Anhedonia
Blue Belt
Join Date: Jul 2015
Location: Soberville, USA
Posts: 4,174
I don't know how anyone but me feels, but I used to need booze to have fun.
No booze, no fun.
Nowadays I have fun all the time.
My dopamine adrenalin and endorphin production have returned to levels that let me get high on life.
Grappling started the ball rolling, but now I get it from exercise, sr, etc.
Maybe try some exciting activity like jumping off a high dive at the pool, watching a scary movie, or eating spicy food. All of these things trigger internal opiates.
Thanks.
No booze, no fun.
Nowadays I have fun all the time.
My dopamine adrenalin and endorphin production have returned to levels that let me get high on life.
Grappling started the ball rolling, but now I get it from exercise, sr, etc.
Maybe try some exciting activity like jumping off a high dive at the pool, watching a scary movie, or eating spicy food. All of these things trigger internal opiates.
Thanks.
Member
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: NSW - Australia
Posts: 14,584
What a co-incidence.
I was just thinking about my own adhedonia, and there was your post at the top of the page TWTOM.
Yes, I do, and it's horrible as HeadEast says. I'm trying without much success to find motivation but it is very hard. Hope it lifts soon.
Hope so for you too.
I'll try to do something in the garden today.
I was just thinking about my own adhedonia, and there was your post at the top of the page TWTOM.
Yes, I do, and it's horrible as HeadEast says. I'm trying without much success to find motivation but it is very hard. Hope it lifts soon.
Hope so for you too.
I'll try to do something in the garden today.
p***enger
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: NYC
Posts: 19,039
Hi ThatWas&c,
You might use the advanced search option on SR to see what others have posted on anhedonia. A couple of years ago, there was some really smart writing on the topic in the forums.
Good luck!
You might use the advanced search option on SR to see what others have posted on anhedonia. A couple of years ago, there was some really smart writing on the topic in the forums.
Good luck!
Member
Join Date: Oct 2019
Posts: 259
I developed anhedonia as my binge drinking got worse. For the last 2 years of drinking I would often go from a couple of weeks to a couple of months and not feel any kind of happiness or laugh much until I started drinking then everything was euphoric for a little while before I inevitably went off the rails. At the time I didn't know why this was but when i got into IOP and recovery I ended up reading a lot about how alcohol is the source of anhedonia for many people, including me. Now I feel normal and get good feelings and laughter while being sober.
Giving up is NOT an option.
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Western Wisconsin
Posts: 7,808
Yes, I did go through that for about the first year of sobriety. To varying degrees. I would say "my happy is broken." But so was my sad and angry and everything else. I would have days where all I could do was cry, but then I'd pull out of that and everything was just dull. But I was in IOP, so I knew intellectually that it was a science thing. My dopamine receptors were messed up, and needed time to heal. So I persisted, and now I feel more. I still don't know if I'm "normal," (what the heck is that anyway?) but I sure do feel better.
Member
Join Date: Jul 2019
Posts: 710
Do you have specific examples? What activities/moments you are unable to enjoy that others do?
You of course know alcohol addiction causes this problem. Not only does alcohol become not enjoyable, it takes away the joy from everything else. I have read you enough to be sure you know all this better than most, and certainly me.
I do not know how long you have been sober either. I am 7 months down the road. For the first 3 months, I really struggle to feel any 'benefit' from non drinking. I had to change my mindset. I was expecting some kind of euphoria/perfect life around the corner. I was exhausted, I have put on weight, no pink clouds anywhere.
The benefit is on the repairing. I am healing. I am not feeling great. What I am not feeling is the absolute misery I was living in. The spiraling depression, the panic attacks, palpitations, fear, anxiety... It was very very bad despite my constant denial. I became much better from day one but I could not see it, because I was expecting something ridiculous.
I am not saying this is happening to you. But I know you know the science and I guess you are looking for individual experiences. I have started feeling pleasure around the 6 month mark. I still struggle to get engaged. It takes a lot to show interest in going out for a show for instance, but then I do truly enjoy it (instead of spending 90% of the time finding ways of getting drunk or hiding I am drunk or drinking).
So, what is it you are not enjoying?
You of course know alcohol addiction causes this problem. Not only does alcohol become not enjoyable, it takes away the joy from everything else. I have read you enough to be sure you know all this better than most, and certainly me.
