Emotion regulation through chemical means

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I've put this in the health section because the approach I'm taking are emotions in terms of body and health. I'd like to understand the exact mechanism of emotions. What are they? What part of the body or physiology governs them, and why do I feel emotions throughout my entire body?

When someone is depressed they're often prescribed an anti-depressant. A selective seratonin reuptake inhibitor which will lift mood. Neuroleptics apparently dull mood, with the added side effect of sedation and fogginess.

I have too much emotion, to the point it interferes with my life and is unmanageable. I'd like to chemically limit them or remove them so that I can actually function well, without fogginess. I'm not running from whatever problem and looking for a quick fix anymore than someone who uses insulin to regulate blood sugar.

Honestly, it's good to have emotions. When you stop feeling sad when things should logically make you sad, that means your brain is basically running in crisis mode, similar to the way you can't like, cry if you're in the military or in prison or something. I have experience of being in a state like this, where I had no emotions. So if that's the state you desire, once things get really terrible enough in your life, it'll happen naturally. Anyway....

What I'd recommend for your emotions, just to help in general is get plenty of sleep, like 9-10 hours, even if you're an adult. It'll help loads. Other than that, my only strategy is to take caffeine when I feel negative emotions, as it makes me function better. What caffeine does, is it triggers your adrenal glands to make adrenaline. I don't know if this is a good strategy, but for me, it does what I want, makes me work on things. I don't think this is a good strategy, needing pots of coffee everyday to function, but it is cheap, no prescriptions, etc. For me, I feel it helps my brain multitask better. For me, ideally, I'd like to be able to get away from everyone else and live a nice peaceful life in like, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, etc away from my family and everyone else who gives me so much grief. But, if I can't do that, I'm thinking I'll move on from caffeine to prescription amphetamines, like Ritalin, Adderall, etc. This is sorta the "last ditch" strategy. Anyway, neither of these are really "good" solutions, they're short term bandaids.

But yeah, stimulants basically can act like anti-depressants if you're the right kind of person, with the added benefit of making your mind super powered. But long term, I don't think it's a good solution. For me, I'm diagnosed NVLD, nonverbal learning disorder, which is a right brain deficiency, so my verbal IQ is like 130, but my nonverbal is like 80. I have problems multitasking and stuff like that, as I have to verbally think out almost everything. For me, I probably could get those amphetamine medications without saying I have ADHD, but I really wanna hold off and see if things get better in my life, as it feels like I'm stopping to a low level. But at the same time, caffeine at really high doses like I take sometimes can basically cause psychosis, I remember taking so much one night I had lucid dreams and felt slightly wired waking up in the morning (1 gram of caffeine in 4 hours.)

One thing I recommend is ginseng, too, ginseng is good stuff, better than caffeine in some ways. Ginsenosides in ginseng are actually sort of medically similar to steroids, so there's that going for it. I've really found Chinese medicine type stuff very helpful to incorporate. Some doesn't work, obviously, but usually you don't loose too much money if it doesn't, and if you find stuff that does work, it's usually cheap and pretty awesome. Obviously, you gotta do your own research on that stuff, but yeah.

Anyway, it's what I do, I don't think it's a good idea, but it's my strategy. Really, you're best off trying to get the most amount of sleep you can, and making your life as peaceful as possible, and only have caffeine in "normal" amounts. Exercise and diet have profound effects on your mental health. If your diet sucks, and is full of processed food and stuff like that, change it and you'll almost instantly feel better. Exercise too, exercise is awesome. For me, though, I know how I feel with exercise and diet, and it becomes another problem I have to juggle, as I can detect a difference if I don't do them, so I have to fight to do them in my "routine" and usually it doesn't fit with other people's routines. So that's something I have to learn to compensate for.

But ideally, you should try to make your life just as peaceful as possible so you don't need to jack yourself up with all kinds of stimulants and stuff. Try doing things like hiking and stuff, too. I find hiking greatly calming.

I'll try exercise, changing my diet, ginseng and such first. I'm on anti-depressants, a stimulant, and seroquel, and my emotions are still like those of an animal--overpowered. It actually interferes with my well being and function. Not just one emotion, like sadness, but all of them. A break from them would provide the mental clarity I need to function properly. Why has no one created the anti-emotion pill?

Drugs such as Diazepam (Valium) will reduce emotions, it is not suitable for long term usage.

Some antidepressants claim to reduce anxiety (although they may also have it as a side effect!). A change of antidepressant/ adjustment of dosage may help.

Avoid taking psychoactive substances when there are simpler alternatives. Every time you consciously feel a reduction in emotion, do something subtle, which can be as simple as lightly pinching the other thumb. After a short amount of time (assuming this was done frequently enough), there should be some association between the action you choose and the effect you want. At that point, perform the action when you want the effect. Although this may be more of a placebo than actual training, it is much safer for the long-term health of your neural circuits and requires very little energy.