Advice

I think what I'm experiencing is PAWS, I had a period of about 3 months where I was smoking almost every night while on sertraline, and for ~5 months after stopping the weed (and sertraline later on) I experienced a period of absolute anhedonia, not sadness but a complete inability to feel, where all that existed to me were the thoughts in my head. These were in multi-week windows with 2-3 day periods of relative normalcy. I didn't get many other symptoms that you guys describe, nothing on the physical side, but DPDR is a huge problem that was also amplified. Now it's been about 5 months since those windows stopped, and I feel better but I'm still so far from feeling much emotional depth, everything is on the surface level. From my angle it seems like since then very little has improved, but I know things can be deceiving while you're in recovery. I've had days where I've felt better and I don't want to downplay it because I do feel like some progress has been made, but I often worry that I'm decieving myself one way or another.

While all of this was going on I was pursuing ADHD treatment, I've come to realise that this is basically a necessity to me as I'm completely incapable of keeping up with the demands of life in my regular state (I got on sertraline because I read my executive dysfunction as depression, I have depressive tendencies but in this case they were definitely the effect rather than the cause). I got prescribed lisdexamfetamine recently and have been taking 30mg a day for a week. I've noticed that I've become somewhat flatter now, specifically when I'm off the medication, like my baseline has changed to where I'm getting even less emotional response to things (but still more than while I was in anhedonia), and I'm feeling a lot more anxious and depressed when I'm off the medicine. What freaks me out is that my system could be particularly sensitive to dopamine disruption, especially after all of this, and that the medication could be pausing or slowing down my recovery progress significantly. Either that or it's just a temporary adjustment phase. I really don't want to have to pick between functioning in life or feeling real and like a human with emotional experiences. I probably should just wait it out but I wonder if general consensus leans one way or another, so far I've found nothing on the topic. Also things just feel especially stagnant, and discounting the lisdexamfetamine, I want to see if any others have been through a similar thing with the anhedonia. Thanks for reading

Also I'm 19, this whole thing can caused me a lot of remorse for reasons which I think are obvious, I've made some bad decisions for sure but the repercussions were completely beyond my expectations, and a lot is up in the air about whether I'll ever truly reach normalcy in the way that I envision it. I'm honestly so worried and regretful, I don't know how to soothe it