I am so eager to share this because I know there are so many of you—some of you are new to benzo withdrawal hell, others are a few months in, and yet others are months, maybe even years in and so weary and panicky that you’re not going to heal (you are, I promise).
I was polydrugged and then cold turkeyed off of klonopin and an opioid.
I had physical withdrawal symptoms for about two weeks—anxiety, OCD, shaking, cold sweats but that was nothing compared to the anhedonia that set in after those two weeks. I woke up and it was like my soul had been removed from me. I’ve had situational/emotion depression, physiological/brain depression, and medication-induced depression, but none of it comes remotely close to the pain of anhedonia.
Anhedonia is not emotional blunting or numbness. It literally means “without (an) pleasure (hedonia).” Yes, emotional blunting and numbing is a BZWD symptom but with that, you neither feel good nor bad. With anhedonia, there is a complete and utter lack of any pleasure, joy, contentment, whatsoever. And I’m not talking like happy laughter joy. I’m talking like the basic most fundamental feeling of being “okay.” or feeling normal. Just being okay being alive. It was truly agonizing just to exist. Not for any reason other than the complete deprivation of any sort of okay, safe, content, comfortable, feeling in the brain, soul, mind, body.
There is no way to describe this pain to those who haven’t experienced it, and bless their hearts, your supporters will try to think of the most depressed they’ve ever been to try and understand—but anhedonia plunges far, far beyond those depths. I found that trying to explain it with words only detracted from how painful it truly was, and only made me feel more isolated. It was painful to be around friends and loved ones and not feel the love or connection. And it was even more painful to not be able to explain why. Which is why isolation was my survival.
What was so scary was that I had my mental faculties and personality. Cognitively I could function. I could work, i could fake it (when i’ve had severe depression in the past, I couldn’t fake it), I could make others laugh, i could even laugh. But all of that existed separately from joy. It was too painful to do anything that would normally bring me joy, like hobbies and spending time with family and friends—or even normal things that just gave you a basic sense of satisfaction, like completing a household task.
It set in on February 1, 2021 and i had ZERO windows or shifts. I stayed distracted literally all day by doing work. I could not see friends or family. I could not leave the house. It wasn’t because of anxiety, it was because anything that served as a portal to the outside world, the world that i so desperately wanted to be a part of, a world hat was right there all around me but which I could not access or get anything positive out of. It was too painful. I wanted to die every day and i knew that these things only served as triggers that drove the knife in further.
I share this because everyone has different ways of dealing and healing. For some, talk therapy, CBT, meditation, yoga, being with people, reframing, etc. helped them. For me, I have been in (and benefited from) therapy for years (including ERP/CBT and intensive inpatient for OCD) and am all for talking it out but talking about this one issue was not going to help. It was not a mood problem or a thinking problem. It was a brain problem. A physiological problem. I could not reframe, meditate, exercise, talk, or cheer my way back to feeling normal or okay. And the futile attempts to do so only left me feeling more despondent. I eventually realized I had to simply stay alive and let time pass. Despite others perceiving that I wasn’t being proactive enough or doing the right things to heal.
I repeat: time was the healer for me.
Isolation and distraction were my survival. It was how I stayed alive while my brain did its work. I worked all day, taking one hour to exercise (I hated every second of it, even though i normally love working out). I got all groceries delivered. I did not see anyone unless i had to - work meetings, the occasional visit from my mom or dad). I had a very strict routine that kept me distracted from the present and alive. If I was pulled out of that routine, it was excruciating.
On January 12, 2023 (23 months), it lifted. And I knew it. It wasn’t a complete turnaround, but I just felt a change. I felt a twinge of desire. It wasn’t totally positive, but i didn’t feel like I wanted to die. I noted it, cautiously. And then each day got better and better. The anhedonia lifting is an experience that is unique to everyone—for some it’s gradual, for others it’s sudden, and for many, it’s somewhere in between.
I’m not going to go on and on about how happy I am now—I know that can be inspiring for some people but for those with anhedonia, I know for me at least, it didn’t help me to read other’s success stories. They actually were too painful to read. I couldn’t physiologically, emotionally, logically, intellectually believe that I would feel that way one day. I felt left behind and left out, even though I knew that I needed to know that people healed from it.
