/dep/ - Depression

highs and lows balance.

Call upon the four, King of Longing.

>>208567
The good thing is you have nothing to lose. I have no waterproof advice for you but what helped me was to overcome personal weaknesses through self denial of instant gratification pleasures like fapping and fast food. It helped me to find joy in other things like reading, tv and video games or at least the ability to concentrate on these things again.

anhedonia manifests in me as an extreme form of laziness. It was a revelation to me to understand that normies actually get good feelings from exerting themselves, like literally even things that don't seem pleasurable at all give them a feeling of accomplishment or something that is pleasurable. They go to fold laundry or something and each time they fold an item they get a little hit of dopamine. I think this is the key to being able to do things in life, without that you are only motivated by the avoidance of pain which means you do the least amount possible as all exertion is suffering.

>>208600
Coming out of depression after most of my life in it I have to remind myself doing things can actually feel good. Like just being aware, moving your body, and passing through time doesn't feel bad. That didn't even make sense before. I have to remind myself of that every time I have a depression relapse because your world changes. I don't know if it's little hits of dopamine from each action but it's certainly different from depression.

>>208600
It also does with me, I have to push myself just to simply clean things because it just doesn't matter. My life is shit, everything and everyone hates me no matter what I do with myself so why even try most of the time unless I absolutely have to. Time will also feel like it's moving in slow motion and there's nothing else in my reach to experience that'll make me feel good. This could go on for weeks at a time if something else triggers it at the right time.

There are countless funny theories on what actually created depression evolutionary speaking. Some scientists believe, that the purpose of depressive symptoms is to make the sufferer feel miserable sick, so that his tribe/pack provides additional resources/cares for him, since they see his misery and want to help him.

>>208600
It's the hardest to actually do something, first hurdle is the biggest.
And while it might even feel good doing something, while doing it, memories of it being good are wiped very fast. It's like your constantly dizzy, short moments of feeling good don't last and you're back into nauseous hell shortly after.

>>208573

You saying I'm like Gurifisu, wizzie-san? The fact that he didn't have the guts (heh) to kill himself, is something we have in common at least. Personally though, I'd consider myself more like that nameless guy who became the living behelit. At least insofar as being a completely alien observer to the world, I suppose. Outside of that, it's not like someone can 'clang' their way out of anhedonia, or make self-defeating bargains with a pack of faggoty looking demons.

>>208592

>through self denial of instant gratification pleasures like fapping

Hmm, it's a divisive thing for me. I don't eat junk food, but fapping can often be just as exhausting & tiresome as it is pleasurable, if not moreso. It's a bad habit, I guess. One I could never see myself giving up unfortunately, but a bad habit nonetheless. In my case, I usually only jerk off only once or twice a day. That's still a lot, I suppose, but, again, I can't help it. Nonsense like "NoFap", may as well be as blatantly ludicrous as something like "NoPiss", or "NoShit" would be, at least as far as I'm concerned. Sure, you don't have to jerk off, in the same way you don't have to clean yourself, but committing to abstaining from either one is simply more trouble than it's worth.

>>208600

I felt good the other day when I set up my mother's printer. I sometimes feel good when I vaccum/tidy up my room. In that sense, I sort of get what you mean. Like this other wizzie mentioned however, >>208621 it means nothing in the end. There's no consistent pleasure or respite to be found in repetitive chores, or one time, easy to accomplish tasks that help someone else & briefly endow me with a sense of ephemeral value. The only reason the former works on occasion is because I don't do chores very often (if I did it'd be total fucking shit, of course), and the only reason the latter works is because it's a one time instance that doesn't strain me to the point where it simply ends up being annoying, or otherwise makes me feel like shit.

I mean, can I still enjoy gaming & modern entertainment in general? To some extent, yes. It's the fact that the anhedonic downtime between the periods in which I'm able to enjoy it become ever longer, and ever larger. Almost each day is an endurance test of pure discomfort. Where even doing the things you pointed out are beyond contemplation. Again, as the other wizzie already mentioned, it's the struggle to actually do something, anything, that feels insurmountable. At this point, I really do think that anhedonia, or at least chronic anhedonia, is a permanent condition that, to a rather large degree, makes life perpetually unbearable. There's as much a chance of solving it, as there is for someone trying to solve their Alzheimer's, or whatever else.

>>208614

Would reptiles, assuming they had the same desires & intellectual capability of current humans, suffer from anhedonia? Would cephalopods? Would even other mammals, like say sloths? Is anhedonia simply the inevitable cost of consciousness? On some level, I don't even know why I'm asking this, since, as old papa Schop would probably say, "Course it fucking is!"

Really, the fact of the matter is, to truly get past anhedonia you'd almost need to develop a neural implant of some kind that could disable whatever part of the brain is responsible for producing a crushing sense of ennui, or to otherwise convert those sensations into something else. To truly stay drunk & satisfied in escapism, as juvenile to wannabe normans as it might be, one would need to somehow continually revitalize, though artificial means, the synapses, so as to prevent jadedness from taking root. In such a scenario, escapism would be perpetually novel & enticing, just as it would seem to have been the first time. This notion of stopping or even reversing the diminishing returns of escapism is, to me anyway, the true holy grail of technology. It'll never happen of course and, even if it did, I'd hardly ever trust it well enough to ever make use out of it. I mean, can you imagine if something ever went wrong, (this is humans we're talking about here) as it almost certainly would? I sure as hell don't. Be that as it may, in the hypothetical scenario where one could 100% guarantee its effectiveness/safety, it would be the greatest thing, next to death itself, that I could imagine happening to me. I mean, hell, what is escapism, but simply waiting out the reaper, anyway? I just want the escapism to actually feel good while I'm sitting here waiting. That's fucking all. To hell with the rest of whatever both wizards & normalfags cling to (developing arbitrary & pointless skills, learning useless things, reading a bunch of stupid, empty shit because 'reading rainbow, books r gr8', etc.)

>>208647
I understand and fully relate to everything you're saying. I've been battling anhedonia for what would be 2+years now, and only until recently was I able to make significant progress.

For the purposes of this post, I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're like me, a reclusive shut-in with no friends, family or social contact in general(maybe you chat with the local priest every now and then, but that doesn't really change anything).I’m also going to assume that you’ve been on the internet for a long time and consumed all kinds of media,movies,shows,websites etc.

What I’ve learned during the past few months is that the battle against anhedonia is constant and always uphill. The fact that you are no longer satiated by video games or anime is part of the process. You are no longer the 16 year old kid whose brain was fresh as it comes who enjoyed the internet immensely everytime you were on it. You have already done most things that could be done, and you have subconsciously learned all the patterns that made escapism via a computer(I’ll abbreviate this as EVAC from now on) enjoyable. Since you recognize all the patterns consciously or subconsciously, EVAC became predictable and boring and lost its magic. It became harder and harder to stimulate your brain instantly.

What you need to understand that those days are gone forever, never to return. In fact, even if you were to do everything right from now on, what you are going to see is (at best) a slight to moderate improvement in your EVAC experience. Your brain is wired in a way now that simply prohibits that intense stimulation from happening through EVAC.

