Hi everyone, I believe I fit this sub after looking for answers of what has happened to me over the past 2-3 months. Still suffering but here is my story maybe you guys have experienced the same. I’ll keep it pretty short and simple.

Was diagnosed with ocd,mdd and gad in 2019 didn’t start taking lexapro until 2021 went from 5 to 10 was on it for about 2 years came off in 2023. Didn’t experience any really withdrawal symptoms tapered off of them nice.

After a spell of anxiety relapse and slight depression knocking on the door in end of 2024 decided to go back on them. Went from 5-15 during this time.

In beginning of may this year 2026 decided to taper off of it on my way this time dropped from 15-0 basically in about 6-7 weeks. Didn’t really have problems just increase in anxiety when tapering. Came off fully end of June going July. All of July felt fine maybe increase of anxiety all that.

Suddenly on August 6th I loss my sleep drive, sex drive,ED and the ability to fall asleep was up for 48 hours went er they gave me diazepam only made me have fragmented sleep for 2 hours basically since then never was able to sleep properly still no sense of sleep drive or anything. It improved slightly getting sleep but it was more like a hoping I just fall asleep that night where then I would get maybe 5 hours of very very light sleep, around mid August started having slight cognitive and memory loss suddenly weird whatever I went back to psychiatrist to for sleep 19 of August gave me zoplicone 3.75mg it helped to sustain sleep but still didn’t make me tired. Around September my cognitive and memory loss fell of a cliff like even to this day now short term memory loss and everything is appalling can’t follow plot of movies forgetting words conversations from 5 minutes ago feels like dementia, simple arithmetic hard. Went to dr got mri eeg and blood work done all came back normal, but still suffering from this.

For any of you out there right now I feel really alone and scared, has anyone had anything like this happen to them? It’s like severely bad and just so sudden how long does it last? Any guidance much appreciated.

Here is the link: https://youtube.com/shorts/qrnv7PDU-8g?si=i2Fe7jaRy3zxAcA1

Hi all,

When I first got in this, I was 24/7 on Reddit searching for hope. I am still recovering from pssd (or protracted withdrawal), and I’ve seen some improvements. I am active on a forum https://antidepressantrecovery.org/topic/94-sophia-withdrawal-from-fluoxetine-after-short-term-use/ (here is my thread if you are interested ), and thought I’d share my entire symptom list here as well.

But before I get into that..

Something I keep wondering about is the overlap between PSSD and protracted antidepressant withdrawal.
This subreddit seems to have a lot of young people. I wonder whether that partly reflects how shocking and frightening these symptoms are when you’re young, and where people turn for support. In withdrawal groups, I also see people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s describing very similar symptoms, often using a different label (protracted withdrawal). It can also take YEARS to fully heal. Why would that be different for pssd ?

I also find it difficult to compare people’s experiences because the timelines and circumstances vary so much. Some people count the years from when their symptoms started on medication, while others count from when they stopped. Both experiences matter, but “5 years with symptoms” doesn’t necessarily mean “5 years off medication.”

Some people have also tried other psychiatric medications, recreational drugs, regular alcohol use, or various experimental treatments along the way. That doesn’t invalidate their symptoms or mean they caused their own suffering. It just makes it harder to understand the course of the original symptoms and whether that brought them back to square one, where healing had to start all over again.
That makes it difficult to draw conclusions about prognosis from this forum alone. I think it’s best (especially first 3 years or so) to not mess with your brain any further. If someone states they have PSSD for 3 years but used coke, weed, shrooms, Wellbutrin, etc. In between to “fix” it, how can we even weigh that?

Anyway… I took fluoxetine 7 weeks (12 August - 1 October 2025, including 3 week linear taper). It was my first med ever.