All I will say is this: the joy you feel when you come out of anhedonia is other-worldly. Especially when you’ve had it for two years straight with no windows whatsoever, and especially when you suffered from other levels of depression/mental illness from benzos and other health symptoms for three years prior to that (I had severe digestive issues and bloating—I’ll save that for another thread).
I want to now provide two things:
Here are the thoughts that I had that I want to reassure you are anhedonia:
1. Scary untrue thought #1: This is permanent. It’s not physiologically possible for this to be permanent. Your brain is in a hibernating /protective state and it will NOT last.
2. Scary untrue thought #2: This is brain damage. Ditto above. You have suffered from a brain INJURY but not DAMAGE. Your brain is actually doing healing work in this state. It very much works and is doing its job. It is recuperating.
3. Scary untrue thought #3: I’m going to be the one who doesn’t heal. No matter what symptom we’re experiencing, we all fear that we’ll be the one that doesn’t heal, that we’ll be the exception. Or if our symptoms don’t exaclty match up to others’. EVERONE’S symptoms are unique to their body, their disposition, their makeup, their affect, their identities. We all are unique! Your specific symptoms WILL resolve. We’re all different but we’re all human bodies, and the human body is a miraculous healing organism made in nature.
4. Scary untrue thought #4: The people telling me I’ll heal don’t know how bad I really am. They probably don’t know, if they’ve never had anhedonia. But the best part is, they are right. THAT YOU WILL HEAL. Your anhedonia is torture. It’s cruelty. But they don’t need to know that to know that you will heal and to share that truth with you.
5. Scary untrue thought #5: Life is not worth living. No, when you can’t feel joy or just the basic desire to be alive, there is no reason to get up in the morning, to participate in life. But that is because you’re in the symptom. Not reality. And when the anhedonia lifts, you’ll be so glad you did not subscribe to that as truth. LIFE IS WORTH LIVING, even right now while it is excruciating to be alive. Just because you can’t emotionally feel that doesn’t mean it’s true. Please, hear these words and even though you can’t feel it or trust them, just subscribe to them. For as long as you can. Pretend that you trust them. Because you will be so glad you did.
REASSURANCES:
1. Your brain is healing, even right now and when while you don’t feel it.
I always tried to see it as my brain building up to a threshold. Like how when a seed sprouts and you see it breaks through the soil, that’s not the first time it’s done something. It’s been working hard under the soil for some time. But it has to reach a certain threshold before the work is made visible. Or like a phone that dies. You plug it in but it doesn’t turn on for another 15 minutes because it needs to reach a particular threshold. And then once it turns on it can charge. Your brain is there, it’s been plugged back in, but until it reaches the threshold, the anhedonia won’t lift. But it is on its way.
2.Your brain is in a protective state. The body is so smart. It knows what it needs. And I would say I agree with the theory that anhedonia and even depression is the brain’s way of protecting itself. Many people have severe anxiety and hypersensitivity in benzo withdrawal. While it’s definitely overcompensation, it can be helpful to see this as your brain keeping itself out of that state.
3. Healing is sometimes painful. We tend to think of “healing” as this wonderful blooming thing but think about the pain of burns healing (blisters, peeling skin) or hypothermia–you don’t just start to feel warmer and more comfortable. No, it is extremely painful when the blood starts flowing again. This anhedonia is a symptom of healing and it is painful. Let it run its course, because you will make it to the other side.
4. Just do what it takes to stay alive. Anhedonia always heals. I scoured every blog, forum, and group to learn about others with anhedonia and everyone’s lifts. It just takes time. I truly believe that healing finds us no matter what. People recommend things and different things work for different people. But a big part of me also believes that the brain and body does most of the work, and that whatever you were doing when you started to reach your threshold, that’s what you’ll think did it and that’s what you’ll recommend. But personally, what i will recommend is to simply do whatever it takes to stay alive. Like i said, i couldn’t go through the motions. It was too painful. I couldn’t do therapy. I couldn’t force myself to socialize. I cocooned in and shielded myself from those things, and that’s how i stayed alive. And i simply gave my brain time to heal. And it did.
I share this so that for those of you struggling with anhedonia, you can have “hope” (though i know that with anhedonia, you can’t feel it; there is virtually no comfort to be had with this symptom) that yours will lift. I know how scary it is to be on here and to be going through this hell. It is like being told to hold your hand on a hot burner indefinitely. If you have any questions about my experience, please PM me and I will be glad to answer them and reassure you that you, too, will heal.
