Talk:Anhedonia

Re emptiness & boredom
"emptiness is negligibly related to boredom, is closely related to feeling hopeless, pathologically lonely, and isolated, and is a robust predictor of depression and suicidal ideation (but not anxiety or suicide attempts). "

This is problematic.First of all the reference cited does not mention anhedonia. Second of all emptiness and boredom are different from anhedonia. Anhedonia is not related to either Borderline personality disorder or attention deficit disorder - It can be found in those conditionsBut it is neither a criterion nor frequent comorbidity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rberlow (talk • contribs) 19:41, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Re drugs
Isn't anhedonia considered one of the symptoms of opiate withdrawal? --FOo 21:18 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

no, it is not. it CAN occur but is NOT a criterion

And what about dissociation? 24.205.46.249 02:09, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Can anyone relate of give a clear example of a case where someone now suffers from Anhedonia from the long term use of Crystal Meth, Amphetimine or related drugs?

I have used such for long periods and am questionable as to whether I suffer from this disease as the use of the above drugs can blur lines of reality...both physical and mental.

Any takers?


 * It is not a disease per se, but a symptom. Talk to your physician or pdoc about this. There are ways to combat this problem that do not involve potential damage to the systems involved. Zuiram 03:14, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

there have been experiements with chimpanzies that after dosing them twice a day with mdma they experienced complete anhedonia and starved them selves to death


 * MDMA is not purely dopaminergic. The majority of the damage done by MDMA is to the serotonergic system. Without a reference, or even stating how long this effect took to develop, your statement cannot be used to improve the article. Also, most amphetamines, including MDMA, will suppress the user's apetite. Zuiram 03:14, 17 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes. You eventually use up your dopamine and everything gets screwed up. Being spiritual can help offset it. Life becomes a challenge and a chore. I wouldn’t recommend messing with your brain chemistry. But what do I know? 2601:2C1:C801:D3DC:54EF:D271:4A47:C5D2 (talk) 00:35, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

need to cite sources
There are none in this article. Especially the claim that addicts can have anhedonia for life, needs a source, research etc backing it up. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Merkinsmum (talk • contribs) 09:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC).

I will yank the suspicious statements on 20070301, unless sourced. Anhedonia is generally associated with a hypoactive dopaminergic system, whether it has been suppressed by SSRIs or neuroleptics, or desensitized. The mechanism of action of meth and cocaine in causing long-term anhedonia is different, and if I find the reference for that, I'll add it. Zuiram 03:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

It's back, without a source I'd suspect its anti-drug propaganda, especially with weezle words "sometimes said", current version says:

"Anhedonia is often experienced by drug addicts following withdrawal; in particular, stimulants like cocaine and amphetamines cause anhedonia and depression by depleting dopamine and other important neurotransmitters. Very long-term addicts are sometimes said to suffer a permanent physical breakdown of their pleasure pathways, leading to anhedonia on a permanent or semi-permanent basis due to the extended overworking of the neural pleasure pathways during active addiction, particularly as regards cocaine and methamphetamine. In this circumstance, activities still may be pleasurable, but can never be as pleasurable to people who have experienced the comparatively extreme pleasure of the drug experience. The result is apathy towards healthy routines by the addict."

I'm not going to edit it because I don't have the time or itnerest to get in an edit war but suggest someone else do it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.83.201.36 (talk) 15:22, 6 June 2009 (UTC) Hopefully people will get that it's un-sourced and comes across wrong. Was going to pull the whole paragraph (it's pure BS/speculation w/o a single reference, of course there aren't any to be used by whoever's re-posting it...gonna pull it anyways, but I'm sure it'll be back.

Romantic causes?
Has anhedonia been studied in relation to such things as, e.g., suicide as a result of failed romantic relationships?

