Crashwaganda is rumored to act on serotonin and can unfortunately cause a syndrome similar to PSSD.
I’m writing this here as a small update because I simply needed to write it somewhere.
The anxiety from this condition feels completely unbearable. I have been experiencing an immense amount of physical anxiety in my chest that just won’t ease up, leaving my entire body feeling incredibly wired.
This wired state has made sleep nearly impossible for the last few days. I’ve only managed to briefly fall asleep due to sheer exhaustion, getting maybe an hour or so of light broken sleep a night. When that short bit of sleep ends, I wake up immediately with an intense surge of anxiety and overwhelming suicidal feelings.
This intense mental state is currently my main concern. While the sexual side effects etc are bad, this relentless anxiety and insomnia feels like its destroying me.
I’ve spoken to both my GP and the Community Mental Health Team (CMHT). The CMHT suggested I try Promethazine to get some sleep, reasoning that the severe sleep deprivation is likely exacerbating everything. However, I am extremely reluctant to take any new medication in the fear of causing a further crash. Asking about it on Gemini indicated that Promethazine affects dopamine and prolactin and can potentially cause sexual side effects, so I’ve decided against taking it for now.
I have also booked a blood test with my doctor for nine days from now. I don’t expect the blood work to reveal a treatment path as this is such a complicated issue. Plus, it seems what helps one person can hurt another. Still, I thought the blood test might be worth doing for future reference if nothing else. The test is a general overall panel, plus testosterone (likely just Free T). I asked if a DHT blood test was possible, but the doctor said it isn’t something they can do.
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I can relate to this. My sexual symptoms are devastating but the relentless anxiety, anhedonia, and sleep disturbances drive me insane. Not medical advice but Ramelton may help. It’s a melatonin antagonist.
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I appreciate your replies to my comments. Thank you for sharing how you’re doing and for your thoughts on some of the different things Ive mentioned.
I read through your intro post and the following comments. I can see this condition has affected you massively as well, like so many others. Its truly a devastating thing to experience.
As you’re still relatively early in it, I really hope you’ll see improvements with time. You’ve been experiencing this longer than myself, and even the small amount of time I’ve been experiencing side effects seems like it’s going to be too difficult to go on with long term if it persists. Hopefully we can recover or at least improve like others have. It seems even some people who have had it for a long time can get improvements too, so I think there’s some hope for everyone.
For me, even if I didnt regain full sexual function, I’d be content enough if I could just get proper sleep and relief from this crushing anxiety. I didn’t have a girlfriend at the time of taking finasteride, and if I never have one again, so be it. Hopefully I reach a stage where I feel like I can function well enough in other aspects of life.
Thank you for mentioning Ramelteon, and don’t worry, I completely understand that it’s not medical advice. I appreciate you sharing your experience regardless. That’s all we can really do, describe our symptoms and what has or hasn’t helped us personally, while keeping in mind that others might respond differently.
For now, I’ve decided to go as long as I can without taking any new medication or supplements, and just hope my symptoms gradually improve on their own. I did try some valerian root the other night and it did seem to help reduce the anxiety and improve sleep a bit, but I’m concerned it might cause more problems which currently don’t present themselves, only to suddenly emerge, even if it’s just used a few times in the short term. Certainly it wouldn’t work as a regular thing each night anyway.
I’m also not ruling out trying something else in the future given how extreme this is, but for now I’ll see how far I can go without anything else. I have some clonazepam from a previous prescription which I may end up taking on rare occasions, or perhaps something else just to have a bit more sleep every now and then.
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Of course, no problem. In the early stages, I knew I had PFS but was doing alright because I did not have anhedonia. Anhedonia makes dating impossible but it’s definitely possible without it. I’m living proof of that even if you have ED. Women can be understanding if you’re unfront, even if they don’t understand the severity of the situation.