I do not know how long you have been sober either. I am 7 months down the road. For the first 3 months, I really struggle to feel any 'benefit' from non drinking. I had to change my mindset. I was expecting some kind of euphoria/perfect life around the corner. I was exhausted, I have put on weight, no pink clouds anywhere.
The benefit is on the repairing. I am healing. I am not feeling great. What I am not feeling is the absolute misery I was living in. The spiraling depression, the panic attacks, palpitations, fear, anxiety... It was very very bad despite my constant denial. I became much better from day one but I could not see it, because I was expecting something ridiculous.
I am not saying this is happening to you. But I know you know the science and I guess you are looking for individual experiences. I have started feeling pleasure around the 6 month mark. I still struggle to get engaged. It takes a lot to show interest in going out for a show for instance, but then I do truly enjoy it (instead of spending 90% of the time finding ways of getting drunk or hiding I am drunk or drinking).
So, what is it you are not enjoying?
Member
Join Date: Oct 2018
Posts: 1,254
I hadn't heard of this term, so had to look it up but this is definitely a feeling i have, could be linked to my bipolar, thats something im coming to terms with too, but yes the lack of any enjoyment or happiness in life is so hard
Member
Join Date: Jul 2019
Posts: 710
TWOM, I have been thinking of you... I hope this is not the start of your relapse. I have read you on your depression, and how you felt you were still depressed despite a longish time sober (11 months?).
So perhaps you are trying to give yourself good excuses to start again. Since life makes no sense anyway, since you are depressed anyway, blah, blah, blah...
I can only tell you that I read much more than I write. I have read your posts and it is VERY obvious that you are much better when not drinking. By far. Try to read your own posts. Do not start rationalising your relapse. That place where you go while drinking is horribly dark and ugly.
So perhaps you are trying to give yourself good excuses to start again. Since life makes no sense anyway, since you are depressed anyway, blah, blah, blah...
I can only tell you that I read much more than I write. I have read your posts and it is VERY obvious that you are much better when not drinking. By far. Try to read your own posts. Do not start rationalising your relapse. That place where you go while drinking is horribly dark and ugly.
Member
Join Date: Oct 2012
Posts: 5,937
Sometimes. I'm an existentialist so maybe it just comes with the territory. Sarte said the two states of man were boredom and terror, and sometimes I think he had a point. We often rush through our days, doing all the things we're required to do, expected to do, with little time to cultivate any interests of our own. Then when we have time we learn we really haven't developed ourselves adequately. It's easy for ennui to settle in, and I think anhedonia is something everyone grapples with occasionally.
Guest
Join Date: Jan 2018
Posts: 675
It's really taken a while for my brain chemistry to even out and to find "normal" levels of enjoyment from things again.. But it has improved drastically and I think is still improving at over 2 years. The closest thing I feel now to how I used to feel anticipating drinking/"partying" is the endorphins I get from exercise. It might seem like a lame replacement but I assure you it's not.. and the "high" from it is new, initially I had to just force myself despite hating every minute of it. Then slowly ease my way further into it with yoga. So I don't mean to say we can simply replace one activity/addiction with the next, just that it's made me realize the "positive/thrilling" way I used to feel about drinking doesn't really have anything to do with drinking at all. There are so many other avenues to find it.
There are dues to pay in the beginning but overall I've been starting to fully feel and engage in life again just without the ball and chain of alcohol, and there's no price I could put on that.. it's definitely worth sticking it out.
There are dues to pay in the beginning but overall I've been starting to fully feel and engage in life again just without the ball and chain of alcohol, and there's no price I could put on that.. it's definitely worth sticking it out.
Member
Join Date: Sep 2016
Location: Lakeside, Arizona
Posts: 1,138
no so much anhedonia (but nothing was pleasurable) that but complete apathy where I couldn't really feel anything, for me it seemed like a PAWS effect as your brain chemistry has to rebalance due to the lack of alcohol. For the first six months of sobriety I would go between being unable to think through my brain fog, unable to really care about any thing, and then just get set off and agitated about nothing.
It was not a pleasant ride but things got better with time and the waves of these symptoms slowly dissipated. After around 13 months off the booze I started thinking clearly again and it was the most refreshing thing.
It was not a pleasant ride but things got better with time and the waves of these symptoms slowly dissipated. After around 13 months off the booze I started thinking clearly again and it was the most refreshing thing.