You have to accept this and find other avenues to explore. And as mocking and cynical you are of reading, and as retarded as Jordan Fraudsterson is, reading or learning a language or getting better at a video game and challenging your abilities and knowledge constantly is an avenue that almost never gets old. Don’t let frauds like JBP make you think that building habits to better your day-to-day life is a waste of time. You will still be engaging in escapism since, let’s be honest, everything we ever do in life is simply escapism before we die eventually;us humans do shit that has no objective or justifiable meaning and die anyways. No, instead you can make the most out of this avenue, because as you’ve been experiencing yourself, there is not much else out there. So just get good at something(preferably at something that matters and improves your life, could be money, your job etc.) and challenge yourself. Learn a new language and watch movies, TV shows or whatever in that language. Doing these will not create meaning or fulfill you, but it will pass the time, which is objectively what we are all out to do here. You’re not gonna read books because you are delusional about their worth or whatever, you’re gonna read them in order to find something new and re-create that feeling of intense stimulation.

I hope I didn’t waste my time by typing all this out in case that you think I’m advocating for a version of JBP’s charlatanism. If you are serious about defeating anhedonia rather than asking for a magic pill that would make all your formerly enjoyable pastimes enjoyable again, this is the way to go.

>>208653

>For the purposes of this post, I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're like me,

I'd say we're fairly close in our situations, at least in certain ways. I assume, based on what you say, that you must have a job, yes? If so, that's a pretty big difference between us.

Personally speaking, I've been a complete agoraphobic hermit for over 12 years now. The term 'hikikomori' almost doesn't even cover it, frankly. Plus, I'm not Japanese so using it as a descriptor has always felt pretty off in that way. As an aside, Japanese society is simply repugnant to me. Sure as shit am glad I didn't end up born there. Yeesh, that would've sucked. Anyway, I live with my parents and interact with literally no one, but them and occasionally my brother when he comes to visit. Often times, I just ignore him, though. Day to day it's reduced to simply being my mother & I, since my father up & left for good not too long ago. I have no friends, not even online, and I've also never once joined a public chatroom (like discord, or whatever). I've only had two jobs in my entire life. One as a paper boy as a kid which lasted for a couple years. and another as a clerk at a local video store, which lasted for about a month. I'm also a highschool dropout (surprise, surprise, I guess). Only made it to the end of Grade 9 and then dropped out due to a combination of disinterest, anxiety and simply wanting to embrace my chosen forms of instant gratification based escapism. I got my NEETbux in 2012 and my mother looks after me in every other way (cooks the meals, does the laundry, sorts any larger stuff that might come up, etc.)

For me, my anhedonia didn't really start hitting me hard until about the end of 2014. Ever since, it's just been a near constant battle to fight my own overwhelmingly crippling listlessness. Interspersed here & there with a few moments of brief respite, maybe lasting upwards of a week or two, but never more than that.

>I’m also going to assume that you’ve been on the internet for a long time

Yes, but I actually only started using forums & message boards in early 2016, mostly out of desperation to express, and perhaps escape, from my ever worsening anhedonia. Before that point, it would've been unthinkable for me to go to such places. Why would I? I had my escapism and it worked for me. Places like these were simply unnecessary & irrelevant, with me being far too anxious & disinterested to ever seriously consider venturing anywhere near them. It's true that I've also consumed lots of different media, long before resorting to message boards & forums, but now it simply feels like a struggle. Yeah, maybe I'm just a base consumer, but you know what? I don't care. As much as I've consumed, there's still loads more stuff I'd also like to consume. My only desire is to do so without stupid shit like anhedonia holding me back, making it feel like the worst thing in the world.

>Your brain is wired in a way now that simply prohibits that intense stimulation from happening through EVAC.

Exactly. Which is why there isn't really an answer to this. At the end of the day, there's simply no current way possible to rejuvenate those worn out synapses in our brains. That why I used the example of a Deus Ex-like augmentation that could do just that. A futuristic neural implant designed to suppress or eliminate anhedonia. That's honestly the only thing I could see as being an actual solution, as fantastical as it sounds.

>retarded as Jordan Fraudsterson

I've actually never even once listened to the guy or barely heard his voice, funnily enough. Irregardless, he always came across as an idiotic fraud to me and I could smell his bullshit from a mile away just based through the copious amount of memes/jokes about him alone, implying his greater, overused schtick (dumb self-help guru, with an anti-NEET, anti-hermit, anti-wizard, conservative mindset).

>You will still be engaging in escapism since, let’s be honest, everything we ever do in life is simply escapism before we die eventually;us humans do shit that has no objective or justifiable meaning and die anyways.

Well, at the very least, it's quite refreshing to hear someone admit that for a change. You're absolutely right that even those seemingly "productive activities" that come so highly touted by the norman wing of wizardry are just pointless forms of escapism & self-indulgence in the end, equal to anything else that's more frowned upon (video games, movies, anime, etc.)

It also bears mentioning that truly applying yourself to something difficult & that's mentally/physically taxing (learning a language, reading books centered around complex plots or ideas, or, I don't know, becoming a fucking gymnast, or whatever) doesn't necessarily mean it'll lead to what you want to have happen. In this case, being a partial release from anhedonia. I know you accounted for this already, but I just think it remains as something that begs to be reiterated.

It's also tough doing these sorts of things since extreme depression & chronic anhedonia can do quite a number on one's mental faculties, which, as you might have already guessed, in my case weren't all that great to begin with. It's basically a form of brain damage, at least insofar as mental acuity, memory recall & general IQ is concerned. Couple this with my OCD and even something as reading a short book, becomes nigh Olympian an undertaking. Fuck, personally speaking, I read my first real book in over 13 years, that being TCATHR by Ligotti. It was great stuff, didn't exactly tell or reveal to me anything that I didn't already come to on my own, but great stuff nonetheless. The major problem was that reading it was insanely mentally taxing for me. Had to re-read pages constantly, whether due to OCD, or because of my short attention span not being able to hold what I just read, leading to lots of literal headaches forcing me to stop. Even a book as short as TCATHR, felt like reading fucking 'War & Peace' to a retard like me.

Again, that's just an example, but it illustrates how constant & chronic anhedonia/depression has ruined my mind. I couldn't learn a language, or how to code, or whatever the fuck else it is that sorts like that do, even if I wanted to. My mind is literally not up to the task of it. As a result, I'm in a double bind here. A post like this one describes what I'm talking about here.

>>>/dep/207119

Physical stuff is a different story, of course. Your brain can be a rotten lump of shit, as is mine, yet that shouldn't get in the way of it. In my case, I exercised, and still exercise, fairly consistently, even as a hermit (using kettlebells, leg weights and a workout mat) and have done so for over a year now. And you know what? Didn't really help. It may have slightly stymied my anhedonia, but the condition has only proceeded to get worse. Drastically changed my eating habits around the same time I started exercising (no sugar, no junk food, no bread, no milk, only drink water, only meat I eat is chicken, turkey & fish, etc.), lost tons of weight and have an amazing diet now. And you know what? Same deal. Maybe it stymied it a little and I would've been even worse off was I still a fat ass, but the anhedonia is still excruciating to deal with.

>If you are serious about defeating anhedonia rather than asking for a magic pill that would make all your formerly enjoyable pastimes enjoyable again, this is the way to go.

