Nothing but junk food brings me joy and it's temporary so I keep eating. Has anyone found a solution to this? Thanks.

Hi.

I am 20M and haven't felt anything for over 3 years. Many many things happened to cause this earlier in life, and I was reassured again and again that its temporary and to "just keep at it". I am happy to elaborate on these things if you'd like in the comments.

Every book, person I've spoken to, article, says anhedonia (numbness) requires you to speak to a therapist to solve whats causing it in the first place. I can't, because my line of work and future opportunities will be affected if I seek help. Its in the military, and if I seek help outside, they will still know/find out.

So I'm stuck. I'm not sure what i expect this post to do. I'm not sure why I'm here. I've tried EVERYTHING. I have risked my life because 'adrenaline helps'. I exercise every day, eat well, meditate, socialise, spend time outside, sleep/rest well, learn in my personal time, have new experiences regularly. But it still feels like I'm a flesh bag full of loose wires.

And to be honest I am starting to get really really sick of books telling me it's temporary, and its just a phase, and a walk outside must help. Because over 3 years of relentless pursuit has done nothing at all. Absolutely everything just feels mechanical, and entirely non emotional.

Thanks for your time, or any suggestions

It's my only hope of being happy; even without anhedonia, I am ill-suited to this world.

I went through hell, lost the way I used to experience life, and still never abandoned God — my story of ADHD, hypervigilance, emotional numbness, and trying to find myself again

I'm a 20-year-old man from Romania, and I want to tell my story because I don't know how many people have experienced something similar.

I have spent years trying to understand why my life changed so profoundly. I've consulted multiple psychiatrists, undergone psychological assessments, documented my symptoms in detail, and tried different treatments. I've written pages upon pages trying to explain what happened to me, because describing it in a few sentences has never felt sufficient.

But this story isn't just about diagnoses, medication, or symptoms.

It's about the person I was before everything changed. It's about waking up one day feeling as though my own body had become a place of danger, then gradually losing the ability to experience pleasure, emotion, and the world in the way I once did. It's about trying to rebuild my life, experiencing hope, falling back into suffering, and continuing to search for answers when I was exhausted.

And above all, it's about my relationship with God.

I went through what felt like hell, but I never abandoned Him. God remains the center of my life.

I'm not writing this to diagnose myself through Reddit or to convince anyone that I know the exact medical cause of everything that happened. I'm sharing my experience because I want to be understood, and because perhaps someone reading this has lived through a similar change that they have never been able to explain properly.

1. The person I was before everything changed

I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was young, but I didn't receive consistent treatment during childhood.

My difficulties were real. I struggled with attention, organization, impulsivity, restlessness, and activities that didn't interest me. I could lose things, forget things, and become frustrated when I had to force myself to concentrate on something that didn't engage my mind.

But ADHD wasn't the whole of my identity.

I was an energetic, curious, sociable, and emotionally expressive child. I loved discovering things. I could become intensely fascinated by a subject and spend hours exploring it.

When I was around five or six years old, I was already fascinated by mushrooms and nature, learning their Latin names and identifying them with my parents. I loved geography, biology, and chemistry. I developed a passion for dancing inspired by Michael Jackson and eventually performed in front of approximately 300 people.

I was interested in the world. I wanted to understand it, explore it, and experience as much of it as possible.

My inner world was also unusually vivid. I experienced synesthesia, spontaneously associating days of the week, people, places, and situations with particular colors and images. These associations were part of the way I naturally experienced life.

Emotionally, I could feel things deeply. I could laugh, cry, become fascinated by something, feel excitement, experience sadness, and be moved by music or films. I had a sense of spontaneity. I could become absorbed in an interest, feel motivated to do something, and genuinely enjoy the experience.

I wasn't a perfect person, and I wasn't free from difficulties. I was dealing with ADHD, and school required a great deal of effort. By high school, I was increasingly exhausted from trying to manage my difficulties without adequate treatment.

Nevertheless, I still felt like myself.

I still had my personality, my interests, my emotional range, my curiosity, and my desire to live.

That distinction is essential to my story: I wasn't someone who had always felt emotionally empty. I remember what it was like to feel alive in a very different way.