I’ve personally avoided benzodiazepines and zolpidem (baby brother of benzos for sleep) but I can understand for sleep and silencing the anxiety. I can almost promise you if you can get rid of the emotional blunting/anhedonia that the other symptoms will improve (especially sleep).
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The side effects keep on coming.
As I mentioned in my last thread, I’m no longer able to sweat. My eyes, nostrils, and mouth have become dry, and no matter how much I drink, my thirst never feels quenched.
Now I’ve also noticed a loss of volume in my scrotum. I’m not sure if my testicles themselves are shrinking or if it’s just an overall loss of volume, but it’s noticeably smaller. My groin area is still aching so I assume whatever’s happening is still progressing. My actual scrotum and penis have maybe 10% sensitivity.
I can’t believe how devastating the side effects of this so called hair loss “medication” are. It’s destroying my body. I feel so heavy and drained that it’s hard to get up and do anything, probably from the exhaustion caused by the insomnia and whatevers happening hormonally. My chest and nipples have been tingling most of the day as well so I wouldn’t be surprised if gyno starts setting in soon.
It’s only been about nine days since my crash and I’ve already been wrecked this much.
Well, my username doesn’t fit my outlook anymore… “HopefulRecovery”, I don’t think so.
P.S. Sorry for being so negative, I know everyone here understands firsthand how devastating PFS is. I have to commend all of you who’ve been dealing with this long term. I think I’m still in total shock at the situation.
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You’re not being negative, even if it feels like it. There is really no way to sugarcoat anything more than mild PFS. When I crashed I noticed a bunch of strange things too. I would look in the mirror and I could feel stuff happening on the inside, yet I couldn’t see it visually at that time. Something just felt amiss 24/7. New symptoms would pop up in place of old ones. You can actually feel like you are worsening for quite some time, but it’s extremely like you settle at a baseline and have some symptoms improve.
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Thank you for the reply @waiting1985
I hope the baseline comes soon. My body and its functions are rapidly deteriorating.
I used to be a fit, healthy, athletic man before this. Now I have this syndrome, there’s no cure, and I feel hopeless.
Since the doctors haven’t taken this seriously so far, I’ve decided to start documenting my decline with photos and videos. I’m even considering recording a video explaining my use of finasteride and the onset of all the symptoms I’ve experienced and posting it to YouTube. I just did a practice video before coming to the forum actually.
It’s such an embarrassing thing to talk about however, my body breaking down, especially with the sexual issues, but I also feel this information needs to be out there. To add to what others have shared about how devastating finasteride can be, there needs to be more. This drug needs to be banned but instead its freely given out.
My main concern is my family seeing the video. I think it would break them to know what I’m going through. But at least it would explain my physical and mental decline, and help them understand if anything ever happens to me what the reasoning was. I don’t feel I can go on like this long term. I’m not planning to do anything yet, I’ll likely wait a year to see what happens. But if I continue to deteriorate, that might be it for me.
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you probably won’t deteriorate much more, this is your new normal however. at least that how it went down for me, 2 months of decline and now 1+ year in that has become my new “normal”.
it’s kinda unbearable at times, but there is only one way out and it ain’t pretty…
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I hope it levels off here but I think it’s too early to say. Yesterday was the start of my scrotum shrinking so side effects are still popping up. My penis is very cold today as well, which it wasn’t yesterday.
I’ve seen some unfortunate members develop many other side effects which haven’t hit me, atleast not yet.
I will just have to wait and see I guess.
I appreciate you trying to be supportive however!
I hope you eventually start to make improvements on your current new normal. I’ve seen some people do, although not always a great deal and sometimes with future crashes. I guess we just have to keep going day by day, seeing what the next will bring. It just seems too much however. I will leave it there 
the skin thing hit me about 2 months in, overnight my skin became strecthy and loose, and took on this weird texture, it’s also very dry and flaky not oily like pre pfs
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I just had a phone call with my doctor again today. He was completely dismissive and rushed to get off of the phone call. I have blood tests on Wednesday so he said let’s wait and see what they show - which of course will likely be nothing, atleast from what I understand it seems not much shows up in blood tests as it’s to do with an epigenetic change of the receptors?