I can appreciate you offering your perspective on this and I wouldn't say what you wrote was a waste of time, since it might help others. Be that as it may, I can't see how doing any of the things you listed would change matters for me specifically. Anhedonia is, when it comes right down to it, a universal condition. Once you reach it, that's it. Switching up hobbies or pursuits really won't make a significant dent. Like you said yourself, the sort of stimulation & level of distraction I'm looking for is essentially gone forever. Any slight or moderate improvements that may happen to alleviate this awful state, in my view, being more a result of chance, than what one actually does in the end.

Even though I poo pooed them in my OP, drugs & alcohol are, simply put, the next best thing to my hypothetical neural implant. They're a temporary fix, certainly, but that's the best that's available, unfortunately. Personally speaking, I just rue the fact that neither of those substances ever worked for me, nor will ever work for me. Weed causes panic attacks & derealization in me (sativa strains, indica strains, doesn't matter), and alcohol. Well, alcohol, I've never actually tried before. If I'm being honest, even if it were a temporary fix to my anhedonia, I don't care. I sure as shit ain't going to run the risk of becoming a potential alcoholic, plus it's simply poison for the body anyway.

>>208664

Just an addendum to what I just said, but here's a random post of mine from the latest dep crawl thread, which I feel helps to better describe & illustrate my own felt experience with anhedonia.

>>>/dep/208483

>>208664
>I can't see how doing any of the things you listed would change matters for me specifically.

It is not a matter that you can have insights on before trying. Your brain wants long-term enjoyments that stick with you, rather than trying something that loses its effects as soon as you stop using/doing it.

>It also bears mentioning that truly applying yourself to something difficult & that's mentally/physically taxing (learning a language, reading books centered around complex plots or ideas, or, I don't know, becoming a fucking gymnast, or whatever) doesn't necessarily mean it'll lead to what you want to have happen. In this case, being a partial release from anhedonia. I know you accounted for this already, but I just think it remains as something that begs to be reiterated.

This is also true, but I think it is at least worth a try.

>It's also tough doing these sorts of things since extreme depression & chronic anhedonia can do quite a number on one's mental faculties, which, as you might have already guessed, in my case weren't all that great to begin with. It's basically a form of brain damage, at least insofar as mental acuity, memory recall & general IQ is concerned. Couple this with my OCD and even something as reading a short book, becomes nigh Olympian an undertaking. Again, that's just an example, but it illustrates how constant & chronic anhedonia/depression has ruined my mind. I couldn't learn a language, or how to code, or whatever the fuck else it is that sorts like that do, even if I wanted to. My mind is literally not up to the task of it. As a result, I'm in a double bind here. A post like this one describes what I'm talking about here.

I also struggle with my attention span, but my problems with my mental acuity or attention span are definitely not as bad as yours. What a wizzy here suggested to me was the usage of mini-habits to slowly build it all up(you can google mini-habits by the youtuber “better than yesterday”. I’ve been making the mistake that most people struggling with this issue makes, which is try to bite more than I can chew, limit myself to a few days of unrealistic expectations, and when it becomes obvious during the day that I can’t make it, give up entirely. The solution is to slowly build it all up. Limit yourself to a minute of studying, or 1 page of reading, or 30 seconds of watching a documentary(depending on how bad your situation is) make it so that you literally cannot fail the given task. Then slowly make your way up, but always increase it in a way that it is significantly under your limit. I don’t have OCD or depression so I can’t comment on how it would be in your situation, but as I’ve said, it’s worth a try. Don’t fall for the trap of self-condemnation. If you fail to do 1 minute, aim for 30 seconds, or 15 seconds. Just lower your aim. Our brains’ situation is uncharted territory;nobody else had problems like ours before so nobody can really give you objectively good or useful advice, I’m only writing this because I have experience.

>>208691

>Your brain wants long-term enjoyments that stick with you

Does it, though? I don't feel this to be the case. Is there clinical evidence to suggest this? At the end of the day, if it's a choice between forcing myself to read a book, or forcing to play a video game, I'd honestly just rather play the video game. It's a struggle either way, so what can really be gained by picking one, over the other? If anything, reading in itself makes me doubly unwell, due to what I've already mentioned previously. The actual process of reading has as much novelty to me as anything else, which is to say none.

>A wizzy here suggested to me was the usage of mini-habits to slowly build it all up

Couldn't those techniques be just as easily applied to re-immersing oneself in video games, or any other form of modern entertainment, though? As you say, the goal is simply escapism. If one used these techniques to make counting the fibers of their carpet an engaging task, then, as far as I'm concerned, it would be a success.

Naturally, I haven't read much, that's true, but so what? Anhedonia, depression & OCD, taints it just as badly as anything else I could think to do. It's not as if forcing myself to read will, in the end, prove to be less tiresome than simply forcing myself to play games would be. Again, I don't mean to sound excessively belligerent or defeatist, but I just can't help, but see it this way.

>I don’t have OCD or depression so I can’t comment on how it would be in your situation, but as I’ve said, it’s worth a try.

Fair enough, but, man, let me tell you. Depression & OCD are some major fucking buzzkillers. That fact alone, more than any other, is what makes them truly intolerable. Yeah, they might, and probably have, lowered my overall IQ, but their ability to inflict anhedonia on top of that, is what most assuredly makes them the most demonic things ever to grapple with.

However, it needs to be said, that, had it not been for my grappling with major depression & anhedonia, I highly doubt I would have ever bothered to begin exercising, losing weight & eating better. At the same time, I'd trade away all those things in a heartbeat to get rid of my anhedonia. Yessir, no doubt about it. As a hermit, being in shape & healthy literally means nothing to me. In the end, it was just an empty, worthless gesture that happened by accident, due to my proverbial, spastic flailing in trying to cope with chronic anhedonia.

Nothing can be done. This sensation of incompleteness, malady, tedium is a fundamental part of humans. Since the classics the concept of taedium vitae was a thing. Perhaps you could try to vent that malaise through art as Baudelaire and others did and Schopenhauer suggested. Of course, this won't solve the problem but is a form of coping if you aren't considering suicide.


"When the low, heavy sky weighs like a lid
On the groaning spirit, victim of long ennui,
And from the all-encircling horizon
Spreads over us a day gloomier than the night;

When the earth is changed into a humid dungeon,
In which Hope like a bat
Goes beating the walls with her timid wings
And knocking her head against the rotten ceiling;

When the rain stretching out its endless train
Imitates the bars of a vast prison
And a silent horde of loathsome spiders
Comes to spin their webs in the depths of our brains,

All at once the bells leap with rage
And hurl a frightful roar at heaven,
Even as wandering spirits with no country
Burst into a stubborn, whimpering cry.

— And without drums or music, long hearses
Pass by slowly in my soul; Hope, vanquished,
Weeps, and atrocious, despotic Anguish
On my bowed skull plants her black flag."

>>208876

>Perhaps you could try to vent that malaise through art as Baudelaire and others did and Schopenhauer suggested.

