In regards to my mood and feelings changing over the last 18 months making me feel depressed and flat -
can this kind of thing be fixed/restored over time without synthetic meds? or is it a case of anti-depressants?
Would you say it's anhedonia that you have, ie, not feeling any pleasure or sense of reward when you do the things that previously you found rewarding?
Anhedonia unfortunately is hard to treat. Whereas there are dozens of drugs and supplements that can treat depression, for anhedonia there's almost nothing, except that amisulpride may help a bit.
I myself had severe anhedonia for many years. It was caused in my case by a viral infection, which triggered a number of nasty mental symptom, all listed on my website
here.
What seemed to help my anhedonia was the same anti-anxiety / anti-inflammatory supplements like N-acetyl-glucosamine detailed in the thread I linked to earlier.
Research in recent years is finding evidence for brain inflammation underpinning many mental symptoms, so by reducing this brain inflammation with anti-inflammatory supplements like N-acetyl-glucosamine, you may get general benefits in reducing mental symptoms.
The interesting thing about N-acetyl-glucosamine is that its anti-anxiety effects kick in within a couple of hours of taking it. So it works very fast to tackle anxiety.
The trauma began 2 years ago after I was prescribed the steroid prednisolone for my adrenals - his words, by an anti-aging doctor in Belgium, a drug known to have effects on mental health However, I was not warned of any side effects and suffered a great amount of emotional trauma over a period of 7 months as this drug altered my reality making me feel like life itself wasnt real - a major stress that i suffered every second for months without knowing what was happening to me. Continuous pacing around and distress occured on this drug. After weaning myself off prednisolone and back onto Hydrocortisone (which I was doing GREAT on before) the nervous energy, fear and dread components stayed with me asif my brain had been rewired and couldnt deal with even the most minor stressors.
Before you took the prednisolone, and were on hydrocortisone, was this hydrocortisone prescribed by a doctor for a particular medical reason, such as adrenal insufficiency?
In Wikipedia it mentions that the long-term side-effects from prednisone (a pro-drug of prednisolone) include: Cushing's syndrome (high cortisol), steroid dementia syndrome, and depression.