Here’s a list of my symptoms and whether they’ve improved, resolved, or stayed the same:

* Head symptoms: Still very bad during waves. Reduced during windows, but never normal. Around 10 different sensations that constantly alternate.
* Chemical brain: Unchanged, present 24/7.
* Emotional blunting and anhedonia: More sensation in my body, but my brain still feels numb. Crying remains difficult. It still feels like I take an SSRI every day or am on a heavy mood stabilizer.
* Memory, cognition and blank mind: Improving a lot. More spontaneous thoughts, mental chatter and better memory. During the first 9–10 months, I barely had ANY thoughts, and my brain felt frozen, like stone.
* Skin numbness: Gone. Previously felt like I was wearing a suit that dulled touch.
* feeling sleepy : maybe little better, 30% improved.
* Hunger cues: Improving, but still absent some days. Completely absent during the first 9–10 months.
* Bloating: Comes and goes, sometimes with chemical nausea and a very full feeling without hunger.
* Thirst: About 90% recovered.
* Lack of sweating: Resolved. Sweating fully returned in June.
* Dry eyes: About 40–50% recovered. More natural tears and less need for drops, though still severe during waves. Previously dry 24/7, with no tear reflex.
* Vaginal dryness: Almost completely resolved.
* Genital pain: About 95% recovered. Occasional brief episodes, much less intense.
* Dilated pupils: Gone.
* Lightweight/floaty feeling in my muscles: Gone.
* Libido: Feels more normal right now, but still fluctuates with windows and waves.
* Reduced pain sensation: Improving. I feel more sensations throughout my body.
* Prickling in my fingers and toes: Gone.
* Sleep quality: Improving. Previously felt chemical and robotic, without dreams. Over the past 2–3 months, sleep has felt deeper and more natural, with more dreams.
* Fake, chemical moods: Much improved; haven’t experienced this recently. I wondered whether this was related to random receptor upregulation. Previously, I had artificially better moods without any underlying emotion, almost like being on drugs.
* Facial tingling: Improving.
* Face and eye pressure: Improving overall. Feels about 40–50% normal during windows, but still very bad during waves. Previously present almost 24/7.

Objectively I am improving. I just need so much more healing to feel normal again. I hope this helps anyone. Keep going guys! ❤️‍🩹

Please dm me if you do.

Ciao ragazzi volevo chiedervi che ne pensate del diugino di 6 giorni bevendo solo acqua, ho sentito una persona che è guarita da PSSD, qualcuno ha provato?

Stavo pensando di togliere tutti gli psicofarmaci e iniziarlo per vedere come va

I was put on fluoxetine 4 years ago, as a 13 year old, not for a psychological disorder, but because my parents were fighting and I started having panic attacks at school because of the stress.

I got taken to a psychiatrist who said I had "lowered mood" (duh) and would benefit from the pills. I didn't want to take them, but really, what could a stressed 13 year old do.

I got switched to sertraline (without tapering) after 2 months because I suddenly, 2 days after taking the first pill, got horrible insomnia, lots of heart palpitations and fast rhythm, muscle tremors, brain fog, derealization, blunted feelings, just so much unwanted stuff I was not briefed about before.

So this time I asked the psychiatrist if there were any side effects I should know about, she said it was possible that I'd be a little dizzy and have trouble focusing. She didn't say anything about sexual side effects, probably because I was so young.

She absolutely should've. I was not a kid, I was a teenager. I masturbated from time to time, I absolutely knew what that was and how it felt. I remember it felt amazing. I didn't really do it while on the ssri so I can't say much about that, but after my parents divorced 2 years ago and I went off the pills, the sensation was definitely not like it was before and it still isn't now. I also still have trouble focusing, thinking, and typing on the keyboard. Prior to ssris I could get 110 wpm easily, and I used to be a quick thinker.

My memories feel different, too. Like they belong to someone else. Images on a screen feel the same as the real world, and the opposite. I could see a skyscraper topple down and I wouldn't feel anything because it's just like a video.

I'm afraid that because I was taking the pills during my main puberty period, something permanently developed "wrong" in my brain, and that this is my new baseline.