Well, in some sense, I could almost see myself doing that sort of thing. If money & space were no object, I'd probably give the whole "art thing" a whirl. Every now & again, I've actually sometimes fantasized about how great it would to be have a large "expression area", as it were. Somewhere where I could just paint, or, hell, I don't know, maybe even try & learn an instrument, or do whatever the hell else a useless autist like me would be capable of doing in this regard (not much, naturally). It's not like I'd actually end up learning anything, though. At the end of the day, it'd basically just be a complete mess of retardation (splashing paint around, generating inchoate noise with some instrument, smashing panes of glass or other objects & trying to make some sense out of the chaos, recording my thoughts aloud then listening back to them, etc.). Again, it'd basically just be a place where I could vent my emotions fully, without restraint and let it all gush out like sewage from a drain pipe.

"Art" as in actual artistry itself & mastering a particular craft day after day, being something I have no interest in, nor any aptitude for. I often wish I did, but I don't. I'd love to be a Dostoevsky writing some sophisticated masterpiece, or a Schopenhauer penning some treatise on my own philosophical musings, simply for my own sake and my own satisfaction, with me being the only one who'll ever read it. The real problem is that I'm just a dull, useless sack of shit. I have no spark for artistry, nor anything else, in even the tiniest degree. I have nothing worth expressing, nor can I even begin to think of anything that could ever change that. In that sense, I'm as vacant as a mannequin. A mannequin who can only exist & be aware of how empty it is, wishing there was something, when, of course, there will only ever be nothing. For better or worse, I'm just a completely shallow consumer. There's not one cell in my body that deviates from this. Nothing is more foreign to me than the drive or desire to create, or to be a creator. Even shit like that, to some extent, is simply left up to chance in regards to how our individual DNA shakes out. Schopenhauer & Baudelaire had the privilege to be artists, thanks to their favorable, deterministically decided happenstance to allow them to be. I, and most others, aren't as fortunate, so "art" as a way out from anhedonia, as they prescribed it, has an extra problem, in addition to the joys of art simply suffering from diminishing returns like anything else.

>Of course, this won't solve the problem but is a form of coping if you aren't considering suicide.

Hell man, I consider suicide every god damn day. The problem is that I'm too much of a weak little faggot to actually do the deed and thereby save myself the enormous trouble of having to wake up to yet another day of this fucking awful shit. Even outside of chronic anhedonia, nothing about my existence has, in any way, ever been compelling to me. How could it, since I'm simply nothing more than a mannequin? It's just an excruciatingly pointless & self-defeating waste of time. Tragically, however, I'm also a cowardly little bitch. If I could jam the barrel of a shotgun in my mouth and pull the trigger, while not being crippled by fear to do so, I'd proceed without the slightest hesitation. That's the only wish or dream I've ever known. To have the strength to just get on with it. But, whatever. I'm just weak little bitch #2457 who's too much of a pathetic wuss to off himself. Same old, same old.

Well, either way, I'm glad posts like yours can still be found on Wizchan these days. Never heard of Baudelaire before, but that quote of his really does sum the whole dreadful matter up. For all the good describing the ordeal does in the end, which, for me at least, has never been much. The discomfort can never be washed away. Least of all by mere words, whether they be mine or someone else's.

>anhedonia
there is no cure for it
your body just comes to conclusion that your entire existence is pointless because your wont reproduce
therefore, anyhting you do is equally pointless

only thing you can do is to find distractions that keep your mind occupied for some hours per day

>>209130
>The discomfort can never be washed away. Least of all by mere words, whether they be mine or someone else's.

That's true. As it has already been pointed in this thread, there aren't cures because that state of uneasiness is implicit to life and otherwise it wouldn't be life.

Nevertheless, knowing that there have existed people experiencing and channeling the same malaise offers me some little solace. Of course, I'll never have the artistic talent of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Schopenhauer, Kafka, Pessoa but at the end they were just miserable stinky humans made of flesh and bone and full of fears and imperfections. As "cringe" as it might sound, I consider them my friends. At least I know I'm not the only one feeling the same (perhaps for this same reason I keep coming back to this place) and I read them while waiting for death to arrive. Anguish won't dissapear but what else can I do?

>>208653
>just get good at something
Is that supposed to be a joke?

>>208729
Sorry for the late reply wizzy.

>>208729
>Does it, though? I don't feel this to be the case. Is there clinical evidence to suggest this?
No, I'm speaking from experience. Also "clinical evidence" regarding issues like this is rarely helpful or conclusive.Reading was just one example. There are many different types of hobbies that build up on themselves.
>t the end of the day, if it's a choice between forcing myself to read a book, or forcing to play a video game, I'd honestly just rather play the video game. It's a struggle either way, so what can really be gained by picking one, over the other?

The difference is(this depends on the video game, but) reading and then challenging your knowledge(through questions or whatever) should be able to induce some kind of novelty. And when I say reading don't get too hung up on words, you can read advanced quantum physics and that would also be reading. As you've said the goal is simply escapism. Playing a video game would also work if you were challenging yourself constantly to get better. You're right, reading has no superiority over playing video games, it was just meant to serve an example.
>If anything, reading in itself makes me doubly unwell, due to what I've already mentioned previously.
I can't think of much else. you have to find that form of escapism yourself. Also try to get the gist of my post rather than focusing on a few examples.
>Couldn't those techniques be just as easily applied to re-immersing oneself in video games, or any other form of modern entertainment, though?
It could, if you were to get that long-term enjoyment somehow. There are games which you can play for a thousand hours and you’d still be lacking many features the game has to offer.
>As you say, the goal is simply escapism. If one used these techniques to make counting the fibers of their carpet an engaging task, then, as far as I'm concerned, it would be a success

Yes but the difference is that you subconsciously know that counting the fibers of a carpet doesn’t translate itself into anything, nor does it provide you new avenues to explore, at best you can repeat the same task. Whereas when you are learning A2 level Italian, it translates itself to learning more advanced grammar and being able to read Italian books or watching anime with Italian dubs or whatever.
>Again, I don't mean to sound excessively belligerent or defeatist, but I just can't help, but see it this way.

No worries. As I’ve said before, try to get the gist of my post. Only you can find that specific activity.

My fingers are crossed for you wizzy. Anhedonia is a fucking bitch. You have my sympathies.

There is a supplement called Sarcosine and NAC (both are available on Nootropics Depot), studies show it helps with negative symptoms of schizophrenia which include our very own anhedonia. Personally I order Etizolam (RC benzo) very cheap in bulk powder from the dark net, and dose 0.5mg using volumetric dosing (look this up). I find it works well for anhedonia but it comes with all the addiction problems of benzos, I'm going to try sarcosine and NAC soon though. I'd reccomend Etizolam if that one doesn't work.

>>209272
Also I know you said drugs are not an option but 0.5mg of Etizolam isn't even noticeable.

>>209272
What's the word between "nothing" and "could" in that image?

>There is literally nothing ??? could do on the computer to make yr life better except turning it off

It kinda looks like "u" or "yis".

>>209151

>there aren't cures because that state of uneasiness is implicit to life and otherwise it wouldn't be life.

Yeah. I mean, I've pretty much said as much myself and am pretty much a broken record, even in regards to this thread alone, when it comes to this stuff. Again though, be that as it may, it still remains to make me quite ill & despair ridden. Life being what it is and what it will always be, makes me desperate to not only push my personal off switch ASAP, but the off switch on the universe itself.

