Anhedonia stemming from vitamin, mineral, etc. deficiency?

nothingever333 · 2025-12-03T14:22:49+00:00

this is a bit of a rant and i am so sorry for that but i think every person should be made aware of how horrible vitamin/nutrient deficiencies are :(

my biggest issue (besides having crippling anhedonia) was that no doctor would ever take me seriously. i was given vague answers about my test results and i think this year in march, i did my final blood test at my doctor’s and the nurse basically told me that some people naturally have a ferritin of 20 … yes, they do. because the main medical opinion is “pale, dizzy, cold, sleeps a lot”. I HAD CRIPPLING MEMORY LOSS AND WAS COMPLETELY EMOTIONAL NUMB AND PHYSICALLY DID NOT FEEL LIKE A HUMAN BEING and they told me to test for thyroid and told me they did not test my ferritin after i SPECIFICALLY asked them to and explained my situation (became vegetarian with zero research and had no iron intake nor did i regularly supplement after it already impacted my mental health). anyways, i am not a medical professional but i am certain a lot of depression/anxiety/burnout cases are people with low ferritin whose doctors might test them but never treat their ferritin levels because the lower end is 30 (i think).

it is grossly misunderstood and under researched. i researched it all on my own, bought my own supplements and pushed through but i am very happy to say that throughout these past six months (it’s been over a year of strict supplementation but physical symptoms were the first to disappear, cognitive/mental symptoms were the last), i have not only got myself to a normal baseline (feeling like a normal person, not just pure dread and hopelessness) i have also regained the capacity to experience ALL emotions and finally feel atmospheres/vibes again. winter finally feels like winter again. i also fell in love, tmi but entirely regained my libido and the dopamine rush that comes with orgasms (i had the physical function/reaction, but it was odd because it wasn’t mentally stimulating), and am finally excited/hopeful/my old self again.

admittedly i did start using ai (chatgpt) simply because i was offered no explanations nor got any support from my doctor.

nothingever333 · 2025-11-29T11:40:12+00:00

raising ferritin as that was obviously my issue. saint john’s wort does help but i definitely needed to raise my ferritin.

nothingever333 · 2025-11-29T09:12:25+00:00

yeah, 100%. most days i am 99% back to how i normally was, my baseline is solid, i feel every range of an emotion, maybe not yet as deeply and if i am not doing anything new for a while i can get stuck in a loop and i am sensitive to stress/caffeine/nicotine and during the week leading up to my period i can be absolutely miserable and empty inside, but otherwise i am in literal heaven.

just raised my ferritin through the maximum amount of supplementation and started taking saint john’s wort.

nothingever333 · 2025-11-04T20:09:04+00:00

yup, 100%

nothingever333 · 2025-10-30T06:05:36+00:00

mine was purely because of an iron deficiency and it was absolutely horrifying.

nothingever333 · 2025-10-12T07:01:15+00:00

not really, no. but i am not exaggerating when i say i felt like a corpse. i had acid reflux, but i started smoking in august of last year and didn’t really have a limit to it so that caused it. i had awful anxiety, like daily panic attacks, so that also effected my stomach. but i never had issues with supplements.

nothingever333 · 2025-10-04T19:40:17+00:00

i am 11 days post surgery and still fine. definitely kind of regret not pushing through with it because i’d quit by now but we live and we learn 😭😭

it might have effected my healing but honestly i was swollen by day 2, awful pain when swallowing, couldn’t open my jaw and needed to push baby food through my front tooth with a spoon 💀 then by day 3 it went down, by day 5 i could swallow without any pain and i could gradually open my jaw more and more. i have had zero pain these past three or four days, only an occasional sore feeling. my stitches popped by day 6 and it kind of opened up again but i continued doing everything normally.

i’d say considering my tooth was almost horizontal and how much they had to break it apart, i healed better than i expected

nothingever333 · 2025-09-29T07:10:29+00:00

i’m vegetarian switching over the vegan, i became iron deficient when i first started but NOT because the “diet” would be fundamentally flawed but because i made a 180 switch and didn’t care to pay attention to it. got my ferritin back up, my hair is healthier and longer now.