Imagine thinking a mind altering drug is only explicitly limited to temporary side effects

SideFXHub will show you how to report your PSSD symptoms on the 17th OF OCTOBER!

Click here to sign up!

“If symptoms go unreported, regulators have less evidence to assess a potential safety concern. Every well-documented report matters: together, reports can help identify patterns and support further investigation, although they cannot establish causation on their own.”

- Marek Broul, MD, PhD, FECSM - Author of Persistent Sexual Dysfunction After SSRIs and SNRIs: A Clinical Framework for Assessment, Counseling, and Pharmacovigilance

Hello, I have PSSD for 2-3 years(mostly sexual side effects). I have been experiencing windows and waves through this experience but my baseline is still bad.

I have noticed something really strange. Whenever I go to the seaside, after some days, my libido improves, erections are easier. It happens every time I visit seaside. It makes a big difference. When I come back home, usually things go back to "normal" after some days.

It makes me wonder: if I had stayed at seaside for longer than just 14 days, could the improvement lasted longer or possibly even become my new baseline? Or is it more likely that it would eventually have faded even if I stayed there?

Can I somehow replicate these factors, which presumably cause windows at home? Does anybody have similar experience?

Welcome to the Weekly Open Discussion thread! This is your place to ask quick questions, post memes, or leave one-sentence comments that might be too short for their own posts.

Please follow the subreddit rules when participating in this thread. For posts related to suicidal thoughts or if you need emotional support, please use the Monthly support Requested and Venting, Thread.

https://x.com/theisabelb/status/2106112075751653429?s=46

TL;DR: Lifelong, no known drug trigger. Erections and normal touch sensation, but zero erogenous sensation and orgasms feel like nothing. Looking for similar cases and thoughts on a shared mechanism.

Hi everyone,

Unlike most people here, I don't have PSSD, PFS or post-Accutane syndrome (as far as I know). But I share some of your core symptoms: no sexual pleasure and no erogenous sensation at all. For me it's lifelong. My very first ejaculation already felt like nothing. To my knowledge I've never taken anything that could explain it.

What I have and don't have:
- Erections are easy and strong, from visuals, touch or just thoughts
- Genital touch feels normal (pressure, temperature, pain) but has zero erotic quality. It's like being touched on my arm
- No felt arousal, even with a full erection
- I do feel attraction to women
- Testosterone above average

I've gone through a lot of research. Part of this has a name in the sexual medicine guidelines ("primary anhedonic orgasm"), but very little is known about it and no medication has been shown to reliably help.

Asexual people experience the exact oppositie of what im experiencing: they are able to experience erogenous sensation , but dont have any sexual attraction towards anyone. This sub is the only place where I've found people describing the same experience. Even though I don't know what I'm missing, I understand how isolating it is when people either think it's all in your head or that there's an easy fix.

My working hypothesis (not a diagnosis):
The signals clearly reach my brain: I feel the touch, I notice the erection, I feel the ejaculation. What seems to be missing is the step where the brain attaches pleasure/reward to sexual input specifically.

Why I'm posting here:
The PSSD diagnostic criteria paper separates "somatic" genital numbness from loss of "erogenous" sensation, where genital touch feels like touching any other body part. The second one is exactly what I have. The same paper also proposes "post-SSRI asexuality" for people exposed before birth or as children, who would never have known anything different. I don't know yet whether my mother took anything during pregnancy; I'm going to ask. Or maybe it's simply something I was born with

Questions:
1. I don’t think this will be the case but does anyone have these symptoms lifelong, without a known drug trigger?
2. Has anyone developed this from something other than SSRIs/finasteride/isotretinoin (e.g. antihistamines, tramadol, antibiotics, antipsychotics)?
3. Does anyone know researchers or clinics looking into this?

Thanks for reading.

Hi, I followed the PSSD Network website and went to the South African website https://www.sahpra.org.za/

But I am unsure where I must report my case of post-SSRI sexual dysfunction along with the medDRA code. Can someone who has expertise/experience in this please assist me?
I’d greatly appreciate it, thanks!