>Nevertheless, knowing that there have existed people experiencing and channeling the same malaise offers me some little solace.

Well, surprising as it may seem, I don't even know what that feels like, honestly. Personally speaking, I've never once experienced that same sensation to any noticeable degree. Cioran, Zapffe, Ligotti, Mainlander, Benetar, or, hell, even random yahoos like Inmendham (etc.), none of it has ever elicited a sense of solace, fellowship or relief in me. In the end, no matter what I read, hear, type, and or say, I still feel the same way I always have. Whether there are others out there experiencing, articulating & artistically expounding on the crippling miasma of this excess of reality we're all saddled with, it makes no difference to me. It's like alright, they went, or are currently going through, the same trials & tribulations that I'm going through. So what? How does this help me? I know how well it can help most others since, even Ligotti himself in TCATHR, commented on how much he cherishes the likes of Poe, Lovecraft & others for having been that voice in the darkness, whispering to him that he wasn't alone & that people of his, and our, unique temperament & perspective, "were also here", being the way he put it, I believe. I guess, for me, it just all rings hollow on some level. It just slides down the wall like a wet ball of gooey sludge, ending in an unsatisfying plump at the bottom.

Then again, maybe I've just become jaded & forgetful. I doubt you've ever heard of it, but, now that I think of it, reading the semi-anonymous blog "Say No To Life", by a user that went by the name of Karl, felt pretty cathartic in its own way, with an additional sense of recognition to the effect of, "Wow, so I'm not taking crazy pills then. This guy fucking says it all.", which, indeed, felt a bit relieving, to some extent at the time. This must've been like 8-9 years ago now and I've just found that since then nothing has really had the same impact on me, since Karl was effectively my first taste of another's pessimism & cold sense of reality which reflected my own. Others have undoubtedly said what he said better, while taking everything that much further in regards to its content, but, again, to me it just doesn't seem to matter, or have the same effect. The initial knowledge that there were others out there like me was nice, but afterwards it meant about as much to me as anything else does, which is to say nothing.

Now, despite all that, I still naturally prefer to gravitate towards those who share the burden of knowing & being encumbered by the ghastly truths of this universe, painfully raw as they are. To pull again from Ligotti when he referenced "Panic" by The Smiths in TCATHR, I, like him, want songs/stories that say something to me about my life, and my experiences, and by extension the lives of other chronic depressives, even if, in my case, they don't make me feel any better. Just so long as they don't make me feel worse, which practically anything else of a different sort would. In his song "The Frolic" by C93, David Tibet uttering the lyrics;

"A voice whispers to me
And says nothing, nothing
There is nothing"

really nails this for me. Funnily enough, that itself shows a sign of me feeling solace in another's bleakness, despite the fact of it expressing the emptiness & nothingness that comes from hearing it in the first place, which I otherwise always suffer from.

That fact alone probably explains why I still keep coming here. I feel very little empathy or fellowship, even amongst those I might identify with, but the natural environment of Wizchan, and /dep/ specifically, lends itself well to my temperament, even if it leads to nothing, but a sense of emptiness.

>As "cringe" as it might sound, I consider them my friends.

That's not "cringe", at least not to me, anyway. I wish I could say the same, frankly. Ideally, I really should consider these sorts as my compatriots & fellow sufferers of reality, but I don't. They're just nothing to me. I have a poverty of emotions in all aspects, it seems.

>Anguish won't dissapear but what else can I do?

Uncomfortably & impatiently wait for death? Oh, wait. That's the problem. I don't know, wizzie. I just don't know. Whatever gets you by, I guess.

I don't remember that particular scene from Hanbei, by the way. Weird.

>>209196

>Yes but the difference is that you subconsciously know that counting the fibers of a carpet doesn’t translate itself into anything, nor does it provide you new avenues to explore

Well, you got me there, I guess. Frankly speaking however, as an agoraphobic hermit, I'd consider most anything else to, more or less, amount to the same thing in the end. If I myself don't feel a personal sense of accomplishment or direction in these tasks, then they essentially become as pointless, mind numbing, and as much of a dead end as counting proverbial carpet fibers would be.

Anyway, I'm not sure how else I can get across just how truly bereft I am of everything you're trying to assume I'm capable of. Literally all I've done for, what is essentially the past two weeks (which itself exemplifies the last 12 years of my life), is get up, browse Wizchan, force myself to sit down & play a video game for 5-6 hours straight (whether I enjoy it or not, doesn't matter), eat a couple times, maybe shower or masturbate at some point, then finally go back to sleep. My brain constantly feels like it's leaking out of my skull & I'm always, always uncomfortable, or fearing on how I'll swiftly return to feeling uncomfortable should I happen to feel "good". By and large, it's a complete, sterile waiting room of a nightmare & I go to bed each night hoping I don't wake up, only to then open my eyes and have Groundhog Day play itself out once more. The shit you're suggesting that I do is so alien & utterly beyond me that it may as well be coming from the fucking Andromeda Galaxy.

I also, as an aside, have a really bad OCD related tick lodged in my head at the moment that's making me doubly unwell & anxious to boot. Again, for further reference, this is me;

>>>/dep/207056

"Gotta do that shit! I have to! Otherwise my soul will get sucked out. I know it will. It will. I need to do it. I don't want to, but I'll have to. If I don't, the worst things imaginable will happen. I'm a completionist, I have to do it. I need to see it through, but I keep putting it off, which makes me anxious, which makes me more unwell, which makes me berate myself more. The anxiety won't leave me unless I obey, but I don't want to do it. I just want to sleep. I just want to be left alone. But you need to do it! How much longer will you wait! The timer on your soul getting sucked out is running out, you need to do it now! Stop, jesus christ, just stop. Ok, I'm doing it. Now I'm just feeling intense anxiety & discomfort. I have to stop. You can't! You're not finished yet! You won't let this go. You can't. I won't let you. It must be finished. It must. This ritual can't be denied. It can't. Every moment you do, the worse it will get."

All this, from me not finishing some random game I started a little while back. There's plenty of games I never finish of course, but this particular one created what I sometimes refer to as an, "especially strong & upsetting thought ritual, except with extra steps required". Unfortunately for me, I still haven't done what I need to do. I'd imagine I probably will because the thought of not doing it causes me somewhat noticeable anxiety & recurringly unpleasant thoughts which resemble the above.

>>209293

(Continued from above….)

It's not just restricted to gaming though, so don't mistake this for just that. Sometimes I'll watch a video, or read an article, that will elicit the exact same sort of thing, just with a shorter half-life. Even in the rare times when I'm outside, I'll get these same insane notions in my head that refuse to let me be.

