Medications that can make you feel nothing, often described as emotional blunting, are commonly antidepressants, especially SSRIs (like Zoloft, Lexapro, Prozac) and SNRIs (like Cymbalta, Effexor), which reduce the ability to feel both positive and negative emotions, leading to numbness or detachment. Other drugs, like some ADHD stimulants (e.g., Adderall) or corticosteroids, can also cause emotional detachment or depression. If experiencing this, discuss dose changes or switching meds (like to bupropion) with your doctor.
Lidocaine injection is used to cause numbness or loss of feeling for patients having certain medical procedures (by blocking certain nerves using the brachial plexus, intercostal, lumbar, or epidural blocking techniques).
However, several reports have shown that the excessive use of amphetamines, cocaine, and other stimulants is associated with amotivational syndrome including symptoms of apathy, lack of motivation, loss of interest, and other depressive-like symptoms often leading to relapse in the addiction cycle.
PCP – Phencyclidine (PCP) is a drug that has both hallucinogenic and dissociative properties. The dissociative effects of PCP leaves users feeling removed from their body and their environment.
Emotional numbness is typically an unconscious protective response to feeling difficult emotions, whether due to anxiety, stress, or trauma. Chronic or acute trauma can trigger a stress response that swamps the system and triggers a state of collapse, including emotional numbness.
How to Turn off Your Emotions and Take Back the Power
Physical activity can positively affect your mood and reduce stress. Walking is a great way to start, but if you want something more invigorating, try a heart-pumping aerobic activity like jogging, dance, or swimming. Just make sure you check with your doctor first. Try tai-chi or other relaxation exercises.
Anti-anxiety medications help reduce the symptoms of anxiety, such as panic attacks or extreme fear and worry. The most common anti-anxiety medications are called benzodiazepines. Benzodiazepines are a group of medications that can help reduce anxiety and make it easier to sleep.
Dissociative drugs distort perceptions of sight and sound and produce feelings of detachment (or dissociation) from the environment and self. These mind-altering effects are not hallucinations. PCP and ketamine are therefore more properly known as "dissociative anesthetics."
An anaesthetic is a drug or agent that produces a complete or partial loss of feeling.
Research from 2019 suggests that bipolar disorder and schizophrenia medications, like clozapine (Clozaril) or risperidone (Risperdal), may cause emotional numbing. Other medications, such as hormonal birth control and beta-blockers, may cause depression in some people. Emotional blunting can be a symptom of depression.
People may experience episodes of apathy with certain psychological conditions, such as major depression and schizophrenia. In addition, people who experience traumatic events may develop apathy syndrome (indifference and emotional detachment) as a way to protect themselves mentally and prevent further distress.
Types of feel-good drugs
By far, alcohol is the most commonly abused substance in the United States.
Some people report that Adderall use can lead to emotional blunting, especially with long-term use or high doses. The effects of amphetamine on brain regions responsible for processing emotional stimuli might suppress emotional reactivity, making feelings seem flat or less intense.
In general, alcohol, analgesics, and psychedelics reduce neural reactivity to negative emotional stimuli in the amygdala and other brain regions.
#1 – LYSERGIC ACID DIETHYLAMIDE
LSD or acid, is possibly the most well-known psychedelic drug. It alters awareness and perceptions and may also cause hallucinations. It is not chemically addictive but can cause some negative effects like anxiety and paranoia.
Phencyclidine (PCP)
This drug causes involuntary rapid eye movements. An individual on PCP might also develop a blank stare.
Ketamine is perhaps the most well-known dissociative drug similar to nitrous oxide. Originally developed as an anesthetic, ketamine: Is used medically for anesthesia and increasingly for treatment-resistant depression. Produces more potent dissociative effects than nitrous oxide.
Propranolol is a beta blocker first approved by the FDA in 1967 to treat heart conditions and high blood pressure. Today, many clinicians also prescribe it off-label for short-term, situational anxiety because it calms the body's stress response.
Medications don't erase thoughts, but they do reduce the brain's tendency to obsess over them. The most common prescriptions for OCD are SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), which increase serotonin levels in the brain.
Importantly, however, rumination is not only related to depression, but is involved in the development and/or maintenance of a broad range of disorders, including post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety disorders, insomnia, eating disorders, somatic symptom disorder, and substance use disorders2, 3.
Chronic stress can lead to many long-term health issues affecting your: Immune system (like arthritis, fibromyalgia and psoriasis). Digestive system (like weight gain or loss, ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome). Cardiovascular system (like high blood pressure, increased heart rate and heart palpitations).
Passing feelings of depersonalization or derealization are common and are not always a cause for concern. But ongoing or serious feelings of detachment and distortion of your surroundings can be a sign of depersonalization-derealization disorder or another physical or mental health condition.