Welcome to our community. Please fill in the following template as a way of introducing yourself, and helping others to understand your background and situation.
Where are you from (country)?
Brazil.
How did you find this forum (Google search – if so, what search terms? Via link from a forum or website – if so, what page? Other?)
What is your current age, height, weight?
37, 65kg, 1,80m.
What specific drug did you use (finasteride, dutasteride, saw palmetto, isotretinoin/Accutane, fluoxetine, sertraline, citalopram, leuprorelin, etc…)?
Finasteride.
What dose did you take (eg. 1 mg/day, 1 mg every other day etc.)?
1 mg everyday.
What condition was being treated with the drug?
Hair loss.
For how long did you take the drug (weeks/months/years)?
5 years.
Date when you started the drug?
2007.
Date when you quit the drug?
2012.
Age when you quit?
24.
How did you quit (cold turkey or taper off)?
Cold turkey.
How long into your usage did you notice the onset of side effects?
I notice some side effects in about 3 days of use. But the leaflet said that sides usually went aways for men that kept using it. So I was stupid and young enough to continued taking it.
What side effects did you experience that have yet to resolve since discontinuation?
Maybe all of them. I have got better in some ares, worse in another ones, as who reads my story will know. But I strong believe today that to resolve sides is to get full better, and I’m not on this point, nor know if I will ever be.
Check the boxes that apply. You can save your post first, then interactively check/uncheck the boxes by clicking on them. If your symptoms change, please update your list.
Sexual
[X] Loss of Libido / Sex Drive
[X] Erectile Dysfunction
[ ] Complete Impotence
[X] Loss of Morning Erections
[X] Loss of Spontaneous Erections
[X] Loss of Nocturnal Erections
[X] Watery Ejaculate
[X] Reduced Ejaculate
[X] Inability or Difficulty to Ejaculate / Orgasm
[ ] Reduced Sperm Count / Motility
Mental
[X] Emotional Blunting / Emotionally Flat
[X] Difficulty Focusing / Concentrating
[ ] Confusion
[X] Memory Loss / Forgetfulness
[X] Stumbling over Words / Losing Train of Thought
[X] Slurring of Speech
[X] Lack of Motivation / Feeling Passive / Complacency
[ ] Extreme Anxiety / Panic Attacks
[X] Severe Depression / Melancholy
[X] Suicidal Thoughts
Physical
[X] Penile Tissue Changes (narrowing, shrinkage, wrinkled)
[ ] Penis curvature / rotation on axis
[ ] Testicular Pain
[ ] Testicular Shrinkage / Loss of Fullness
[X] Genital numbness / sensitivity decrease
[ ] Weight Gain
[ ] Gynecomastia (male breasts)
[ ] Muscle Wastage
[X] Muscle Weakness
[X] Joint Pain
[ ] Dry / Dark Circles under eyes
Misc
[ ] Prostate pain
[ ] Persistent Fatigue / Exhaustion
[X] Stomach Pains / Digestion Problems
[ ] Constipation / “Poo Pellets”
[X] Vision - Acuity Decrease / Blurriness
[ ] Tinnitus (ringing or high pitched sound in ears)
[ ] Hearing loss
[ ] Increased hair loss
[ ] Frequent urination
[ ] Lowered body temperature
[ ] Other (please explain)
What (if any) treatments have you undertaken to recover from your side effects since discontinuation of the drug?
I did go on fast, I tried test cream, exercice, eat better, all the usual stuff.
If you have pre or post-drug blood tests, what hormonal changes have you encountered since discontinuing the drug (please post your test results in the “Blood Tests” section and link to them in your post)?
My blood tests usually come back fine. I have high test rates and hyperhigh DHT levels. Last year, I did a blood test that came back with high suggar. So I cut foods with high suggar concentration of my diet.
Anything not listed in the above questions you’d like to share about your experience?
I’ll say in my story.
Tell us your story, in your own words, about your usage and side effects experienced while on/off the drug.
Well. I’ll try to make it short. But it’s a lot of years to cover. I was really young when I took it. Didn’t even have had sex yet. I started losing my hair when I was about 13 years old and, by the time, it really messed up with my self-steam. So, when I was 18, a doctor prescribed Finasteride to me.
Looking back, I’m not even sure if I had androgenic hair loss, and the doctor didn’t take much time investigating it. I say that because my hair just got thinner and some autoimmune diseases have this pattern.
I was afraid of taking it, but I was also depressed and alone, and it seemed I had nothing to lose. I experienced some sides by the third day, but figured that it was just a time of adaptation since, in my mind, I had a lot of sex drive.
