DON'T have is the decreased need for sleep. It is because of my medicines, they put me to sleep and make me tired all day long. I take Valium and that is like a sleeping pill. I have ideas that are not like me at all such as public speaking. Before the episode, I was terrified in thinking about that and had my mom speak in front of people about me instead. Now I do it. In fact, I have to speak at autism conferences next year and want to do it often. I am now part of Toastmasters which is a public speaking group. It has absolutely nothing to do with toast! Where is my toast? Now I am being a comedian. Ha ha ha!

Adverb says that Wellbutrin helped him with his anhedonia. It was the only thing that helped, and it helped very well.


I've felt anhedonia but never had it for longer than a day, maybe. I know I'm lucky.

sounds like a factor of depression. I've had times where I couldn't be cheered up, but not as a permanent condition.

like the word, though.

Do you think extreme Anhedonia can merge almost into a Dissociative state? It seems to me its like there is a crossroads between the two.

I don't like Welbutrin. When I took it it caused me seizures. Yuck! No thanks! I think sunlight is best to shake one out of anhedonia phases.

Yes. At least when it is extreme. When I was in high school I was depressed, and it was of course hard to enjoy things; but I'd listen to angry or depressing music and feel connected to it. I'd think about suicide and feel better because I related to the thoughts. But the recent case where it was extreme, I couldn't even enjoy angry or sad music because I felt no connection to it. I couldn't even fantasize about suicide anymore. I suppose that is a plus. But I did consider it, I just didn't dwell on it or anything. When your emotional state is completely independent of your surroundings, you become disassociated.

Wellbutrin did not work for me, it just made me anxious. The one thing that helped in the past was ambien---the other medications I was prescribed did NOTHING for months but I realized that the only way I could feel is to take a little ambien in the day. Not healthy, but a last resort. Now that I'm able to feel a bit more, I dislike the feelings of ambien becuase it makes the feelings you do have make no sense. In anhedonia, any feelings are good, even if they don't make sense. But once you have feelings again, ambien is no longer enjoyable.

I'm frustrated that the doctor never gave me anything that could help immediately, except briefly xanax. The antidepressants didn't work, and now I think the new ones don't help much either, but he doesn't want to give me anything like valium or anything because I suppose the potential for addiction. At many points, I'd rather take that risk with something that works strongly now, than end up in a state of despair misusing ambien (which I'm trying to stop doing now).

I have experienced anhedonia, although my periods of depression have been quite different from classic depression in that instead of lacking feeling, I have been racked by anguish and wanted certain things badly that I knew I would never get and have generally been very unstable. But to be honest, the anhedonia I have experienced seems far worse than being in constant pain and anguish. It was particularly bad for me after coming off over a year's treatment with antidepressants/antipsychotics. I think (and thought at the time) that it was probably a chemical reaction to having the extra seratonin provided by the drugs suddenly removed, and this made it bearable because I had hope (which has been fulfilled) that in time it would fade away. But at the time it was so bad that I wanted nothing - I kept on with daily life because staying in bed was no better (and I was supposed to be better so I had to keep up with appearances), but there was no enjoyment. I didnt care about anyone much at all (although I was aware I would normally care) and wished I could die without having to use any effort. In fact, for the first time in my life I wished that I had never existed as I just felt so tired of having to exist - everything was a meaningless effort. Maybe luckily, I have so many routines that I just kept on with things. I still have the tiredness sometimes (a sort of psychological tiredness), but 6 months later I am enjoying the simple pleasures of life. I have kept however the viewpoint of non-existence being perhaps preferable and have lost all fear of death - in fact I quite like this new philosophical viewpoint so I am reluctant to become completely involved in life again - I feel apart from things and as long as I am apart then I cannot be hurt too much again.