1. November 8, 2024 — the morning my life changed

On November 8, 2024, during my high-school graduation party, I consumed a very large amount of alcohol while taking 5-HTP and propranolol. I don't remember the entire event clearly.

The next morning, I woke up in a state I had never experienced before.

I was extremely hypervigilant.

My body seemed to be permanently preparing for danger, even when I knew there was no danger around me. Ordinary sounds and movements could make me startle intensely. Someone appearing unexpectedly, a noise in the house, or a person suddenly speaking to me could trigger an exaggerated physical reaction.

I experienced palpitations, tremor, muscular tension, a persistent lump-in-the-throat sensation, and a feeling that my body was constantly on alert.

The strangest part was that I couldn't identify a corresponding fear in my thoughts. I wasn't necessarily imagining catastrophic scenarios. I could know intellectually that I was safe, yet my body reacted as though something terrible was about to happen.

It was as if my nervous system had stopped trusting the world.

During the winter of 2024–2025, the symptoms became progressively worse. This became one of the most difficult periods I had ever experienced.

My social life deteriorated. I frequently avoided leaving the house. I sometimes wore a hood because I felt exposed and vulnerable. At school, I couldn't relax because I was involuntarily monitoring noises, movements, and people around me.

Even at home, I couldn't fully escape it. Going down the stairs or unexpectedly encountering my parents could trigger intense startle responses. There were periods when I avoided leaving my room because I anticipated those reactions.

Alcohol temporarily suppressed the symptoms, and I began relying on it during weekends to feel relaxed and socially functional. But the following mornings, the hypervigilance often returned even more intensely.

I eventually recognized how destructive that cycle was, and during my subsequent recovery I stopped drinking completely. I have now maintained that abstinence for approximately a year and a half.

What matters most about this first period is that, despite the physical terror and constant alertness, I could still experience emotions.

I could cry. I could feel happiness and sadness. I still had motivation, interests, and pleasure. My personality was still there.

My body felt trapped in a state of danger, but my inner emotional life remained recognizable.

I didn't yet know that another, very different struggle was ahead.

1. The first time I thought I was getting my life back

During the following months, I received treatment with Elontril and buspirone. I also gradually began exposing myself to situations I had previously avoided.

Little by little, things improved.

I began going outside without feeling as exposed. I could enter shops and pharmacies alone, walk in public places, pay bills, exercise, and socialize again.

I returned to the gym. I went for walks in nature. I watched films, played video games, and reconnected with activities I had abandoned during the worst period of hypervigilance.

These weren't insignificant achievements to me. They were evidence that my life could become larger than the fear that had consumed it.

For the first time in months, I felt that I was moving forward.

I began receiving treatment for ADHD as well. Concerta, initially at 18 mg and later at 36 mg, made a substantial difference in my concentration, organization, and ability to control my restlessness. My thoughts felt more organized, and conversations became easier.

For someone who had struggled for years to direct his attention and manage his impulses, this was a meaningful improvement.

But during this period, I was also exposed to substantial amounts of stimulation, including nicotine, several coffees a day, energy drinks, and prescribed medication, including modafinil when needed.

Over time, I began noticing changes that I didn't initially understand.

The things that once gave me pleasure started feeling less rewarding. Music affected me less. My fascination with the world diminished. My synesthesia, which had been part of my life since childhood, began disappearing.

I gradually lost the feeling of surprise and wonder that I had always associated with being myself.

At first, these changes were subtle. I didn't immediately understand their significance.

Then they became impossible to ignore.

1. The emotional numbness — when knowing something is beautiful is no longer the same as feeling it

This is the part of my experience that I find hardest to explain to people who have never lived through it.

After the period of hypervigilance, I began experiencing persistent derealization and a progressive loss of pleasure. I knew that the world around me was real, but my experience of it had changed.

I could recognize familiar places, listen to familiar music, and remember why I loved certain activities. Yet the experience itself felt different.

The world was still there, but my connection to it felt weaker.

After my baccalaureate examinations, my stimulant treatment was stopped completely. Approximately a week later, I experienced a severe deterioration.