The thing is that Finasteride may take your spirit by bits. And since I haven’t experienced sex by then, I didn’t know what I was missing, and thought I was just getting older and losing the drive of the teen ages.
Anyway, when I realized how messed I was, I quit could turkey. I began exercising and, for about a week, I felt like myself again. I guess the Universe have unique sense of humor, because in this exact same week, I meet a woman and had a wonderful night of sex.
And hence the trauma. Now I know what I’ve been missing all the years before and, since it only lasted for a week, I also had this good memory to hunt me the years after.
I lost some relationships after. Tried test cream, my ball shrink, quit, did a seven days fast, they got back and my semen got milky again. Then, I decided to just give up dating, take care of myself and hope for the best.
I finished graduation, did a master’s degree, and became a college teacher. I even started dating, but I knew I was not myself. I couldn’t feel an orgasm, I haven’t got much motivation, but I got good at pretending.
The thing is that I did never have what you called crash. I didn’t even know what it means… util last year.
Around May 2024, I finally had a full crash. I was trying to have my PHD, giving lots of classes, having to deal with lots stuff at work and then it happened. It began like an intuition that something was off in what was already off. Then I started to have insomnia.
By the end, I remember vividly having a hot flash on my face when I was standing a white stair at the University and, suddenly, it all changed.
My legs and arms felt really weak, I started having problems of coordination, my hands and feet got cold, I couldn’t speak properly (to put things in perspective, I had all this problems in a minor degree the years before, but it was manageable. After the crash, they got really bad, and I even got urinary dysfunction).
I started a path of recovery – eating better, cutting sugar, the usual stuff. By some time, I was able to exercise again and the months went by. I did go to the doctors, because I confess I was reluctant to give this to Finasteride, since I stopped taking it more than ten years ago. But the exams came back just fine, even a magnetic resonance, and I had no alternative than considering another stone in my life brought by this evil medication.
But this where all gets strange and where I need some advice.
In this early year, I began having good erections again and, with that, came better orgasms. But the downside was that my muscles became a lot stiffer, my coordination got worse, I have internal shakes, it’s difficult to swallow.
To summarize, it’s like: when I had the crash, I felt I had multiple sclerosis. Now, after the recover time, I feel like I have Parkinson’s.
And so, as I said that the Universe have a unique sense of humor about me, this is my current state of things: when I had the crash, everybody who saw me said I looked bad and unhealthy, with a red circle around the eyes, now, everybody who look at me says how fine I look. Now, I can achieve an erection (the sensitivity on the gland keeps low), but my muscles are rigid, and I have problems to eat and on coordination.
But, by the other hand, I’m strong, and I can exercise well and feel strong, although I don’t feel any motivation.
The icing on the cake is that I started to have memories of my old self before Finasteride. Now, I remember how I was, the young men I was. It’s like this person that was blocked finally emerged, which is painful because I now know full well what could my early years have been, and the type of person I want to be.
So, here’s the doubts I’ll share with you and any advice or answer, or similar story, will be welcome.
• Is there any similar case here on the forum?
• Could it be that I’m in the early stages of Parkinson and the changes on the dopaminergic system gave me the erections back, but took a toll of the muscles, or it’s just plain and simple PFS?
• Any other advice or reflection?
As you all know, some time we get tired of going to the doctors. And I’m at this point where I’m not sure if I want to go to a person who would understand my speculations and even don’t recognize Finasteride effects.
I guess we all get to the time when people around you just see you as paranoic and, as I’m looking healthy on the exterior, it’s even more difficult to make people believe in what you are feeling.
And, to be honest: it feels like I have Parkinson’s, but it already felt like I had MS and diabetes. So it’s hard to know if we have the thing, or just this PFS analogical symptoms.
As far as I know, Parkinson don’t have a crash, like MS, begin asymmetrically, and I have this strange feeling in both of my arms where it feels heavy to put them up, and makes you slow – the thing is that I feel slow, but, to the outside, I’m fast and I can be really fast too. Especially since I’ve trained Krav Maga for years, I know my movements are fast like always.
But I have the internal shakes, lost of balance, stiffness and so on.
This is just one thing of the immense list of sadness and regrets that comes with the use of Finasteride: as we get older, of course we’re going to have some health problems, but seems that we could never know if it could be just PFS, induced by the use of Finasteride, or stuff that we would have had anyway.
The stage where I am now, I speculate if I have just PFS, if have PFS and Parkinson’s, if I have an early Parkison’s induced by Finasteride, or even if would have Parkinson’s anyway, and the PFS is just a sad overlap on my history.
And no doctor will help me figure out.
Thaks for any response.