In early 2024 I got the covid vaccine for the first time (I had a bad experience with covid in 2023 so figured I might as well get the shot to try and avoid it again), but the next day after the shot I wake up with complete anhedonia - no pleasure or joy from hobbies, no feeling of excitement, complete loss of hedonic tone. I'm well aware that my current problem may not be from the vaccine and may just be random chance, however I find the probability of that quite low.
Now fortunately I have had some hedonic tone come back and can enjoy music to an extent now, and novel activities can feel good although it's limited, but for the most part it's still quite severe.
One thing that helps me a lot is sleep deprivation, I can feel my old self come back and I start to enjoy things after just ~18 hours awake and if I can make it to 30+ hours I feel great with my hedonic tone almost fully back. It's not sustainable though, but it leads me to think this is 100% biological/neurochemical in nature as opposed to psychological or something I can just snap out of. A couple psychiatrists I saw think that think it's somehow depression or anxiety induced anhedonia (they dismiss the vaccine being able to cause this, and maybe it didn't and I just got unlucky with it happening at the same time).
I have talked to a lot of healthcare professionals and have gotten numerous tests for chronic health indicators, hormones, thyroid, and everything comes back normal aside from elevated morning cortisol.
I can stare at a screen and it's just pixels, flashing lights, my ability to distract from life is gone, I can't immerse myself. Which has led me to think of anhedonia not only as reduced pleasure, but the inability to distract oneself from life itself. I'm too aware all the time now, because I can't immerse.
Anyways, I'm wondering if anyone has experienced this and if there's potentially any treatments that I could try that has worked for others, I've read about heavy metal poisoning from the vax, or even elevated spike protein which can persist for years.