If "feeling sad" and crying is a way to communicate emotional state, then anhedonia could be seen, in these cases, as the opposite of being in love and being loved (instead of feeling "sad" being the opposite), the same way that love and hate are the opposite of indifference. With the loss of the loved one, life could be seen as pointless and not worth living, and suicide is done not with any strong emotion, but because the subject simply does not care about their life anymore. 74.61.41.118 19:30, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Personal Experience with Anhedonia
I am a 34 year old schizophrenic who has anhedonia and is currently being treated for it with Wellbutrin, an antidepressant. I do not have depression, but I have anhedonia as a symptom of my schizophrenia. My doctor told me that it's possible that my anhedonia was worsened by an antipsychotic that I used in the past. I am currently on a different antipsychotic medicine.

Anhedonia has nothing directly to do with romance or lack of romance or love. It is lack or loss of feelings of pleasure/enjoyment/fun/satisfaction. This is exactly what I have experienced before being medicated with Wellbutrin and this is exactly what I still feel to some degree. Looking at artwork and women's bodies used to be pleasurable. Listening to good music used to be pleasurable. Talking with people used to be pleasurable. Now those things give me very very very very little pleasure. Even sex is not very pleasurable anymore for me. Anhedonia is also pronounced with respect to humour. Most jokes are no longer funny to me, and when I do laugh at something slightly funny, I don't have the accompanying good feeling that used to come from laughing. It is as if the laughing is merely a reflex, not anything enjoyable. I also noticed that with anhedonia, anything that touched my skin felt rough, and smooth fabrics no longer felt soft to the skin. This decreased a little bit with medication. Eating food became a mundane experience as well. Looking at nature stopped being a pleasant experience.

When my anhedonia was worse, before the medication, the lack of pleasure emotions was so unpleasant that it made me feel suicidal. I knew something was very wrong when I would see family members whom I love and feel no pleasure at seeing them. It is a very alienating experience to have no feelings of pleasure for anything. For me, life without pleasure is nearly a life not worth living. In order to remain content with living, medication was absolutely necessary. Luckily for me, the medication works somewhat and although I hardly ever feel "good", I am able to feel normal more of the time.

My anhedonia had nothing to do with the loss of a loved one or emotional rejection or depression or sadness. I have been clinically depressed in the past, and I know what real clinical depression feels like. Anhedonia can be a part of depression, but you can be depressed without anhedonia, as I was, and you can have anhedonia without depression if you are schizophrenic. I don't see anhedonia as the opposite of anything. It is the lack or loss of pleasure. The only partial opposite would be the gaining of pleasure. But emotions do not occur in opposites. There are many emotions that do not have an opposite. For example you can be happy and sad at the same time... like when people cry at weddings; it is the loss of childhood and the gaining of a relationship. Anhedonia is NOT an emotion, it is the lack of the pleasure sensation. Feelings of pleasure are part of a reaction. Anhedonia reflects a breakdown or blockage of that reaction.

The anhedonia affects socialising profoundly. A lot of conversation is based upon pleasing experiences and humour designed to make each other feel good. A lot of socialising takes place during meals which are intended to be a pleasurable experience. For the person with anhedonia, all of this without enjoyment is alienating and often annoying and anxiety-producing. Doing things without any pleasing reward can feel like work. As a result, I don't socialise very much at all even though I used to do it quite a lot before my schizophrenia became pronounced. Because I don't really get pleasure from sex, the connotations and innuendos of dating are very different for me now. There are lists and lists of recreational activities that no longer have any reward other than intellectual stimulation perhaps. But many recreations are not at all intellectually stimulating once you take away the pleasure.

I have the feeling it would be very difficult for me to fall in love. Because to fall in love you have to feel love. And to feel love, you have to feel some form of joy/enjoyment/pleasure. Without that I can feel gratitude, but not any of the emotional/sensual intensity of being in love. So there is some indirect connection to a lack of romance to anhedonia. For certain, there is no "Love at First Sight", because there is not much experience of beauty with anhedonia. For me I can know intellectually that something is probably beautiful, but there is no emotional impact and no feelings of pleasure from looking at it. Therefore, I cannot see someone beautiful and fall in love with their beauty.