Member
Join Date: Jan 2020
Posts: 546
It was the experiencing of anhedonia that helped me to nip my dalliance with meth (smoking ice) in the bud. (My meth use was very intermittent over a period of about two years, ending last summer.) For me, the dopamine rush of a meth high was so intense that the aftermath, days and weeks later, left me depleted. That feeling -- the feeling that something was missing -- was the anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure.
Luckily I noticed relatively early on with meth that the pattern of using and then missing-the-using could and would lead to a spiral of wanting and needing more of the stuff, not just for whatever fleeting pleasures were associated with the high, but to avoid the low that I was beginning to associate with the condition of absence-of-meth. So I stopped (not that quitting was nearly as simple as those three little words might imply).
Each of us is different, but in my experience I think the same pattern played out with my alcohol use but at a less intense level as to both the highs and the lows.
My alcohol use/abuse is/was of much much longer duration (50 years from age 17 to age 67 of high-functioning alcohol use), much of it at what is considered the "social drinking" level in our alcohol-tolerant society, but I also consistently overdrank on way too many occasions, and I am/was adept at masking the overuse so that for the most part it was only myself who knew the extent to which I abused alcohol and toughed it out through the hangovers and other consequences (social, emotional, financial).
Beginning when I was about 40 years old in the early 1990s I was diagnosed by a mental health provider with dysthymia, a long-lasting, low-level depression. I was eventually prescribed meds (SSRIs, the modern variants of Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and the like), which helped alleviate the symptoms.
But I kept drinking through all those years, and not admitting the extent of my use to my health care providers, so they didn't draw a direct line between my alcohol use and my mental condition.
At this writing I am just 53 days into my new sobriety from alcohol. So far, I have not been conscious of anhedonia in these weeks since 2 January 2020, because I think the long-term effects of continued alcohol use were finally debilitating me so much that my body and mind are still enjoying a post-drinking bounce. I am greatly enjoying where I am right now, but I am aware that as time goes by my mind-body may go through a period of experiencing the extended absence-of-alcohol as a version of that feeling that nothing seems to give joy or pleasure. If that happens, I hope to cope in ways other than returning to the bottle (or the meth pipe), in part by remembering that the fleeting euphoric moments are followed by extended negative consequences.
As others said here, I think the brain rewires itself to adapt to new circumstances. I expect that my own brain may take quite a bit longer than 53 days to adjust itself to the absence of the ethanol baths that it has been receiving steadily for a 50-year period. I am looking forward to the changes, one day at a time.
Luckily I noticed relatively early on with meth that the pattern of using and then missing-the-using could and would lead to a spiral of wanting and needing more of the stuff, not just for whatever fleeting pleasures were associated with the high, but to avoid the low that I was beginning to associate with the condition of absence-of-meth. So I stopped (not that quitting was nearly as simple as those three little words might imply).
Each of us is different, but in my experience I think the same pattern played out with my alcohol use but at a less intense level as to both the highs and the lows.
My alcohol use/abuse is/was of much much longer duration (50 years from age 17 to age 67 of high-functioning alcohol use), much of it at what is considered the "social drinking" level in our alcohol-tolerant society, but I also consistently overdrank on way too many occasions, and I am/was adept at masking the overuse so that for the most part it was only myself who knew the extent to which I abused alcohol and toughed it out through the hangovers and other consequences (social, emotional, financial).
Beginning when I was about 40 years old in the early 1990s I was diagnosed by a mental health provider with dysthymia, a long-lasting, low-level depression. I was eventually prescribed meds (SSRIs, the modern variants of Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and the like), which helped alleviate the symptoms.
But I kept drinking through all those years, and not admitting the extent of my use to my health care providers, so they didn't draw a direct line between my alcohol use and my mental condition.
At this writing I am just 53 days into my new sobriety from alcohol. So far, I have not been conscious of anhedonia in these weeks since 2 January 2020, because I think the long-term effects of continued alcohol use were finally debilitating me so much that my body and mind are still enjoying a post-drinking bounce. I am greatly enjoying where I am right now, but I am aware that as time goes by my mind-body may go through a period of experiencing the extended absence-of-alcohol as a version of that feeling that nothing seems to give joy or pleasure. If that happens, I hope to cope in ways other than returning to the bottle (or the meth pipe), in part by remembering that the fleeting euphoric moments are followed by extended negative consequences.
As others said here, I think the brain rewires itself to adapt to new circumstances. I expect that my own brain may take quite a bit longer than 53 days to adjust itself to the absence of the ethanol baths that it has been receiving steadily for a 50-year period. I am looking forward to the changes, one day at a time.
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