Are there more people with severe dry eyes and complete dead tear reflex?

My eyes don’t produce tears anymore from wind, yawning, rubbing eye, cutting onions, pain, spicy food, etc.)?

Did it get better ? I am getting tested for Sjorgens, but I really hope it’s just withdrawal 🥹

It is WD, @Sophia. I have absolutely the same. No one tear from nothing.

25 minutes ago, Sophia said:

Are there more people with severe dry eyes and complete dead tear reflex?

My eyes don’t produce tears anymore from wind, yawning, rubbing eye, cutting onions, pain, spicy food, etc.)?

Did it get better ? I am getting tested for Sjorgens, but I really hope it’s just withdrawal 🥹

Me, they are quite recent symptoms too. I alternate between excess saliva or tears, feeling teary eyed all day, or dry lips, mouth and eyes.

Yesterday I watched a show that got emotional, and when I cried, my eyes felt like they were being stabbed by needles. Same happened when I started sneezing and got a bit teary eyed.

It's miserable, but it's all probably withdrawal... Same as the whole getting obsessive googling and looking for other diseases that might explain it. It's good to be tested just in case though

Edited May 31May 31 by ALonelySoul12

15 minutes ago, ALonelySoul12 said:

Me, they are quite recent symptoms too. I alternate between excess saliva or tears, feeling teary eyed all day, or dry lips, mouth and eyes.

So annoying! I think it’s good your symptoms alternate tho! My eyes never feel teary, just a desert for months now. Even getting something in my eye does nothing…

16 minutes ago, ALonelySoul12 said:

Yesterday I watched a show that got emotional, and when I cried, my eyes felt like they were being stabbed by needles. Same happened when I started sneezing and got a bit teary eyed.

I have this too!! Sometimes when crying my tears burn in my eye… like they are toxic…

wtf do these meds to our bodies 😭

20 minutes ago, skamen said:

It is WD, @Sophia. I have absolutely the same. No one tear from nothing.

Pfff so annoying!! It’s like I sleep with eyes open.

How are you Svetla? Any mini improvements? 🥹❤️

6 minutes ago, Sophia said:

So annoying! I think it’s good your symptoms alternate tho! My eyes never feel teary, just a desert for months now. Even getting something in my eye does nothing…

I have this too!! Sometimes when crying my tears burn in my eye… like they are toxic…

wtf do these meds to our bodies 😭

Hopefully it improves soon enough, for me those things didn't happen until 8-9 months out. It's contantly changing so I have to adapt to whatever comes 😅

But yeah, I relate to you. Just a couple minutes ago I was already obsessively googling to find many symptoms similar to multiple sclerosis. Need to remind ourselves that this isn't any of those weird things.

Thank you for asking, @Sophia. I am still waiting for improvement. The night cortisol surges kill me: ramping terror and depression, sweats, itching, heartbeat, feeling of dying. I hate this. And during the day the anhedonia crushes me.

Have you had more reliefs? I deeply hope so for you.

Svetla

Edited May 31May 31 by skamen

Oh dear @skamen … I pray and hope you get relief soon… you deserve it ! 🥹❤️

I am seeing improvements here and there but still have a lot of healing to do! However, I feel parts of me sloooowly getting back.. I hope it continues to get better 😊

Another question…

On the medication I got really big pupils 👀… like I was on drugs.

Now, 8 months post discontinuation, I still have this on many days…. It annoys me because it really looks like I popped an xtc pill 💊

Anyone who also has this? 😭😭

5 hours ago, Sophia said:

I have this too!! Sometimes when crying my tears burn in my eye… like they are toxic…

I had this for a long time. It will likely get better in time, just as the other symptoms.

My windows don’t feel real or genuine.

Sometimes I feel better and lighter and my mood is up, but it feels very artificial to me.. like some receptors upregulate but it’s not connected to real emotions.

I am mostly very blank and blunted and have a lot of head pressure, so when my head pressure lifts and I am more energized and motivated, I do feel a bit better, but my brain feels lightweighted and hollow and there is still no true connection to my feelings.

Its just like I snorted a line and I feel uplifted (sort of) but it’s really fake and unnatural.

Do people recognize this ?

I can't help with the similarity to doing a line, but yes, I had the blunting--just blah emotionally. Its a sign of slow healing, like going from cold to lukewarm to nice and hot. Like everything else when it comes to recovery, its very gradual and uneven. But you're on the right path!

@Sophia yes I've had this. I suddenly feel "better" but it is really artificial and almost I feel too light and ungrounded. I feel more things (very briefly) and the anhedonia lifts, but it just doesn't feel like me. I can't enjoy it because it feels wrong somehow.

Yeah exactly the same… @Sminismoni

I do feel like the intensity is a bit less than 1-2 months ago… so I hope that’s process to level out.

What an awful scary journey!

Getting used to feeling bad…. I miss my emotions…

You know what I find the hardest of this journey?

That I can’t even tell if I am really improving… or if I just getting used to the state I am in.