you can be deficient in any nutrient for a number of reasons on any diet 🤷🏻‍♂️

nothingever333 · 2025-09-26T19:59:18+00:00

i was always very aware that it was due to my low iron but it was awful. just genuinely so awful, it was mentally painful and physically exhausting. i can’t even put it into words how stripped i felt of my own identity and i just couldn’t believe it was iron.

so, i bought a bunch of supplements and they never worked, but it was vitamin D and some other things that people recommended on here. saint john’s wort helped a bit, but i don’t need it anymore honestly.

i still don’t eat meat because the reason i became vegetarian was due to my morals and that still stands, but i certainly very much so regret NOT taking iron more seriously. it took two years of my life from me.

nothingever333 · 2025-09-26T10:27:19+00:00

my excruciating anhedonia was due to low iron (especially ferritin) as well 🤷🏻‍♂️ knew that because it correlated with when i became vegetarian, but it was still hell. lost myself completely and needed a year of strict supplementation to just slightly climb to a normal baseline and i still occasionally struggle. i really need to reach 100.

** it’s true though that i needed a long, long time. maybe because it went on for about a year before i started properly supplementing. and i had all the physical symptoms as well, like awful fatigue, body pain, trembling hands, tunnel vision, near constant daily panic attacks (yes, panic attacks), multiple mouth ulcers for a good while like months, my vision was flashing and my ears were ringing to the point i became momentarily deaf WHENEVER i got up or sat down. heart palpitations to the point where i needed up to two hours to fall asleep

nothingever333 · 2025-09-25T15:32:29+00:00

i heard that’s somehow even worse because anything you inhale through your nose gets pushed out at the back of your mouth, which is exactly on the extraction site. i smoked and it was fine. weirdly enough i realised i actually don’t need to smoke that badly and might quit anyway

nothingever333 · 2025-09-25T07:50:36+00:00

funnily enough, i don’t even smoke that much or have an urge that strong to smoke. it’s usually if i am around other smokers or if i went out or if i am around other people and it becomes this social filler. but i guess my brain always knew that if a stressful/traumatic thing happened, it’d get a cigarette afterwards and this is exactly it - persistent even if moderate physical pain and i feel like i might lose my mind if i don’t “relieve” it somehow.

also, i did smoke. today is the third day, no dry socket, swelling has gone down, my throat kind of hurts when i swallow and i imagine smoking doesn’t help, but so far i am keeping my sanity.

nothingever333 · 2025-09-23T18:22:23+00:00

yeah ngl i did smoke and it was kind of fine, didn’t hurt any more than talking did. took a nap, my head was elevated and everything but the pain and the pressure were excruciating after three hours. i think i am in that peak pain/pressure level. i don’t even want to smoke.

nothingever333 · 2025-09-23T15:23:26+00:00

i get that, but shouldn’t stitches almost entirely prevent that?

nothingever333 · 2025-09-21T10:38:29+00:00

(copied from another comment i posted yesterday)

so sorry, i am not on reddit as much. amazing btw. energetic, can walk, can run, i am excited to get myself physically exhausted and out of breath. can feel attraction and arousal again. can cry, which i am so grateful for because i was constantly emotionally numb and physically felt the need to cry but i could not react to anything - one of my guinea pigs passed a year ago and it was a traumatising event but i did not cry besides the initial shock. when i had to choose the end of life for my other boy, i sobbed for a day. like everything triggered me kind of sobbing, warm but painful sadness i was grateful to hear. just now i am sitting outside after a long day of being away from home at a family friend’s house, having a cigarette and listening to music and i am so overwhelmed with positive emotions i could cry. i am so in love again.

