100% mental recovery - libido still low

Therapeutic Efforts
#1

Hi everyone,

I have been a silent reader for some time. Thanks everyone for contributing, you`ve been of great help!

My story in short: I took fin for 6 years, stopped 3 years ago and crashed 1 year ago. I Had almost every symptom in the book and became the brainfogged suicidal zombie most of you are familiar with. I quit my job and concentrated solely on recovery for 9 month now. A few days ago I would have said the mental sides were 80% cured, I then managed to solve the slurred speech symptom a week ago and with that, I got a recovery burst and got to 100% mentally, I feel amazing. Libido however is still very low. I am now taking Tribulus since 4 days and it got a bit better. I wrote a more detailed description about tribulus in the dedicated thread that is currently ongoing. Sorry for those who read both of my posts for the copy-pasting of some content :slight_smile:

Like I said I am in the lucky position to go a year without working, so I`m full time on recovering. When I started I felt like killing myself a lot, was exhausted every minute of the day and had zero motivation to do anything. I read all the recovery stories I could find and decided on two things:

  1. Not take any supplements, because there are a million to pick from but none has reproducible effects
  2. Go with a wholistic approach centering on sport and meditation.

So since these two things arent really new for anyone, I will only post the thing that got my recovery started and which I havent found anywhere else. Maybe it is of help to someone. Because what I did, is go quite into overtraining in the first month of my recovery. I started with German volume training 5-6 days a week (heavy weightlifting programm), then 30 minutes stretching followed by 30 minutes of high intensity interval training on a cross trainer. I was eating a weightlifters diet, so lots of carbs and protein, protein shakes as well and I juiced a lot of fruits and vegetables for vitamins etc. I stopped after one month and took a 3 weeks break in which my mental sides got better for the first time. I followed this up by another 4 weeks of “normal weightlifting” and normal cardio. In the following break I got a lot better again and recovered since then to the point where I really feel back to normal. Only libido remains, but as those of you with heavy mental symptoms know, it is such a lesser problem then depression and all that other stuff. I am living a happy life now.

I looked a bit into the science of overtraining. There is a molecule produced during training which increases neurogenesis. However, if it is overproduced, it has the exact opposite effect on the body. This is what happens during overtraining and the symptoms you get from it are very similar to ours. Maybe the body heals a bit of the pfs symptoms as well when recovering from it. This is of course not much of a theory, but maybe one of you wants to give it a shot.

Also check out Ido Portal. There is a documentary called move about him, you can find it on youtube. I did a lot of his exercises and started moving a lot. THAT also helped my mental sides tremendously.

I wish you all good luck with your recovery and that we all get back to normal one day.

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Libido recovered with meditation
#2

How do you feel now?

#3

Still feeling pretty much the same. Low/no libido but good mental health. However, I wouldn`t say 100% anymore. There are things that used to be different before PFS. I am more easily stressed and I am a bit more abstracted then before and I don´t learn new stuff as quickly as I used to.

I tried a couple of things like keto diet and intermittend fasting to see if I can improve libido but nothing is working. The only thing that ever did anything was Tribulus, but it stopped working at the sixth cycle. So instead of the upward spiral the effect just stopped. I want to try it again at one point and then take longer breaks in between cycles because the effect was really huge for me. (I posted in the trib topic).

#4

What exactly helped your brain fog?

#5

It’s hard pinpoint what did the trick, but it got better in the recovery phases after the extremely heavy workout weeks. So maybe it was the sports program that helped.

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#6

Sorry, does this mean that you no longer have cognitive problems and a sense of separation from the world? Have you recovered your mood? What about your sexual function? It’s exciting.

#7

did you completely recover sexually?

#8

Yes, I feel super happy most of the time like I used to before PFS. I love meeting friends, going out etc. I am meditating a lot which definitely helped with the separation problem and to feel positive feelings again. Even better for me is moving a lot, be it exercising, sports, dancing. If I do that regularly like I do now, everything’s just amazing.

The one thing that won’t get better at all is sleep (about 6h a night) and libido. I am lucky enough that sexually everything works just like it used to, I just don’t really feel anything or get horny. But you know that feeling.

Hope that you get better soon as well!

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#9

wow，thank you ，It’s as magical as inception，I mean ，you wake up，no longer like a dead walker，libido is hard to come back，but it is worth for you to wait，keep improving！

#10

Thank you for writing this. It is very important that I remember the days of the “Dead Walker” and not get absorbed with my low libido. It is such a minor problem compared to the severe mental problems I had and others are suffering from.

Best of luck to all of us in fighting this illness.

4 Likes
#11

So to clarify you had all the mental symptoms of derealization, disassociation etc and this is all cleared. These are my worst symptoms by far.

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Following Numbs protocol and its working
#12

hi，Headpressure，I also have headpressure and disassociation ，but know，I am recover from them，it took me three months.I just have low IQ.

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#13

Did you do anything for that?

#14

复方羊角颗粒“fu fang yang jiao ke li ” a traditional Chinese medicine，this is its instructions：Compound Yangjiao granule is mainly used for migraine, vascular headache, tension headache, and neuralgia.
Yangjiao is a drug for calming the liver and calming the wind. It can enhance the effects of central inhibitors such as xubabimide and thiopental, showing sedative and anticonvulsant effects. Ligustrazine in Ligusticum chuanxiong can inhibit the contraction of vascular smooth muscle and increase the blood supply to the brain. The other two traditional Chinese medicines also have the effect of vasodilation.
The whole prescription can increase the blood flow of vertebral artery in human body, expand pial arterioles and relax vascular smooth muscle. Therefore, it can effectively improve systemic vascular dysfunction, increase cerebral blood flow, improve cerebral ischemia and hypoxia, improve the tolerance of brain tissue to ischemia and hypoxia, reduce the change of body fluid composition and calcium influx, and alleviate the process of primary nerve inhibition. Thus, it can regulate the contraction of blood vessels, maintain the stable state of blood vessels, and inhibit the attack of migraine. be careful

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#15

Yes, all gone. My worst symptoms were exhaustion, depression, brain fog and a constant hate for everyone and everything.

Sleeping issues and libido is all that’s left. But I’m a happy fella again

#16

What is “on a cross trainer” in this context?

#17

It’s a training equipment that let’s you do full body cardio with low overall impact.

#18

Hey @fightfin,

It’s so great to read how you managed to make such a good recovery on the mental front.

I was wondering, did your stress response ever improve from what you wrote two and a half years ago?

#19

Hey Espresso,

not really. No long-lasting changes since then. My libido had improvements that went away again and that’s it. However, I am extremely happy when I meditate a lot. That’s the one thing that makes a big change in my life. That doesn’t really have a lot to do with our state, it’s just what proper meditation is supposed to do.

I recently focussed a lot on a non-pfs related health issue. I have muscle twitches in my left face and I am making a huge progress there at the moment. If I should get rid of them I’ll start a big effort of improving my remaining symptoms which is bad sleep and libido.