Here's one common example. Say my mother & I are driving somewhere unfamiliar and random and I see an especially triggering thing in my periphery, such as a lone well with a cement cover over it, or a utility shed far enough away from the road where no one could possibly here me screaming if I were trapped there. This is then usually proceeded by the following;

"Quick! Think of three things that are less claustrophobic or creepy, or else you'll be trapped there for eternity! Ok, ok, ok. Uh, a nice green field, the ocean, and um, fuck. FUCK! What else? QUICK! Oh, uh, the highlands of Scotland. Ok, good. Now think all three of those things fast, three times, then swallow your saliva, then do it again three more times and you'll be safe. Make sure not to swallow your saliva too fast or else you'll need to start over! All make sure you swallow it in the opposite direction, since when you swallow you're firing an immaterial piece of essence off into whichever direction you're currently facing. If you swallow when facing well, or shed, or whatever, it'll be trapped there forever! The same is true for gaming as well. Make sure to swallow looking away from your monitor so your essence doesn't travel into the game and become trapped there in whatever claustrophobic space you might find yourself in. Make sure to get to a less triggering area before swallowing. Also makes sure to turn the camera just enough so you can still see the claustrophobic space, then turn away, then turn back from the opposite direction, then again the other way, then swallow, then you can leave."

As an aside, if I ever became some random lets player, at least I'd have a bit of a unique gimmick, I suppose. Which, itself, would probably just amount to me being another regular lolcow for people to point & laugh at, I'd imagine.

Here's another, even more insane, example. I see a bench and I find myself refusing to sit down at it because I become convinced that if I do, I'll somehow be trapped inside it forever. Here's another, I see some people in a canoe paddling on a lake and lose sight of them and become suddenly delusionally paranoid that they were actually ghosts and that now they're going to stalk me & trap me somewhere forever in some hell dimension. Going back to when I was a kid, I'd have paranoid delusion like these all the time. I can recall how me and my family saw a random cat one night when we were all out somewhere and they were going to try to follow it to perhaps help it, but, crying & sobbing, I convinced them not to, since I thought it was a trick and it was going to trap our souls forever in some horrid abyss somewhere. I can also remember going to amusement parks when I was kid and, next to being too afraid of going on the roller coasters, I was constantly on edge, since I thought I'd be trapped forever in one of the attractions and never find my way out again, or be otherwise abandoned and left alone once the park was near closing & the lights were starting to go out.

I suppose one could play armchair psychologist here and deduce that I must have unaddressed abandonment issues of some kind, leading to these recurring feelings of my being trapped forever & forgotten in some dark void, or abyssal purgatory of some kind. I won't deny that, on some level, that could certainly be part of it, but this particular tick of mine has evolved into such an amorphous mass at this point that its origins, whatever it might've been, has more or less become irrelevant.

I also had other random fears as a kid as well, which one would more expect coming from a child. One such example being how I'd compulsively check the underside of our car for Slappy from Goosebumps (TV version), since I thought he'd be under there waiting for my family to fall asleep so he could either murder us or turn us all into dummies. Funny actually, how Ligotti would probably be terrified of a Slappy like construct, given his preoccupation with puppets playing a large role in his stories most of the time, reflecting humanity's own status as living puppets. Of course, as an adult, I don't suffer from much of the phobias I had as a kid fortunately, but the ones that have stuck with me, have essentially become intractable universes on to themselves, of the kind I already described above.

Then again, I've also developed new ones. For instance, I'm deathly terrified of the notion of infinity in a way that I simply wasn't as a child. Think Junji Ito's "The Long Dream", Stephen King's "Jaunt", that one Black Mirror episode (etc.). I mean, what could be worse than to have death be made impossible? Imagine if you were indestructible and immortal and, for one reason or another, humanity, except for you, went extinct. Again, let's also assume you also never had the means to somehow build yourself a means of escape from the Sun's eventual destruction of the Earth. Everything would be destroyed, yet you'd still be there. You'd drift through space forever & ever, eventually after eons of time, being left in a completely darkened void. I feel like the most heinous notions of a "hell", or an "underworld", always come back to that denial of death as a means of escape. Even back to the Greeks, you had the tragic tale of Sisyphus, in which he's doomed to an eternity of torment with no means of escape. On that level, this fear isn't really irrational per se, since it's a form of terror most would probably be struck paralyzed with if they were to truly sit there & focus on it, as I sometimes do. Perhaps death itself leads to what I'm talking about. I sure hope not, since even reincarnation would be better than that. A dystopic misuse of technology itself could also lead itself to this, which makes me quite thankful that civilization won't last long enough to get there, given its, fairly likely, near term collapse.

Anyway, I don't really know where I'm going with this, other than to say that I'm really fucked in the head and am not really capable of doing anything, intellectually or emotionally speaking, beyond, at this point, forcefully jamming the heroin needle of gaming, or mindless web browsing, into my blackened veins every single day so as to drown out my own thoughts & frustrations, occasionally having them amplified & reinforced by the odd ritual that may come up.

Again, another Tool song that comes to mind is "Undertow", which I find, once more, manages to carnally represent what I'm trying to describe here. Insofar as it relates to my personal struggles with anhedonia & OCD obviously, and not drug addiction. These two bits especially;

"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up
You're saturating me
How could I let this happen?
Why don't you kill me?
I am weak and numb and insignificant
How could I let this bring me
Back to my knees?"

"I'm back down, I'm in the undertow
I'm helpless and I'm awake, I'm in the undertow
I'll die beneath the undertow
There doesn't seem no other way out of the undertow"

>>209272

Very interesting. I'll keep this in mind, thank you. In retrospect, me reducing the category of "drugs" to shit like weed and nothing else was simply foolish, since there are many different other options out there, of the kind you just mentioned. Etizolam can only be gotten off the darknet then? If so, that kind of sucks. I've actually used the dark net before & have ordered weed off there in the past, but that was at least a few years ago now, so it would be still kind of a challenge for me.

>>209272
tried NAC on its own. Did nothing. I've wasted thousands of dollars on various medications and supplements. nothing has done anything.

When I was sick I took some Mentats by Himalaya. Maybe it was brain imbalance for me, but it worked. No wisdom here, btw.

Stop expecting extreme dopamine levels over 9 hour vidya sessions. You're not 14 anymore, your brain doesn't get high on crack from a video game like it used to. You only have so much dopamine that your brain gives you per day. Instead, play vidya in shorter, more intense sessions. When you feel yourself wanting to play vidya, wait. Wait until it hurts to wait anymore, then keep waiting. You need buildup. Foreplay. Anticipation. Also, "waiting" doesn't mean watch movies or browsing chans or going on YouTube. It means literally doing nothing. Or doing something unpleasant. Remember: dopamine is a limited resource. If you spend it all watching porn and YouTube in the morning, you're not going to have any left for vidya in the evening. Next time you play vidya, set a timer for 1 hour, and I guarantee you'll have way more fun than a 9 hour sesh.

Also stop masturbating. It's terrible for your brain and unwizardly.

>>210526
Agreed. Doing nothing is like battery charging. Porn should be avoided at any cost.

>>210526
>just wait
I cannot get myself to even start it
I have 8 TB of warez to consume and I cannot start anything of it, let alone finnish it. Last anime I watched was in july

music is the only thing left for me to enjoy and when that fades, the boredom will drive me to suicide most likely

Let me tell you buddy, you're anhedonia doesn't exist, I thought I had anhedonia and decided to do drugs and now i know truly what anhedonia is, you just lack willpower and motivation to do anything.

>>208567

I'm confused. What do you expect from us after this rant? you don't want interaction, yet you post. Care to explain?