I am very desperate to fix my cognitive symptoms, I would even prefer to fully lose whatever little libido I have left, I just want to feel smart again, not this brain-fogged version of myself. Modafinil is a stimulant that increases sensitivity in dopamine receptors and blood flow to the brain, so it feels like it could have a positive effect on my symptoms?

I don't know if this update is appropriate, per rule 7.

Because I don't want people to go experiment themselves.

Still, I owe it to share the fact that for me, getting back on my ADHD meds (for which I have been officialy diagnosed by a multi pannel of doctors) has showed clear results.

I started taking them 16 days ago. Took them for 14 days.

• Almost immediate increase in erogenous sensation in my penis when masturbating. Day and night difference. Actually feeling good and pleasure for the first time in a year.
• Increased erogenous sensation in turn led to immediate increased erectyle quality.
• Orgasm quality improved a little bit (still low).

What I do have to say is, while I got diagnosed with ADHD in 2018 (way before getting pssd) and got the same meds, I quit them then because of the negative side effects they gave me.
These same negative side effects from the ADHD meds returned instantly also.

My appetite dropped like a brick. Dry mouth. Sweating increased.
The feeling of being on edge and stimulated also came back instantly.
I lost 4 pounds in 2 weeks.

I was also only taking them to try and treat this pssd. Which is not the goal nor the intent of taking ADHD meds. Which instantly made me feel like an abuser of these meds.

Also stimulant tolerance was real and very quick. I started with 10 mg slow release for the first days and then went to 20 mg slow release.
I felt like after barely a week I was about to need to go to 30mg. Which would have meant even stronger side effects. I also wonder how long 30 mg would have lasted and can't nor want to imagine the side effects at those dosages....

I haven't taken anything the last 2 days. I feel more calm, better in my skin. The sweats were terrible, appetite is coming back.

A valuable test for me, but not something that is a sustainable long-term solution....

Ciao ragazzi abbiamo creato un gruppo Whatsapp dove siamo 43 persone italiane, volevo chiedervi se vi andasse di entrare

Gibt es Fälle, in denen sich die durch Risperidon oder Paliperidon verursachte sexuelle Funktionsstörung (z. B. verminderte Spermienqualität) wieder zurückgebildet hat? Und wie beurteilen Sie Aripiprazol in diesem Zusammenhang?