I take refuge in science. Science doesn't give me pleasure, but it gives me insight and I am thankful for that. And even though I can't really be pleased much at all, I can still be thankful. It is lucky that I can be thankful, because truly having anhedonia can cause one to become sad. It is easy to confuse anhedonia with depression, but they are different from one another. Clinical depression is sometimes comprised partially of anhedonia and other symptoms. But a life with anhedonia is truly depressing. It is depressing because the human experience depends on feeling some feelings of pleasure even if they are minor.

Anhedonia is not dissociation and it's not psychosis. While experiencing anhedonia I am able to distinguish reality from non-reality so I am therefore not psychotic. While experiencing anhedonia my personality is intact as a whole, and my memories and experiences are still integrated into my personal experience, my personality. With anhedonia there is no amnesia or disrupted memory. I can still remember when I felt pleasure (or pain or anything else). To differentiate... People with dissociation may lose pleasure in some activities because of associated feelings related to trauma. However, with eating for example, a person with dissociation would still be able to experience the pleasure of sweet tastes even if their dissociation disrupted or overrode the pleasure with other emotions. A person with anhedonia would get little to no pleasure from sweet tastes regardless of the associated ideas with sweetness or eating or food. It may seem like a subtle distinction, but it is there.

I hope this helps to clarify for others what anhedonia is in reality. HopeMr 04:20, 22 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I know exactly what you're experiencing. Anhedonia is hell. Leave me a message if you want to talk. Roastporkbun (talk) 02:35, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * ditto on that - very well written HopeMR. I'd also like to add that people leaving an addiction (drugs, gambling, etc) can feel ahnedonia for a long, long time.  In these cases it's because their brain has actually changed through years of reinforcing their addiction.  With, say,opiates, the person's brain during addiction is used to very, very intense pleasures with the opioid, despite the user not even subjectively feeling it necessarily.  Once the drug is gone, and the person's body can, say, pass a drug test a month later, many times the brain is not rewired in a way to let them feel pleasure from food/sex/friends/sports/accomplishments/hobbies, they still just want to gamble/shoot up/etc.  I'm potentially going into studying this area but undecided at the moment, however it's been a fascinating topic to study (and horrible feeling to feel - no I did not shoot up drugs but get ahnedonia for extended periods of time).  Oh and again, spot-on with the "leads to anxiety", with me it leads to anxiety if it's bad, and if it goes on strongly for days it can lead to really mini bouts of depression, but even when 100% lucid, with friends, doing something cool, you're just doing the steps you expect you should - like you said, laughing is a reflex, smiling is too, they're things you do and, sadly, start realizing you're laughing because something funny happened and it deserves a laugh, not because you're truly smiling/happy/enjoying anything.

/If I go into this I'll be studying it directly in regards to people who are either currently addicts (not to be confused with dependent - there's a lot of overlap, but dependence doesn't equal addiction, whereas addiction almost always, but not 100%, requires dependence), or people who were addicts and got clean, but are still unable to move on (PAWS is the general descriptor, or "Post-Acute-Withdrawal-Syndrome"). After much personal experience, followed by lots of research, I'm truly in belief that anhedonia is a large part of what causes relapses in people who got fully clean, as their brain hasn't had time to adjust back to something resembling 'normal' - if one did heroin/coke/gambled 4-7days/week for years, even after the horrors of getting off their addiction of choice, the brain's reward pathways are not being hit by "normal" things (food/sex/friends/money/etc), so the person who is 6mo past their past "abuse of choice" will be in a terrible position, feeling that they're already done "dextoxing" (when they're only physically detoxed, not psychologically 'fixed/rewired' yet), and - of paramount importance - feel that since they think they're "back to normal" because they've finished detox 4mo ago, that this new state (of anhedonia) is what life is like, what life would have been like had they never gotten an addiction, and this is my central thesis, that many/most who relapse AFTER a significant period of time PAST their withdrawals/detox are actually relapsing NOT because of PAWS so much as they're relapsing because they don't understand that, for quite some time after withdrawal/detox, that the anhedonia WILL be there, and there will be a very emotionless, non-vivid time period before they can get back to enjoying things like food/sex. If you're unaware of this, it's quite easy to dismiss the (temporary, albeit much more protracted than withdrawal OR EVEN PAWS in many cases) state of anhedonia as "how it must be when to live normally" instead of the truth, that it'll just take some time to rewire your brain so it experiences many little pleasures a day, not an intense shot or two a day, or gambling heavily 3nights/week. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SangerRainsford (talk • contribs) 21:00, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Harry Potter
I've removed the statement "Harry Potter fans however, are aware that anhedonia is actually caused by dementors."

