I've had anxiety and anhedonia my whole life. It runs in my family. Around age fourteen it started turning into severe depression/anhedonia, with insomnia and lack of focus etc. I've had a few seizures and have tinnitus as well.
Some things I have tried:
relaxing herbs, nearly every vitamin/nutrient, various diets, consistent exercise for months, lots of sunlight, change of location, psychologist sessions
I need help with figuring this out:
Last year I was taking a high dose of niacin (500 mg) and after feeling a bit "spaced out" for the first few days, it ended up having an incredible effect on me.
Lifelong problems (the chronic state of anxiety and disconnectedness/emotional numbness, etc) went away. This was a MASSIVE life-changing effect I felt. Peace, joy, all emotions came back, old memories came into my head, energy and libido restored, insomnia totally gone, mental fog gone.
Also things like the world became brighter, my sense of smell improved, lack of appetite and thirst was corrected too. And I've also had a problem of not being able to sweat and strangely that was fixed too. My OCD-type tendencies didn't go away.
The next day I took niacin it gave the same exact effect but then wore off (a horrible feeling). Arginine prolonged it/brought it back for a short time.
Over the past months I've tried so much to try and figure this out. I got an IV of n-acetylcysteine and it had the same effect! Orally it doesn't do much but l-cystine, not cysteine, gives me a noticeable improvement.
So here is where I'm at:
These were not totally unique experiences because both niacin and n-acetylcysteine are known to have powerful antidepressive effects. I've seen several people report temporary miraculous effects about niacin very similar to my own.
It is possible that if I were to continue cystine use, after a month or two I could be totally better. However there are concerns I have about it potentially being neurotoxic/excitotoxic. It doesn't feel like a clean solution to me and it causes horrible flatulence for the first week. It is not worth the risk of brain cell death, so I look for other things right now.
I would love to try NAD+ infusions. It is related to niacin. When given for days in a row there seems to be an effect people get that is similar to my niacin experience, but often it is more permanent. It helps cure severe addictions and mental health problems. People describe it having an effect where all at once it is like a switch is flipped in you and you're feeling much better, exactly what I felt from niacin. This costs thousands of dollars at the moment.
Other details are that I've tried much higher doses of niacin, tried NAM and NR, inosine (not inositol) to boost NAD/NADH ratio. Inosine with uridine and caffeine seemed to start having a powerful effect where my appetite and thirst was coming back but I got kidney pain and threw up. These apparently all raise uric acid, likely being the cause of this. It happened again after a second attempt.
Any theories or general suggestions? So far my best idea is that I have an ammonia excess issue, but I really don't know at all