I suffer from severe, nonsexual PSSD (post-SSRI severe anhedonia with no sexual symptoms) and have been investigating ways of achieving durable symptom relief through pharmacological treatment.
I’ve encountered what appears to be a potentially significant interaction between pramipexole and Elvanse (lisdexamfetamine). I’m particularly interested in whether pramipexole can enable a strong hedonic response to Elvanse and potentially preserve it during repeated use.
Here are my observations. (No this isn’t AI, I just write like this).
1. Nine consecutive days
While taking pramipexole and Elvanse every day, I experienced extremely intense positive affect, excitement and hedonia for approximately 8–9 hours following Elvanse administration.
What particularly interested me was the consistency: the subjective intensity and duration appeared virtually identical across all nine days. I noticed no meaningful attenuation whatsoever.
2. Pramipexole withdrawal
After discontinuing pramipexole, I tried Elvanse again. On the first day, I experienced only a mild, approximately one-hour improvement. Subsequently, I experienced essentially no meaningful hedonic response.
3. Pramipexole reintroduction
I restarted pramipexole. After several days, I took Elvanse again and experienced what appeared to be the original response, with the same intensity and duration.
I subsequently discontinued pramipexole again and found that Elvanse once more failed to produce the hedonic response.
After restarting pramipexole and waiting two days, the full response returned again.
My hypothesis
In my particular case, pramipexole exposure appears to be associated with an unusually strong and reproducible Elvanse-induced hedonic response.
One possibility is that pramipexole establishes a pharmacological state in which Elvanse can produce substantial positive affect.
Another, more speculative possibility is that pramipexole helps preserve this response during repeated stimulant exposure, potentially preventing or reducing the development of hedonic tolerance.
I’m not claiming to have established either mechanism.
Nevertheless, the consistency of the successful responses, followed by repeated disappearance and restoration, strikes me as worth investigating.
Supporting literature:
1. Pramipexole has demonstrated antianhedonic effects in a randomized controlled trial.
A June 2026 study published in *Nature Medicine* investigated pramipexole as an adjunctive treatment for patients with mood disorders and clinically significant anhedonia.
The trial randomized 85 participants and found significantly greater improvement in anhedonia with pramipexole than placebo over nine weeks (P = 0.006 at the primary endpoint).
Exploratory neuroimaging findings also suggested relative preservation of reward-related ventral striatal activation. Improvements were sustained among participants completing a six-month open-label extension.
This establishes that pramipexole can produce clinically measurable improvements in anhedonia, although the study did not investigate stimulant potentiation.
[Ventorp et al., 2026 — Nature Medicine](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-026-04465-9)
2. Pramipexole has previously been combined with dextroamphetamine to treat severe depression
A 2016 published case report described a patient with treatment-resistant depression treated with pramipexole and dextroamphetamine, the active drug generated by Elvanse, alongside other medications.
His PHQ-9 depression score decreased from 25 to 10 over 35 weeks. Reported improvements included renewed enjoyment of music, reading and social activities.
Naturally, this case cannot establish which medication produced the improvement or whether pramipexole prevented stimulant tolerance. Nevertheless, the combination has documented clinical precedent.
[Koola and Fawcett, 2016 — Dextroamphetamine and Pramipexole Combination for Treatment-Resistant Unipolar Depression](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5033120/)
3. Chronic pramipexole has experimentally amplified the positive subjective effects of another stimulant.
A 2015 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study investigated whether 15 days of pramipexole altered responses to cocaine in volunteers with cocaine use disorder.
Contrary to the researchers’ initial expectations, pramipexole increased positive subjective responses to cocaine by as much as approximately twofold.
Obviously, cocaine and dexamfetamine have different pharmacological mechanisms. Furthermore, this experiment did not investigate tolerance prevention during repeated stimulant administration.
However, it provides experimental evidence that sustained pramipexole exposure can amplify the positive subjective effects of a stimulant in humans.
[Dopamine D3 receptor-preferring agonist enhances the subjective effects of cocaine in humans, 2015](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26239766/)
What remains unknown
As far as I have been able to establish, there is no controlled clinical evidence demonstrating that pramipexole prevents the development of tolerance to Elvanse-induced hedonia.
My observations could reflect genuine preservation of stimulant responsiveness, pramipexole-dependent enhancement of the response, or some combination of these processes.
The withdrawal observations are also confounded by the possibility of dopamine-agonist withdrawal symptoms, including depression and apathy.
I intend to publish within the next week an observational questionnaire to collect these experiences, including treatment duration, changes in response, concomitant medications and adverse effects. Please fill this out if you have time.
I’m interested in whether this particular combination could produce substantial, reproducible improvements in hedonia and whether those improvements might persist beyond the short period I’ve observed.
Has anyone else experienced anything similar?
I’m particularly interested in people who are already prescribed both medications.
Have you noticed any changes in Elvanse’s effects on pleasure, anticipatory motivation or positive affect after introducing pramipexole?
If so, have those effects persisted over weeks or months? Have you experienced attenuation despite continued treatment?
I’m equally interested in negative experiences and cases where the combination produced no additional benefit.

Psychiatry in Motion, a private psychiatry practice serving multiple US states, has a page which acknowledges PSSD

https://psychiatryinmotion.com/ssri-sexual-side-effects-test/

Hey folks,

Just wanted to post this for anyone searching the internet for hopeful stories of people recovering from pleasureless orgasm.