>>208567
I'm not sure if it's anhedonia or depression but my narcissistic family/parents deliberately brainwashed me into feeling guilt and shame for enojying or liking things throughout my childhood including sexuality or nudity. Often even getting punished if caught enjoying things all in disguise for the "greater good" or having to suffer consequences for enjoying and doing normal things or expressing myself verbally, emotionally or through gestures like any other normal child does and would. Often also being laughed at or belittled for doing normal things or anything formerly listed in this post.

I wish I was never sired/conceived. I wish (((worst cult group))) & (((worst ethnic group))) never reproduced/existed. Consider yourselves luckier you never received concussions, & never need to buy/use insulin, & never need to buy/drink psychiatric medicines.
t. concussed obese insomniac type-1-diabetic mentally-ill person
t. member of (((worst cult group))) & (((worst ethnic group)))

Maybe it's just our brain telling us we need to do something with our lives. Mindless consumption stops being fulfilling if its the only activity you've been doing for 20 plus years

>>212369
Doing other things is even worse. Maybe it's like coming off of drugs when you're addicted, but it's impossible nowadays. I wish we had firewatch and shit like that so I could try it. It's pointless to better yourself if you can feel your savings running out and you can't escape wageslaving.
If my brain is telling me to stop, I'm telling it to go fuck itself because there's nothing else.

>>210526

Yeah, I've tried this sort of thing before. It's a nice idea and, I'll even admit, that it somewhat works, but it's just too short lived to be of any use. In my case, I recently spent 2 weeks not playing any video games at all, until a couple days ago where I decided to finally load something up again. Even after coming back from this period of waiting, I can't say it really helped all that much. The process of taking a minor break and feeling refreshed upon coming back is something that possessed far more efficacy for me in the past. Nowadays, it really doesn't matter how long the break it is, since the end result will be the same. Oddly enough, I actually found the longer I waited the more difficult it became to think of playing anything.

>Also, "waiting" doesn't mean watch movies or browsing chans or going on YouTube. It means literally doing nothing.

Yep, I agree. For those 2 weeks I just mentioned, all I did was browse the internet, exercise and sleep. That's it. I'll admit that browsing the internet is somewhat breaking the rule here, but, honestly, what else would you have me do? I can only sleep/exercise so much and staring at the wall eventually leads to me being annoyed & tormented by retarded thoughts, once I run out of random daydreams to mull over.

>Next time you play vidya, set a timer for 1 hour, and I guarantee you'll have way more fun than a 9 hour sesh.

This might be true, but it sorta skirts around the main issue here. That being, me wanting to remain under the influence of these things for longer than 1 hour a day. And to be honest, in my situation, limiting the time I spend playing a game wouldn't make sitting down to boot it up in the first place any easier, which is really the bigger problem. Once I can sit down, I can generally stay absorbed for a decent amount of time, but trying to motivate myself to actually engage in the act of sitting down and to get started is what feels impossible. Even after these past 2 weeks of not playing anything, I still find this to be the case.

Still, what you said is good advice and could probably help someone who is, unlike myself, less deep into the anhedonic abyss.

>Also stop masturbating. It's terrible for your brain and unwizardly.

Read my past posts. I already acknowledged this here >>208647

Also, for the record, no one can decide what's "wizardly" and what's not. If you're a 30 year old virgin than you're a wizard. Guidelines for additional behavior is just stupid and I'm quite sick of everyone running around pushing their own arbitrary guidelines for proper wizardliness on others. Either way, I'll concede that jerking off in excess of once a day is probably not advisable.


>>210582

>you don't want interaction, yet you post.

What the fuck are you talking about? I never said that. You also must be blind, since I've replied and talked with many other wizzies in this thread. What I did say was that I didn't want to hear from dumb self-improvements nuts, shilling their equally dumb advice, like below.

>Drop gaming, bruh
>That shit's for babies, bruh
>Learn a skill, bruh

>>210568

It's all relative. I'd argue that my sense of anhedonia is just as potent to your own. The notion that it could be worse, doesn't alter the fact of how immobilizing & awful it is to me in this moment. As an example of what I mean, I'm sure being trapped under a spiked rock hurts more than being trapped under a regular rock, but, no matter which one, you're still completely trapped underneath its crushing influence.

>>212369

It is. Which is exactly what I hate the most, since it's simply an unconscious & misguided biological signal that I wish I could turn off, since it has no basis in anything and is merely a constant irritant. Like an animal who's teeth grow so long they end up tearing into its own flesh. Anhedonia is essentially the same thing. A useless sensation merely meant to torture you & ruin an otherwise potentially peaceful existence. This also doesn't account for the fact, that while anhedonia might serve as a prod to do something else, whatever that something else is, is just as likely to be a victim of that very same sense of anhedonia. That's why it's such a sadistic sensation, since it puts you in a predicament of which there's no answer.

>>212374

>If my brain is telling me to stop, I'm telling it to go fuck itself because there's nothing else.

Well put. I feel exactly the same way. Modern entertainment is literally all I have. There's nothing else, since anhedonia & depression, and the immutable brain damage they've infected on me, has infected and made impossible anything else.

My experience with it is that i started to do things that never crossed my mind before like exercising outside, going to a gym or studying at the library. I had to to preserve my sanity, i can't do anything at all when i'm home now despite being a relatively happy neet for 9 years. Vidya and the internet don't boost my dopamine like they used to which is probably linked to age and fear of completely wasting my life.

i can't actively listen to music anymore, it's painfully boring to me. i used to be an obsessed music guy too, i could confidently say i knew more than most people, including dudes like anthony fantano

I can't fucking stand the tediousness of it all. That's the worst part. Any video game, any sort of challenge, something as simple as watching a movie is an unbearable task where the assumption that I have to perform perfectly overwhelm anything else.
Surely you can say "just play minesweeper" or something else, but if I do, I am filled with a certain dread of simply right clicking a square with the implication of I mightr be wrong - yet it's an active choice I do, and I'm (supposedly) smart, so I should click the right one.
But by getting it wrong, it ruins so much of my world image, my self, my anything.

Bad example, because minesweeper isn't much effort. I could as well mention anything else, for those familiar: World of warcraft, simply performing is hard. Anything above the bare minimum.
Anything where anyone else would say "what the fuck" if you are not a mind reader ruins me.
I played a little wiht a guy online in Heroes of Newerth (sort of like LoL for you), and he would get mad whenever I thought he did something wrong and it had an unfortunate outcome (he died). But I took it perosnally, that I should've done better, that I should've known, that I should've performed and yadda yadda.
Never is anything anyone elses fault, always mine, and it's exhaausting. I just consume shit, I don't participate or produce.

>>212698

>But by getting it wrong, it ruins so much of my world image, my self, my anything.

Yeah, I experience this as well. I feel especially defeated when it comes to me being unable to solve a puzzle I've been banging my head on for a while. I actually tend to like puzzle games, but man can they be stressful & annoying at times, especially when it comes to old school adventure games, or even random indie games, that can sometimes have those sorts of inane puzzles in them.