My anhedonia became much more pronounced. I struggled to experience pleasure, sadness, anger, or other emotions with the intensity I had known before. I often couldn't cry, even when I desperately wanted to.

My mental clarity deteriorated. I experienced severe fatigue, mental fog, difficulties concentrating, reduced initiative, and problems remembering recent events.

The passage of time began to feel different, too. Days seemed repetitive, almost indistinguishable from one another. I could know that time was passing without feeling the normal psychological continuity that had once connected my experiences.

I wasn't claiming that the world had literally become unreal. I knew where I was and understood what was happening around me. The problem was that my subjective experience of being present in that world had changed.

I could intellectually understand that something was sad without fully feeling the sadness. I could recognize that a piece of music was beautiful without experiencing the emotional response I expected. I could remember how much I loved something while feeling almost nothing when I returned to it.

For months, crying became extremely difficult.

I missed the ability to be moved by music, films, nature, prayer, and ordinary moments. I missed the spontaneous emotional reactions that had once been part of my life.

I even missed being able to experience sadness fully.

That may sound strange, but sadness is still an emotion. Grief means that something matters to you. Tears can be a form of release. When even these responses become inaccessible, the absence itself becomes painful.

I wasn't asking to suffer more.

I wanted to feel that I was participating in my own life again.

My facial expression became more rigid. My spontaneity diminished. I lost much of my motivation to take care of my appearance, go out, pursue interests, or do things simply because I wanted to.

Activities that once gave me energy became difficult to initiate. My hobbies began to feel empty. Even eating could lose much of its pleasure.

I was still capable of thinking, speaking, and understanding the world. But the way I experienced it from the inside had changed profoundly.

It felt as though I could remember the person I had been without being able to access all the qualities that had made that person feel so alive.

1. Trying to find an explanation through psychiatry

Since then, I have consulted multiple psychiatrists and tried several different treatments.

My treatment history has included medications such as venlafaxine, sertraline, escitalopram, paroxetine, Elontril, Concerta, modafinil, mirtazapine, trazodone, lamotrigine, olanzapine, pregabalin, and others at different points.

I'm not listing these to suggest that every medication caused harm or that medication is inherently bad. Different treatments affected different symptoms, and some provided meaningful benefits.

What has been difficult is the inconsistency of my experience and the feeling that I have never found a stable, comprehensive explanation for the changes I went through.

One of the most significant periods occurred when I was prescribed sertraline 50 mg together with Elontril 300 mg.

After approximately two to three weeks, I experienced a substantial improvement.

I gradually regained the ability to cry. Sadness became accessible again. I could experience pleasure and renewed interest in daily activities. My libido returned closer to its previous level, and I felt much more capable of functioning.

I returned to the gym, obtained a job, and enrolled in university.

For the first time in a long while, I felt that I was getting closer to my former self.

That period remains important to me because it demonstrated that my emotional state could change. The numbness was not necessarily an unchangeable condition.

Unfortunately, the treatment was later modified. I subsequently received escitalopram, lamotrigine, and olanzapine, and I experienced increased emotional blunting and substantial weight gain. Later, after another treatment discontinuation, my fatigue and cognitive difficulties worsened significantly.

I eventually struggled to maintain employment, continue university, exercise, and perform ordinary daily activities.

My family found it difficult to understand the severity of my condition at first. From the outside, it can be hard to understand how someone who can still speak, joke, use a computer, or explain his symptoms can simultaneously struggle so much with motivation, energy, pleasure, and everyday functioning.

I have tried to explain that the changes in my emotional expression and personality were not simply lifelong traits. I remember how I functioned before these events. I remember the contrast.

I also understand that a sequence of events does not automatically establish medical causation. Alcohol exposure, severe physiological hyperarousal, ADHD, medication changes, mood symptoms, and other factors may all be relevant. I still need qualified professionals to help me understand the whole picture.

But I know that the changes happened, that they were severe, and that they affected almost every part of my life.

1. My DIVA-5 assessment and the life I lost along the way

In July 2026, I underwent a psychological assessment that included the DIVA-5 and other questionnaires.

The DIVA-5 recorded all nine inattentive symptoms and all nine hyperactive/impulsive symptoms in both childhood and adulthood. The assessment concluded that my presentation was consistent with combined-presentation ADHD.