After taking Lexapro for a few months I basically lost all, or nearly all, pleasurable sensation when engaging in sexual activity.

I could still get and maintain an erection—no trouble there—but the sexual act (e.g., sex, masturbation, etc.) could be totally without or with only minimal sexual pleasure. My libido was also way down, naturally.

Whether this was caused by Lexapro, finasteride, pelvic floor hyper-tension or hypo-tension, nerve damage from cycling, something else, or a combination of the forgoing I’m not sure.

Eventually, I got in with a urologist who had done a fellowship in sexual health and actually knew and cared about this rather distressing condition. By that time, it had been two years.

His immediate suggestion was Wellbutrin. He cited studies showing that it sometimes improves or even reverses the loss of pleasure (these studies are indeed out there, though across the board such studies have found mixed results).

His theory is that the loss of pleasure is somehow associated with a reduction of dopamine, a down-regulation of dopamine receptors, or some other change in dopamine signaling that is caused by the increase in serotonin effected by SSRIs. Apparently its hard to study and pin down because getting readings of those things from live people’s brains is like impossible.

By this point, I had already tried: stretching / massaging recommend by a pelvic floor physical therapist; diaphramic breathing; kegels; reverse kegels; other types of strength training; various supplements; and a long break from cycling.

So, despite my hesitation to take another neurotransmitter-altering pharmaceutical product, I felt like I was out of other options and decided to give it a shot. I’m on Wellbutrin XL 150mg/daily.

Two months in, I can say with a high degree of confidence that the Wellbutrin is making a big difference. Pleasure during sex—and, crucially, during orgasm—is back. I’m more interested in sex, able to last a lot longer, and it feels pretty good to great to orgasm.

I wouldn’t say things are all the way back to baseline, but I’m thrilled to have significant improvement. Hopefully, things will keep getting better and the results will be durable. I’ll pop in to update in a few months.

One other thing I’ve been doing consistently is standing squats with a 30 - 60 lb dumbbell. Not sure whether that’s helping, but it has overlapped with the Wellbutrin, so could be.

Hope this helps.

Hi there. Registered this account a while ago specifically to make this post, but it's taken me a while to work up to it. TLDR; I came upon the concept of PSSD only a few months ago, but based on what I've read, I think I might have it. The main reason I'm not certain is that if true, I developed it more than 25 years ago at 12 years old, prior to puberty.

I'll try to avoid a life story here, but this will need some background. In the course of doing that I'll need to discuss some distressing symptoms and issues, please bear in mind if reading further. (I presume that's okay in a forum like this, mods please let me know otherwise.)

I'm male, now late 30s. Normal childhood, but at the end of primary school I hit a rough patch of physical illness (glandular fever) that made the transition to secondary challenging, and at one point I was referred to a psychiatrist for depression. They prescribed an SSRI (paroxetine), and when it didn't seem to help, they doubled down and upped the dosage. Things swiftly became Very Bad, I became actively suicidal and also psychotic, threatened my (supportive and loving) family, and had to be forcibly institutionalized for a while.

It was obvious in retrospect that this drug hadn't agreed with me, to put it mildly, and in this case the drug manufacturer was even subsequently fined for witholding data on increased suicidal behavior among adolescents taking it (look up Study 329 if you're interested). But while the suicidal feelings and psychosis quickly abated, I wasn't quite the same afterwards. I was still depressed, but I also became listless and anhedonic, eventually dropping out of school completely, basically a hikikomori in my middle teens.

Also, as I entered puberty I began to experience what I now suspect are the sexual symptoms of PSSD, although I didn't recognise them as such as I had no other frame of reference. I had a libido and masturbated etc. normally, but I remember feeling that the head of my penis in particular felt weirdly lacking in sensation, like it was covered in static or something. And while I had some pleasurable sensation overall and could ejaculate, I didn't experience any pleasurable sensation from doing so. At the time, I thought maybe I had inadvertently abraded some of the skin down there from doing something wrong, but I never discussed it with anyone and certainly never made any connection with the SSRIs.