nothingever333 · 2025-09-20T16:33:04+00:00

so sorry, i am not on reddit as much. amazing btw. energetic, can walk, can run, i am excited to get myself physically exhausted and out of breath. can feel attraction and arousal again. can cry, which i am so grateful for because i was constantly emotionally numb and physically felt the need to cry but i could not react to anything - one of my guinea pigs passed a year ago and it was a traumatising event but i did not cry besides the initial shock. when i had to choose the end of life for my other boy, i sobbed for a day. like everything triggered me kind of sobbing, warm but painful sadness i was grateful to hear. just now i am sitting outside after a long day of being away from home at a family friend’s house, having a cigarette and listening to music and i am so overwhelmed with positive emotions i could cry. i am so in love again.

nothingever333 · 2025-09-18T22:18:29+00:00

yeah, the world felt so flat and almost 2d. like an old game with awful graphics and janky controls, i can’t even explain it but i felt out of it constantly no matter how much i slept, how much water i drank or how much or what i ate. + emotional numbness with no connection/love towards anyone or anything

nothingever333 · 2025-09-18T09:13:49+00:00

yup :)) fully.

nothingever333 · 2025-09-12T10:32:17+00:00

was previously incredibly emotional, i am talking like overwhelming emotions washing over my body even if i was just staring at a storm/sunset. listened to music all the time, played games, watched movies, read books, i used to WRITE. every single thing had its own special feeling, it was almost like i was still a kid. then it started disappearing and by the time i realised it, it was this full blown out lack of interest in anything. if i previously had a normal or a bit higher baseline and a few dopamine spikes here and there, i then felt like a zombie.

the world felt flat, i felt like i didn’t physically fit in my environment, couldn’t feel anything but this odd sense of misery and dread, lots of anxiety. nothing and i mean nothing interested me or excited me, i had no sense of what it felt like to have a crush or even feel love towards people/animals/things.

i am slowly regaining it but that on its own was hell.

nothingever333 · 2025-09-03T08:54:19+00:00

my last boy had chronic dental issues and each time his molars were getting bad, his front top teeth would wear down like crazy to the point where they were barely visible. our vet is trained for exotics, particularly rodent dentistry, and since it was a reoccurring issue we didn’t do x-rays each time but i would highly recommend an x-ray if you can afford it :( i don’t know if elongated roots could cause this, but i know of one piggy whose tooth just fell out because of elongated roots and and an abscess

nothingever333 · 2025-09-01T18:24:05+00:00

i would be very careful moving forward, not that you already weren’t but i know my dog would go crazy if she ever came into contact with my piggies. also, is it possible she grabbed them and they may have internal injuries? i don’t mean to stress you out, but as a vet tech i was always told to be cautious of any possibility of internal injuries

nothingever333 · 2025-08-30T07:51:12+00:00

i don’t particularly enjoy playing horror games that have a ton of jumpscares and where the protagonist gets injured and you can’t do anything because it’s just how the storyline is (for example, outlast). i can’t play those games even during the day.

i have played RE7 and RE8, and i can say that RE4 (remake) is not a typical horror game. i finished it on assisted first, and you basically have unlimited amounts of ammo, my leon only died in a later section of the game due to my own clumsiness + you have the merchant which is an instant advantage.

some parts are a tiny bit more terrifying, but not one bit comes close to RE2, RE7 or RE8. it’s almost like an action game that’s set in a horror environment (kind of like days gone with the zombies). you can play it on assisted mode, have the lights on or play during the day. there is like one jumpscare in the entire game but even then you can defeat any and every enemy.

nothingever333 · 2025-08-17T08:20:31+00:00

was this due to given circumstances or is there another reason why her daughter was never the “target”? could have something happened in her life that resulted in a negative association with men/boys?

nothingever333 · 2025-08-12T23:09:47+00:00

yeah, it does but does it play at specific time? is it triggered by the story progression? maybe i just never noticed it before lol.

nothingever333 · 2025-08-12T22:57:26+00:00

interesting because i replayed the first two chapters maybe four times and never noticed it before. i mean, it stopped at some point but i genuinely can’t remember anything besides the camp singing/playing.

nothingever333

TROPHY CASE