Harry Potter is a work of fiction. The statement doesn't seem to be relevant in any significant way to this article. --Tony Sidaway 19:57, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Damn Potter fans. Ornen (talk) 16:06, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

anybody in his/her life can be —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.108.37.62 (talk) 10:12, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

محمد يوسف محمد زغل بشار سعد سلوم عبدالله علاء امجد اشرف —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.108.37.62 (talk) 10:14, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Weird suggestions
I removed this part of the article:

"Until now international laboratories haven't seen it as a good opportunity, even through it can be very profitable for them. As a SA heal, or as a sex pleasure stimulant. It can be a bigger discovery than Viagra itself."

It isn't relevant information for someone who wants to know more about the condition and the writing itself sounds like someone's forum post. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.50.187.132 (talk) 14:47, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Television Appearance
The US television series "House" explored this ailment in Season5, Episode 6 aired 10/28/2008. Aaron (talk) 19:14, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Recent Research
Isn't there a lot of relatively recent research suggesting that anhedonia for quite a lot of mood disordered people and schizophrenics is actually a lack of anticipatory'pleasure, i.e. they feel pleasure, but do not actively seek it out because they think they will get no pleasure from things. By no means am I or those who participate in this research suggesting that this is generalizable to all sufferers, but it is a large amount. Anywho, I'm just surprised nobody's written anything on this at, is there anybody who knows about it in greater detail and has relevant sources who can add this please? 149.157.1.154 (talk) 10:51, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Bipolar template
Anhedonia isn't only related with Bipolar disorders. So we should remove the template or use another one. Cheers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.220.58.92 (talk) 18:11, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Stylistic problems
This article's English expression is very uneven. I could correct it but I'd be guessing what was meant by some phrases (which read like translationese).

Example: "Changing of mood are the most likely to observe in psychiatric disorder. They are the significant symptoms of depression but they can be easily seen in other psychiatric disorders during physical illness. In healthy people, changing mood is also prominent when encountering stressful events"

Does it mean "Mood changes are commonly observed in psychiatric disorders. They are significant symptoms of depression but can be easily seen..." etc??? "Changing of mood are" is completely ungrammatical. If someone knows what is meant here (it's footnoted, so I assume there was some sense to the original) please improve it!

Also, I thought the talk page was for discussion of the article, not the condition. This too is confusing...? Proof64 (talk) 11:59, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