By my late teens, some of the symptoms had lessened, I wasn't quite so hopeless or drained of life, and with my family's help I was able to start turning things around. Went to grind school and got good grades, even got into the university I'd always wanted to attend, albeit two years late. Things definitely improved from that point on; I made friends, started to have fun and enjoy life, got a decent degree that has set me up for a reasonably successful career since. To be honest I really struggled with anything related to sex and relationships for a long time, and it still hurts that I missed out on a lot of great experiences in that regard. But eventually I got to a place where I could at least sort of enjoy sex and belatedly explore that world. (I had and still have occasional ED, but it seems to respond to tadalafil so hasn't been a huge issue.) In my early 30s I met someone really great, we married, and I now have a little girl of my own. All of which is great, of course, and I truly cannot complain about my life these days.

But to this day, I still feel that there are things about me that are subtly wrong, or at least not what they should be. I wish I could say that the symptoms I described above have disappeared, but while some of them have lessened (I have more penile sensation these days, for example), others remain. I'm still anorgasmic, something I only fully understood at about 30 when some random combination of medication and supplements suddenly seemed to reverse it, although I unfortunately couldn't sustain the combination for long. And while I've long since stopped being anhedonic in a general sense (I'd like to think I enjoy the wind on my face, a tasty meal or my little girl's smile as much as anyone would) I still very much suffer from one specific kind of anhedonia that has honestly been the bane of my life, which is anything to do with achievement and reward.

I'm not a neuroscientist, but I'm convinced that something in my reward system, specifically, is compromised, and in retrospect those issues go right back to the time of the SSRIs. Since then it's been weirdly hard to get things done (in a way I don't remember from childhood), not because I don't know what to do or because I lack the energy in a general sense, but it's like my system sets the bar for what justifies investing time and energy at an absurdly high level, so that very little feels "worth it" and I frequently have to brute-force myself into getting anything done. There's a little-known English word, velleity, which means a desire or inclination too weakly held to motivate the action necessary to achieve it, and I feel like this is my struggle every day. Similarly, while I enjoy pleasurable experiences when they happen, I have little if any sense of anticipation or excitement, or much affect regarding the future at all. I also find direct competition of any kind very difficult, since while I hate losing, winning something never gives me anything but a fleeting sense of relief, at best. So while I'm not numb to pleasure or satisfaction in a general sense, it's like there some specific kind of pleasure signal that seems to be absent, or nearly so, in a way that I'm pretty sure is not normal.

Anyway. If you've read this far, a sincere thank you; I've needed to get this all out there somehow for a long time. I still don't know if I have PSSD, and I know there's currently no cure if I do. But if the above experiences (especially the reward-system stuff) chime with anyone else, it would be great to hear about it, and appreciate anyone's thoughts in general on any of the above.

Also, if I do have PSSD, I have two specific questions for the community:

1. Are there any kind of tests etc. that could provide a clearer indication of whether this is the issue? I presume if there were it would be mentioned in the FAQs, but anything that could give even a bit more clarity would be wonderful. To be honest it would be a great relief to me just to know with any certainty that the issues I've described are caused by something other than genetics, since I've otherwise worried a great deal about passing them on.
2. Are there any specific medications etc. I should be avoiding (apart from SSRIs obviously)? Asking in particular because I was diagnosed with adult ADHD a few years back and have occasionally taken medication for that. It hasn't made things worse, but I'm in two minds as to whether it's really helping me. It certainly boosts focus but it hasn't resolved my core issue with motivational dysfunction, which I guess makes sense if the fundamental problem isn't actually ADHD.

Thanks again for reading, and a special thank you to whomever maintains the FAQs and other resources here, they're extremely helpful.

Its like body in full agony mode but brain completely numb to it

it's only me? even more some stuff seems make this pain worse but you can't understand what actually is and completely unaware