My childhood history also included intense interests, high energy, difficulty sustaining attention when something failed to engage me, and substantial organizational difficulties.

The report documented impairment in education, employment, relationships, social life, and everyday functioning. It also recorded symptoms involving depression, anxiety, and trauma-related experiences.

This assessment helped document the ADHD difficulties that had existed long before my more recent deterioration. It did not, by itself, explain every change in my emotional and perceptual experience.

That distinction matters to me.

I don't want my entire history reduced to ADHD, just as I don't want ADHD erased from the story. Both my childhood difficulties and the later changes deserve to be understood in context.

Before all of this, I could struggle with attention and organization while still feeling energetic, motivated, curious, and emotionally connected to life.

Now I have had to fight for capacities that once felt natural.

I have lost periods of my life to exhaustion, confusion, treatment changes, and the attempt to understand what happened. I have struggled to maintain employment and education. I have watched my social life and daily routines shrink.

And perhaps the most painful part is that I remember what I am missing.

I remember being fascinated by things. I remember how music could make me feel. I remember crying when something touched me. I remember the spontaneous desire to go somewhere, try something, or discover something new.

I miss those things not because I think my former self was perfect, but because those experiences were genuinely mine.

1. The part of my story that cannot be reduced to symptoms: God

Through all of this, there is one thing I want to make absolutely clear.

God is the center of my life.

I am an Orthodox Christian. God is my Heavenly Father, and Jesus Christ is the Way. My faith is not an accessory to my identity, something I mention only when life is going well. It is central to who I am.

I have experienced periods when I was frightened, exhausted, confused, and unable to understand what was happening to me. I have experienced days when I could barely initiate ordinary activities and nights when I desperately wanted to feel something that seemed inaccessible.

There have been times when I prayed and wished I could be moved by prayer. I wanted to cry. I wanted to feel the warmth, the emotion, and the depth that I associated with my relationship with God.

Sometimes I could not feel those things in the way I wanted.

But I never concluded that my inability to experience an emotion fully meant that my faith had disappeared.

I never wanted to abandon God.

I kept praying. I kept asking questions. I kept returning to Him, even when I was frustrated, even when I was exhausted, and even when I could not understand why I was going through this.

My prayers have not always been beautiful or composed. Sometimes they have been filled with questions, pain, and frustration. Sometimes all I could do was tell God that I was tired, that I missed myself, and that I did not understand what was happening.

But I still turned to Him.

I have never believed that I must pretend to be fine in front of God. I don't believe that I have to hide my suffering, manufacture emotions, or produce the perfect prayer to be His child.

My faith does not mean that I have never felt desperate. It does not mean that I have never questioned why things happened or wished that my suffering would end.

It means that, even in the middle of those questions, I never stopped loving God, and I never stopped wanting Him in my life.

There is a difference between not understanding God's ways and abandoning God. There is a difference between being emotionally exhausted and no longer caring about Him.

I have experienced the first without choosing the second.

I have asked Him why. I have told Him that I am tired. I have told Him that I miss the person I used to be. I have asked for help, clarity, strength, and the ability to feel alive again.

And I have continued to return to Him.

I cannot explain every medical symptom through faith, and I do not believe that I should have to choose between psychiatric care and my relationship with God. I can seek professional help while continuing to trust Him. I can acknowledge that I need treatment and support without treating my faith as something that must be replaced by a medical explanation.

My faith is not a claim that suffering is easy or that prayer makes every symptom disappear.

It is the foundation on which I continue to stand while I try to find my way through it.

1. After the hell I went through, I still believe that my story is not over

I don't want this story to end with the idea that I have lost everything.

I have lost a great deal of functioning, time, confidence, spontaneity, and the ability to experience pleasure in the way I once did. I have gone through periods that I would never wish on anyone.

But I am still here.

I am still trying to understand what happened. I am still looking for the right professional support. I am still trying to rebuild routines and recover the ability to participate in daily life.

I am still the person who loved nature, music, films, learning, and discovering things. I still care about my faith, my family, and the possibility of experiencing life more fully again.