"Formerly found enjoyable"
The article defines anhedonia as "the inability to experience pleasure from activities formerly found enjoyable." But what about someone who has never found ANY activities enjoyable? I would suppose that such a person suffers from very severe anhedonia indeed, yet their condition seems to fall outside the scope of the definition. Is there a different term that would apply to such people? Or is there an assumption that absolutely everyone in the world must enjoy something at some point in their life? In either case, it seems that more should be said on this point. Kevin Nelson (talk) 07:25, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * While that's a thing (though I dont know its name), you're looking more at a physiological problem, a change in functioning at a significant level. This article is about the psychological expression which would be described as an abnormal state. 74.132.249.206 (talk) 01:58, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It seems reasonable to me, Kevin, that some people have never experienced pleasure from activities normally considered enjoyable, but I don't know what you'd call that trait. I don't think psychiatry actually acknowledges it. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:20, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Anhedonia in Depression (My Personal Experience)
I would like to add my personal experience with anhedonia and what I have discovered about it along the way. I have been anhedonic now for 10 months due to major depression triggered by chronic stress. Anhedonia is my only persistent symptom and is occurring in the absence of any other depressive symptom (I do not feel "depressed," I do not "feel" at all). For this reason, many people experiencing anhedonia (me included) find fault with the technical association with "anhedonia" being only a symptom of another disease rather than a syndrome in itself. Firstly, what I have noticed about every person experiencing anhedonia (me included) is that they seem to mention the inability to experience the same list of things: music/art, sex/romance/dating, and emotional appreciation. To me, all of these are inter-related and so anhedonia really boils down to a flatness of emotional responsivity to anything and a general inability to experience pleasure. The best way to describe it is to make the analogy to the loss of interest in sex as similar to the loss of interest in sex a male might experience soon after ejaculating (refractory period)or the loss of interest in music to the loss of interest one might feel towards a song after having heard the same song repeatedly for several months. I have read many articles on anhedonia and have seen many theories that suggest that anhedonia is a result of the failure to anticipate pleasure rather than experiencing it and that it involves the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinepherine. Firstly I would like to say that I can anticipate having a pleasurable response to something, but the only thing that is missing for me is the response itself. For example, I may get an adrenaline rush from something such as sex, but it is not accompanied by feelings of pleasure. I anticipate the pleasure, but I only experience the adrenaline, not the pleasure itself. I have had partial responses to stimulants and dopaminergic agents but no response to norepinepherine modulating drugs, though I have read many reports of people having success with norepinepherine drugs. Others left no noticeable effect.

Strangely, I would sometimes spontaneously and instantaneously get a “window” of normalcy where my emotional numbness would break for a few minutes and I would feel normal, as if a “light switch” was controlling my emotions and ability to feel pleasure. My libido, my numbed emotions, and that zombie-like feeling I was having – they were all related, they all came from that same part of me that was “turned off.” It’s the same type of sensation that I was missing – whether it was the feeling that I was not getting thinking about a girl, the excitement I was not experiencing thinking about my future, and the enjoyment I was not experiencing being around my family doing activities with them, they all (pleasure) were just “off.” As time passed, I would see fewer and fewer of these windows until they disappeared completely. At first, with much difficulty I felt two windows once while crying shortly after arriving at home and once during a car ride with my mother.

There seems to be two "camps" that psychiatrists fall under. In one camp are the psychiatrists who tend to disregard anhedonia as "just a symptom of the underlying depression/other illness" and not mainly a dopaminergic phenomenon saying "treat the underlying depression/other illness, and the symptoms go away with it like a cascade." These psychiatrists believe that SSRIs are most effective for any type of depression, regardless of symptoms, (usually calling me "obsessive" for researching or disregard science backing it up as "just theories,” and that “nobody knows what’s actually going on in the brain" etc.) and often deny that serotonergics make anhedonia worse (I've been with two of this type). The other "camp" is, in my opinion at least, more reasonable; psychiatrists falling under the second camp listen to symptoms and recognize anhedonia as mainly dopaminergic or to do with norepinepherine.

It's known that the activation of certain serotonin receptors inhibit the release of dopamine, (obviously shown in the blunting effect and loss of libido associated with SSRIs/SNRIs) and it is also known that dopamine plays a crucial role in the processing of emotional responses. Norepinepherine is another key part of the puzzle, in my experience sort of the "second banana" to dopamine, as it is shown in many studies that animals lose preference towards a reward with reductions in norepinepherine - norepinepherine is associated with motivation and arousal.

The treatments that I have found through research to be successful in treating anhedonia are:

Stimulants - Methylphenidate, Dextroamphetamine, etc. Dopamine Agonists - Pramipexole, Ropinirole, Cabergoline, Apomorphine, Bromocriptine, Rotigotine, etc. Low Dose Antipsychotics - Aripiprazole, Amisulpride, Sulpride, etc. Serotonin Receptor Antagonists - Buspirone, Low dose Fluoexitine, etc. SSREs - Tianeptine Dopamine Reuptake Inhibitors - Amineptine, Bupropion, etc. Norepinepherine Reuptake Inhibitors - Desipramine, Atomoxetine, Nortryptaline, Bupropion, etc. MAOIs - Parnate, Nardil, Selegiline, etc. Other - Amantadine, Nicotine, Testosterone, Levodopa, Phenylethylamine, Cyproheptadine, Thyroid Augmenting (lithium for example), L-Tyrosine, L-Theanine, SAM-E, St. John's Wort, etc.