I also feel like shit when I find myself randomly fumbling up all the sudden & playing really sloppily, whether it's an FPS, or a platformer, or what have you, which just serves to deflate me & just makes me want to stop playing altogether due to distracted with disappointment I have with myself. The silly thing is the fact that it's just me playing solo content in a SP game, so who really cares? Well, I guess I do, of course. It's just that when I manage to play skillfully, I can at least pat myself on the back for it and feel somewhat validated in myself. Like solving a tough puzzle gives me the brief illusion of being able to enjoy what an amazing genius I am, or how beating a tough boss on my first or second try can give me the illusion of being able to enjoy how great my reflexes are & how much of a "pro" gamer I am. When the opposite occurs however, the whole thing just backfires on me and I either just feel like a brainless buffoon or an uncoordinated nincompoop who sucks at everything. Even if it's simply that I took 6 or 7 quicksaves to get through a level, instead of 2 or 3, or that it took me more tries than necessary to beat the boss, or that I had to look up a hint to a puzzle, as opposed to the full answer. It varies a lot from game to game of course, depending on its unique quirks, but it'd just be nice if I didn't get so bothered by the sorts of inconsequential things as to what I've just described here.

>>208621

>while doing it, memories of it being good are wiped very fast. It's like your constantly dizzy, short moments of feeling good don't last and you're back into nauseous hell shortly after.

Even when I can manage to play something, the moment I cease with it, it's just me sitting around waiting until I can manage to do it again. Just as a means to kill my brain & my thoughts. Once it's over, the nauseous hell of my life continues. Not that it ever really stops, even when I can boot & sit down with a game. Hell, in a way, it just makes it all worse, to be honest. I'm enslaved to the horrid routine of it all. Sitting down to do these sorts of things is a constant struggle and I get very little back for the effort. It can be best compared to a sickly heroin addict who's been over abusing a single vein to shoot up with to the point that it has become blackened & necrotic. That's literally the perfect description I can use to convey how unhealthy, sick & desperate my relationship to gaming, or simply media entertainment in general, has been for the last number of years.

People who have hobbies that manage to still enrich them & can become something they look forward to doing & enjoy are quite fortunate. More than that, people who can find something else the moment one hobby starts to lose its efficacy are doubly fortunate. Me, I'm just stuck with the same old shit because I'm an empty human being who's incapable of changing. As an aside, playing old games I used to enjoy can be such a downer. Those memories of them being good are, indeed, wiped away extremely quickly, to the point I can't even understand or recall why I even liked them in the first place. I suppose that could just be said towards gaming as a whole though, frankly.

Anhedonia is killing me, I can't enjoy anything and I just spend the whole day doing nothing and sleeping. I can't even watch a movie.

>anhedonia thread
>walls of text
You boyz are inconsistant, no way i'm reading this shit.

>>216984
Yeah when I'm in an anhedonic state I couldn't write or read such long posts (because of mental numbness) . When I'm not anhedonic then I couldn't care about writing or reading such long winded posts because I have better things to do with my time like enjoying vidya or books. Anhedonia is not the same to everyone it seems.

>>216984
>>216993
i suggest reading through them
it's excellent catharsis that might alleviate it a little bit

>>212369
There is nothing I can do with my life. Every time I have done something with it, I've ended up in a worse situation. It's sort of been a perverse way to learn that idleness isn't really a sin if you have no way to improve your circumstances.

OP, one of your problems is that you are too autistically focusing on single hobby. I do often too so I take breaks (usually around month)until I feel like doing it again. This way I rotate dominant interests. Mid December - mid January I was watching a lot of movies. Mid January - end of February I was reading a lot of manga. I was gaming throughout the whole March. Now I am refreshed back to reading manga and occasionally watching movies. It may sound kinda stupid but it really helps.

does the OP thumbnail look like goatse to anyone else

>>218246
lol yeah, it kinda does.

Good day fellas, young apprentice here. I've personally been struggling with anhedonia over here too.
I'm not sure how strong this thing might be for others and I won't claim I have a way out but I'll post what I know.

>it's not like someone can 'clang' their way out of anhedonia, or make self-defeating bargains with a pack of faggoty looking demons.

I think things like this are still worth mentioning. Obviously, that wouldn't be an option in the real world but masterful pieces of art like Berserk contain really powerful metaphors and potential solutions for the problems we face in life. This personally made me seek out anime, videogames, and whatever else not for entertainment or for feeling but to learn about my issues. The scene in Avatar: Last Airbender where Aang opened his "chakras" was especially eye-opening and helpful to me.

>I can only sleep/exercise so much and staring at the wall eventually leads to me being annoyed & tormented by retarded thoughts, once I run out of random daydreams to mull over.

I used to be filled completely with retarded thoughts too. But, learning that I don't actually give a flying fuck about them eventually made them run dry. You see, this is an issue you need to overcome. You can have your mind quiet down if you learn to feel indifferent towards those retarded thoughts. It's a very pleasant and peaceful feeling.

And, once those retarded thoughts run dry, you can start going through the shit you actually care about, if that's relevant. This is important, because all those shitty traumas, stab wounds, and nails struck into you by worthless normans are going to get in the way of eventually feeling the joy you lack.

As of late, I've been focusing on trying to feel good, more senstive, and euphoric without listening to music, or playing games, or doing anything at all. I'm still not sure if this is the right way through but I'm getting a little better at it every day.

I think that might be the solution. To just focus on growing life and sensitivity inside you without outside assistance.
Do absolutely nothing.
Do absolutely nothing, even if it means completely losing interest in everything you've ever loved (which is likely just a retarded concept anyway)
Lock away all your means of distraction and lay in bed for a year if you have to.
Do listen to those retarded thoughts.
Do allow yourself to feel and think stupid, idiotic, immoral, good, or shitty things, anything's better than nothing after all.

I refuse to believe that anhedonia's just a part of life that we have to carry with us forever.
Even if I were brain-damaged I would still keep trying to feel.
Studies do show that the brain can fix itself after all.

I was sure that I had to carry around the obnoxious retarded thoughts with me till the day I died but I was able to burn them away.
And it was all just because I analyzed the situation and figured out a way through.

It's not over yet brother, keep fighting. As long as you're not dead, there's hope to reawaken the life inside you. Don't focus on anything except for that.
Finding joy in your ideal situation is worth any price, even if it means nothing in the end.

Whenever someone says that something I want can't be obtained I'll always look back on the fact that Parmenides' "Path of Foolish Mortals" has been scientifically disproven.

The things that are not, ARE.

ive been anhedonic for 1 year definitely, i think 2 years but i cant be sure my memory is foggy. i dont really take the word anhedonia because it comes off as an /r9k/-doomer-emo-woe-is-me kind of attention-cry but

at some point i became a raging Apocalypse Now-tier alcoholic, actually it was more like this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjy7MsQJpug] and made apocalypse-now look like a joke. and after i got laid off from my last job i sat on welfare for like 5-6 months drinking every single day so its hard to remember.

but even before i started drinking i had gradually lost interest in everything. Video games, anime, movies, etc, all of it was uninteresting to me. i remember being a young twink in highschool thinking i wouldnt be the happiest nigger in the world if i lived in a mountain cottage with unlimited internet access so i could watch anime and play pirated games all day. very strange how that immature, escapist delusion fell apart so fast. very strange, and i lost 100% my sex drive and any desire for love or affection as well, impossible for me to become aroused by porn,hentai, or any kind of fantasy.

strange stuff, i figure i am just severely depressed and suffering the long term consequences, but i dont feel sad at all, just bored of life. I am 100% done with life already.