tortured

Having been subjected to torture, mental or physical.

Those who have escaped the dark and terrible aspects of life will find my brutality, my flash of rage in our final tragedy, easy enough to blame; for they know what is wrong as well as any, but not what is possible to tortured men. But those who have been under the shadow, who have gone down at last to elemental things, will have a wider charity.

Involving suffering and difficulty.

a tortured history

Of literature, burdened by unnecessary complexity, obfuscation, abstruseness, etc.

tortured prose