Unfortunately several drugs are not available in the USA such as Tianeptine, Adrafinil, and Amisulpride, and many of these medications have significant drawbacks such as tolerance, addiction, long-lasting side effects, severe reactions, heart problems, heptatoxicity, blood pressure problems, and more.

I have tried Wellbutrin, Abilify, L-Tyrosine, L-Theanine, SAM-E, DLPA, Ritalin, Adderall, and Desipramine. My experience was that I felt no different on Wellbutrin even after being on it for 8 weeks at the highest recommended dose (450mg). Abilify (5-7.5mg) helped me to regain focus and the ability to do something for longer periods of time without feeling anxious, though had little noticeable effect on anhedonia and gave me random twitching and tremors. L-Tyrosine (500-1500mg) had no noticeable effect. L-Theanine (300-1000mg) made me extremely agitated and irritable. SAM-E made me more irritable. DLPA (1000-2000mg) had no noticeable effect. Ritalin (15-30mg 2x daily) was the closest thing to helping my anhedonia, but was unreliable, worked for only about an hour, quickly formed a tolerance, and raised my heart rate substantially. Adderall (5-15mg 2x daily) only raised my heart rate with no noticeable effect on the anhedonia, but I can't help but to feel that this was because of a cross-tolerance with the Ritalin (I had already become tolerant to the Ritalin after only a week, so thus I was also tolerant to other stimulants such as Adderall). Desipramine (200mg) left no noticeable effect after several weeks, but I later found out that due to its heptatoxicity, my liver was reacting poorly to it and thus I have been forced to come off of it.

For anhedonia I would personally suggest a combination of Pramipexole, Cyproheptadine, Busiprone, and Selegiline, though I am not a doctor so do not regard this as educated medical advise without consulting your doctor (just a legal disclaimer). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.84.161.209 (talk) 05:39, 3 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is not a forum. This is seriously not the place for that.  Lighthead  þ 20:16, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Social anhedonia?
Is social anhedonia a primary component of anhedonia? There seems to be much too much weight given to social anhedonia in this article. The article's lead says something about lack of motivation, but I saw almost none of that referred to in the article proper; perhaps because of the undue weight to social anhedonia? I would like an expert in psychology to tell me if I'm wrong and provide some much needed insight. Thanks.  Lighthead  þ 01:53, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with the above. I don't understand why the two categories are sexual and social. Loss of enjoyment may often be solely individual, e.g. loss of interest in music or a hobby or a subject where there is no or little social component of it. There is a general loss of all aspects of positive experience. At least that is the case for me. (I've been anhed. for over a decade.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.152.201.23 (talk) 14:28, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Primary relevance in schizophrenia and schizophrenia spectrum disorders
anhedonia refers to acquired loss of interes or pleasure in schizophrenia it is similar but not the same thing negative symptoms can include anhedonia but isolation is different there may be paranoia or delusions causing isolation — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rberlow (talk • contribs) 20:10, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Also PTSD
Anhedonia is also part of PTSD. See Blunted affect or this article. --Elabeth (talk) 16:27, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Anhedonia Self-Assessment
I have been diagnosed with Anhedonia. I want to know whether the online self-assessment quizzes are accurate? I feel like these quizzes are symptom based. I have tried a quiz on Illnesstests. They claim that there self-assessment quizzes are accurate. If true, Does it mean that I am dealing with Anhedonia? Here is the Quiz that I took: Anhedonia Quiz: Test Your Emotional Health. Any suggestions? Dbwani (talk) 04:59, 2 October 2023 (UTC)