I think antidepressants can help with this - whilst I was on them my life was fairly boring but the serotonin was there and the mood stayed up (in fact this period is now so hazy that I can't really remember what I felt like but it wasn't so bad). But you don't want to be on them forever and the negative feelings when you come off them can be worse than before you started them. In my case it helped that just after coming off them I had a major change of life - new job, new home, which gave hope that things could be better and although stressful, occupied me enough and gave enough reward that my brain could get back into gear again and produce normal levels of serotonin (well maybe not quite, but it'll do).

I've been through the anguish too. The obsessive thoughts. Quite the opposite of anhedonia. I honestly don't know which is worse for me, because either one did not allow me to enjoy anything. In the anguish stage, pleasure was denied because I couldn't do anything to get rid of the racing thoughts of condemnation--except drink. Come to think of it, I suppose I prefer that to the anhedonia, if only because drinking seems to get the noise in my head to shut up, while drinking doesn't help if you don't have any feelings at all.



I think that may be a necessary way to cope, one that I have certainly felt. But ultimately, you have to realize that existence CAN and SHOULD be a joy. It's easy to forget that entirely and just assume life is pain, and so the cessation of pain is the desire. But now I know there's more to life. It gives me hope when I feel bad to know this. But I had to taste joy again to know it. Now that I've sunk back down, I remind myself that I escaped once. It keeps me from suicidal thoughts---that's good and bad at the same time. Good because I know that suicide isn't the answer. Bad because it used to give me some relief to just at least think about it. But good because the fact that I can't do that means I actually have to find real treatment instead of just coping and limping

Welcome to the club. For me there is this one aspect of my anhedonic episodes that is particularly troubling. When I’m in it there’s this sense that all the previous pleasure in life was somehow insubstantial. It’s like I'm robbed not only of pleasure in the moment but also the memory of past pleasures.

There’s also something about experiencing anhedonia that makes it feel like you’ve lost something that you can never gain back. The realization that pleasure and fulfillment are subjective and depend on some kind of physiological process going on inside my brain never stops haunting me. It puts a subtle veil over every joyful experience. Even when I’m feeling recovered things are never same again. Happiness never feels quite as concrete or real as before the experience of anhedonia. Every time I experience some amount of joy there’s this subconscious part of me waiting for it to end. Reality itself is not as solid in my mind either. Everything is fuzzy and open to question. No real lasting security or comfort exists.

I also miss having a fear of death. I don’t really have much at all. What I fear more is making my family suffer if it ever comes to that point.

I too am finding it hard to get pleasure from anything.It's horrible and makes you feel half as if you're no longer alive.

I too am finding it hard to get pleasure from anything.It's horrible and makes you feel half as if you're no longer alive.

I do feel pleasure but it is very short-lived. This in turn makes me even sadder.

anhedonia sucks

I found that anhedonia is the worse thing in the world. When you have anhedonia, you even lose the ability to remember pleasure. It's like how blind people lose their memories of being able to see if certain optic nerves are affected.

I suffered from it for over 3 years, and I actually don't even remember when I was depressed.
I've had Dysthymia since... a long time. (?)
Antidepressants no longer work, I don't think they ever did work though. I almost ended up getting a VNS implant. But I had a panic attack and decided not to do it.

What is Dysthymia? I'm not familiar with that term.

Be careful with Ambien. A friend who is a doctor told me that a lot of people have gotten busted from extreme DUI when all they took was an Ambien. She said the doctors refer to as a DUA and its kinda a weird joke in the medical community because Ambian is known to whack people out and they can live in a sleepwalking type state for hours after they got out of bed. Funny thing is not long after she warned me not to take it a friend told me about someone she worked with who got kicked out of nursing school because she totally flipped out during clinicals and scared everyone. I don't know the details other than she acted so bizarre, they sent her to be drug tested and kicked her out of the program and she later found out it was caused by Ambien.

I found when I am really down and nothing brings pleasure sometimes going out for fast food helps. So as one last ditch effort go to Sonic... they're open till midnight too.