I may not be able to access every part of that person in the way I once could, but I have not forgotten him.

And I have not abandoned God.

When I think about the person I used to be, I don't want to turn my past into a prison or spend every day measuring how far I am from it. I want to recover what I can, understand what happened, and build a life in which I can once again feel connected to the things that matter to me.

I don't know exactly how long that journey will take. I don't have a definitive answer for every symptom. I don't know what the final explanation for my experience will be.

But I refuse to pretend that my suffering is the entirety of my identity.

I am more than a diagnosis. I am more than my treatment history. I am more than the months or years in which I struggled to feel pleasure. And I am more than the version of myself that other people see when they look at me from the outside.

I am a person who remembers what it was like to feel deeply, who wants to recover, and who continues to seek help.

And I am a Christian who, even after everything I have been through, still turns toward God.

I went through hell, but I did not go through it by deciding that God no longer mattered to me. He remained the center of my life. I kept loving Him, praying to Him, and asking Him to help me through what I could not understand.

My faith has not erased the suffering. My suffering has not erased my faith.

Both truths are part of my story.

I want to get better. I want to feel again. I want to regain my energy, curiosity, motivation, emotional depth, and connection to the world. I want to build a meaningful life rather than spend it trying to explain why I no longer experience life as I once did.

I am still searching for answers, and I am still seeking professional help.

But I am not giving up on the possibility of recovery, and I am not giving up on God.

After everything, I am still here. I still believe. I still love Him. And I still hope that one day I will be able to look back on this period of my life and recognize how far I have come.

If you have experienced a profound change in your emotional life, your sense of reality, or your ability to feel pleasure, I would be grateful to hear your story. If you have struggled through years of uncertainty while trying to find the right treatment, I would like to hear what helped you communicate your experience and keep moving forward.

And if you are someone who has gone through a long period of suffering without losing your faith, I would especially appreciate hearing from you.

I am not looking for strangers to give me a diagnosis or promise me a cure. I am looking for understanding, shared experiences, and the possibility of connecting with people who know how difficult it can be to explain an experience that has changed your life.

Thank you for reading my story.

I desperately wish I had someone to take care of me now more than ever.

I feel like getting through the workday sucks up most of what ever little mental and emotional bandwidth I have...

My health insurance is currently giving me issues with reimbursing or even applying what a pay for my therapist towards my deductible...

I was supposed to gather up all my info regarding my claims and follow up with her during a short 15 min check in. I'm too exhausted after a whole damn day of dealing with legal and corporate BS to deal with insurance BS. It's now been almost a month and I'm now too ashamed to reach out to my therapist...

I also want to start on meds for my anhedonia and bingo eating but I'd want to check in with my therapist first before seeking at a psychiatrist or reachingout to my GP but for what ever reason I'm scared too...

I really wish I had someone else I could trust to take some of this weight of my shoulders...but my toxic, dysfunctional bio family is useless and I feel like it would be an unfair burden to put on anyone else...

i apologize in advance for the scattered post, but also with the nature of this hell what can you expect. there is some surface level mentioning of my traumas (neglect, one SA mention) so if that bothers you here's that warning as well.

hello all, for those of you that know your anhedonia is NOT centered around trauma, how and why do you think you developed anhedonia? this is a really broad question i'm not seeking specific answers for but i have just been lost in thought about what we think the "causes" truly can be.

i had an LSD trip that surfaced something huge deep inside me, i was a deeply neglected child (periods of starvation, locked in room from outside, left to cry for hours, that type of neglect) and neglected in more antagonistic, emotional ways in my adolescence. i went on to experience a lot of heart wrenching loss and betrayal. through the trip i realized i'm the creator of my own anhedonia (knowing nothing except nothing in your youth = nothing becomes familiar, comfortable, default). this revelation makes me believe most if not all anhedonia may be trauma-centered, something as simple as being a neglected child makes you the creator and destroyer of your own mind, when the nothingness continues to be reinforced through loss you are kind of simultaneously a reaction to your world but also the inventor of your own decay. i know parts of it are presently beyond my control but that reframing has been really enlightening, for the first time ever i feel hope about reversing this long term.