My most debilitating withdrawal symptoms are feeling very emotionally blunted and anhedonic. In the beginning the contrast was so so big, I knew immediately something in my brain had switched and I felt really altered.

I’ve got some glimpses here and there, but most of the time I am very emotionally blunted. Can’t cry, can’t feel fear or sadness, can’t get goosebumps from music or movies scenes, can’t feel nostalgia.

I’ve read people having crying spells or panic attacks… Rumination and intrusive thoughts. I don’t have any of that at all. Just a blank void of nothingness. A hollow hole in my brain where normally emotional depth is found. A blank mind. No opinions, no dreams, no future scenario in my head.

“Windows” are fake and chemical. If I feel a real emotion it’s brief and it never stays.

I used to be very sentimental. Feeling things deeply and having a rich inner world was who I was in my deep core. I can’t believe a chemical I took 7 weeks only could put this part of me in standby mode for 8+ months now.

I am getting used to this state, but I doubt it’s true acceptance. It’s just forgetting what I miss. Being to numb to even remember how emotions felt.

I want to process things. I want to work on things. I simply can’t with this thick chemical wall in my brain.

Pls tell me I am not the only one with severe emotional blunting. Pls tell me this can get better.

I even miss my insecurities and neurotic traits for which I got in the meds in the first place. Who would’ve thought I would ever have said that…. It made me me.

It doesn’t feel like my soul is buried by grief, anxiety or overwhelm. My soul feels literally deleted from my mind and body.

Sorry for the rant. Every now and then I get this realization how bad my situation really is, as I don’t even have the emotions to feel despair, grief or fear.

I think WD and recovery manifests differently for all of us. Our nervous systems do what they need to do to protect themselves and keep us functioning, even at a minimal level. Like you said, some people go to very dark places where everything is negative and things seem hopeless. Others become almost manic, bouncing from doctors to therapists to the latest trend on the Internet. Your nervous system s responding by blocking any emotion that it thinks may put you in an even worse place. That my sound good, but obviously its just as devastating as an other WD manifestation. But it won't last forever. Recovery, regardless of the form it takes, occurs gradually and almost imperceptibly. But it does come. Have faith in yourself and in your inner strength.

You really think so? My default mode of my

Nervous system has been feeling anxiety and fear when something debilitating in my life happened. Now, it cannot even produce that feelings as my mind is so so so altered since I took that first pill.

Its stuck in this setting (that’s how it feels). I really hope my mind and brain remember how it worked before the meds :(

1 minute ago, Sophia said:

You really think so? My default mode of my

Nervous system has been feeling anxiety and fear when something debilitating in my life happened. Now, it cannot even produce that feelings as my mind is so so so altered since I took that first pill.

Its stuck in this setting (that’s how it feels). I really hope my mind and brain remember how it worked before the meds :(

I absolutely believe this. Have you ever left someplace and come back years later? It doesn't take long to remember the locations of the streets and stores you used to go to. It'll be the same with your emotions. Once your system is ready, you'll start feeling the things you did before. Its not hopeless.

Dear @Sophia, no, you are not alone, not at all. This poison threw me in horrid, horrid, inhumane, awful, hellish anhedonia in March 2024, slowly, insidiously, cruelly, month after month, and at the end day after day until the final crash when my brain stopped feeling. Until now. And the CT worsened it x10000 times. And added other states of terror: insomnia, adrenaline rushes, unbearable anxiety, dark depression, muscle pains, stomach pains, brain fog, depersonalization, weigh losses, itchings, blurred vision, dry eyes, SI... It is brutal what happens with us. Our unique hope is in the homeostasis of the CNS.

You are very strong @skamen ! I think of you everyday ❤️❤️‍🩹

1 hour ago, Sophia said:

It doesn’t feel like my soul is buried by grief, anxiety or overwhelm. My soul feels literally deleted from my mind and body.

Hi @Sophia thank you for putting into words how I feel. May God help us.

10 hours ago, Sophia said:

Pls tell me I am not the only one with severe emotional blunting. Pls tell me this can get better.

You're not, and it can get better. The glimpses are the small early signs that it is starting to.

Anyone else who feels like their head is under water and nothing comes thru them? This brain fog is a whole other level. My head feels so disconnected from my body.

I think it’s part of the emotional blunting.

Hey @Sophia — I don’t have emotional blunting like you, but brain fog is my worst and most consistent symptom. It feels like my head is in a literal cloud and so I miss a lot and whatever does get through the cloud I process really slowly and kinda can’t fully engage with it, if that makes sense. I find it hard to explain, but does any of that sound familiar to you?

Exactly like you describe!! @SarahMc

Like my head is disconnected from rest of body and with my weird brain (that feels hollow / like air / lightweighted) it really feels like a cloud. Sooo annoying! It’s like I am drunk and wanna be sober!

1 hour ago, SarahMc said:

I don’t have emotional blunting like you,

Do you still have your entire emotional range ? What does that look like to you? 😊