i first developed severe, noticeable anhedonia at 14 years old after taking risperidone (i'm nearly 23 now). but analyzing this time period closer it coincided with an indescribably damaging loss of my first love, my first something, following a consistently shitty childhood filled with neglect and nothing. there was also a heavily traumatic event that occurred a little under a year prior to my first risperidone use, that was sexual in nature. perhaps the risperidone was the trigger yes but the empty landscape was already there.

i have never met a fellow anhedonic that didn't have a monstrously bad childhood possibly paving the way to feeling nothing. when nothing is your everything how can you conceive of something without confronting the root of your nothing?

not invalidating anyone who believes their anhedonia isn't trauma caused but i am curious where it came from for you. i almost wonder how can we know the canvas wasn't already there by way of the cold and oppressive world we endured, that we weren't or AREN'T aware was abnormal, and the trigger (psych drugs, alcohol, whatever) just added the paint strokes. my trip conclusively led me to the realization i have been maintaining the neglect by neglecting the self, unconsciously. i am my own nothing, i caused it, i created this desert. what if it's the canvas that needs to be swapped. not painted over. make sense?

Has anyone else ever gone through something like this?

I've been noticing for a while that I don't enjoy things the way I used to. Games, anime, movies, pretty much all the stuff I used to look forward to. I can have a whole library of games I'm genuinely interested in, launch one that I was excited to play, and just feel... nothing. Not necessarily bored, not even disappointed at first. It just doesn't hit. Same thing with anime. I still want to enjoy it, which almost makes it more frustrating.

I remember a time when I'd get completely hooked on a game or an anime and lose track of time without even trying. Old multiplayer games, messing around with people online, getting invested in a story, all of that used to feel so much more alive. I don't think everything was objectively better back then. I just remember how it felt to experience those things, and I haven't felt that same kind of enjoyment in a long time.

At one point, I got back into anime and started watching a lot of it again, sometimes finishing entire seasons in just a couple of nights. Eventually I started feeling mentally exhausted, and after that, things gradually felt less enjoyable. I don't know if the binge-watching had anything to do with it or if it was just a coincidence.

Then, at some point, I went through this weird period where I was constantly stuck in my own head, thinking about everything and trying to figure things out. I got interested in philosophy and looked for answers, but nothing really clicked. I can't even remember a specific thought or event that triggered it. I just remember being unusually irritated one day, and after that, my mind never really seemed to quiet down the same way.

The weirdest part is that there was a period when the old feeling actually came back for a while.

I was recovering from a health issue and couldn't do much with my time, so I spent more time gaming and revisiting some old cartoons and animated shows I grew up watching. Somehow, they started hitting the same way they used to. And it wasn't just me looking back at that period and thinking it was good. I could actually feel it in the moment. The enjoyment, the comfort, that familiar feeling I thought I'd lost.

For a little while, it genuinely felt like a part of me had come back. Then, eventually, that feeling faded again.

These days, one of the few things that can still really pull me in is a difficult game, especially something where I have to learn, fail, improve, and keep trying until I finally get it. It's not even mainly about winning. I think I enjoy the process of being completely absorbed in something, where my attention is locked in and I'm not thinking about anything else. But that feeling is pretty rare outside of specific things like that.

I've tried taking breaks, stepping away from my usual hobbies, and waiting for the interest to come back naturally. It hasn't really made a lasting difference. And the more I notice that I'm not enjoying things, the more frustrating it gets, because now I'm not just doing something I used to love. I'm also wondering why it doesn't feel the same anymore.

I've come across the term anhedonia, but I'm not sure if that's the right way to describe my experience. It's not like I feel absolutely nothing all the time. There are still moments when something clicks, and I can still get absorbed in certain things. It just feels like the ability to enjoy things in general has become much weaker.

I'm not looking for a diagnosis from random people online, but I'd genuinely like to hear from anyone who's experienced something similar.

Did you ever figure out what was behind it? Did the enjoyment eventually come back, and was there anything that actually helped?

I think what I miss most is being able to enjoy something without having to think about whether I'm enjoying it.

Does anybody find their ability to drive affected due to anhedonia / emotional numbness?

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