I’m still doing the blood tests anyway, but after that I fear the doctor will completely dismiss me. Not that I think he can do anything for me, but I want it acknowledged and recorded that finasteride can cause all sorts of side effects. Hopefully this will help go towards getting this medication eventually removed and more awareness around PFS.
I just reported my symptoms to the UKs medicine regulator agency too. For those who haven’t done so yet for their country, please do.
…UNITED KINGDOM…
…UNITED STATES…
…EUROPE…
…AUSTRALIA…
https://www.tga.gov.au/safety/report-problem/report-adverse-event-or-safety-problem
…CANADA…
If anyone has the links to any other countries regulatory agency for reporting side effects please reply with them here.
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doctors are useless for this, and frankly a lot of other diseases, they cant cure shit
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Waking up from a sex dream to a dead dick is incredibly depressing. I managed to get a mild semi after about 20 minutes of manual stimulation, but there was zero sensation in the shaft and maybe 10% in the head, which is how it’s been.
Is there any consensus about cumming? If I can get to that point, is it actually helpful, harmful, or neutral? (It’s probably variable from person to person, like most other PFS things, right?) I doubt I’d be able to anyway, but I might try again in the future. I stopped as I wasn’t getting past a weak semi and started become frustrated and down. I thought it was best to leave it there. I figured associating negative emotions with it might make things worse.
I’m planning to spend the next week cutting back on internet use and making some lifestyle changes (more in line with how things were). I don’t expect these to fix the sexual issues or anything else, as damage on an epigenetic level is bound to be too complex and deep. But hopefully the changes will help my overall mood and wellbeing.
I don’t think spending excessive time looking up PFS related things has been good for my mental health either.
My goals for this week:
- Reduce internet use
- Improve sleep hygiene (hopefully improving sleep too)
- Start exercising again
- Stick to my diet plan
I also just want to list my current symptoms as a record here.
- Total loss of libido
- Impotence, including no morning or nighttime erections
- Reduced sensation of penis, scrotum, anus, scalp and forehead
- Loss of elasticity in penis skin. It just winkles and stays in place if I move it
- Penis feels cold most of the time
- Groin pain for most the day
- Extreme chest and nipple tenderness
- Insomnia, about 30mins to an hours sleep at a time upto 3 hours
- Emotional flattening
- Persistent fatigue
- Lack of motivation
- Depression
- Suicidal thoughts
- Reduced hunger
- Fat gain
- Change in body odor to an awful smell
- Massively reduced ability to sweat
- Dry skin, eyes and mouth
- Slowed digestion
- Diarrhea
Changes
- I no longer feel like my bodies stuck in fight or flight mode. I believe I still am, that’s it’s not changed, just I can’t feel it as well now due to some blunting. So this is probable an overall negative.
- I’ve gone from constipation to diarrhea, again, this doesn’t seem like a positive change.
Well, that was a fail already.
A while after breakfast I noticed anhedonia kick in. Before that I only had some emotional blunting, but now it’s full blown anhedonia and hasn’t eased up yet.
I looked into the foods I ate for breakfast to see if they might be the cause, and it seems possible. I’ve seen reports that people have developed anhedonia from fish, fish oil, or omega 3s, and also reports of egg yolks triggering / worsening depression because of the choline content.
I ate a tin of sardines, which apparently has around 3.03g of omega 3s, and 4 eggs with runny yolks which is a load of choline.
I use to eat sardines and multiple eggs daily before PFS, no issues then, but I’m pretty sure they’re what’s triggered this now.
Hopefully this passes.
I haven’t managed to have a work out yet. Its hard to do anything right now, my body feels so heavy too. I’m going to try to at least do some push-ups in a moment.
I’ve had watery and reduced semen volume since I got PFS after two pills of finasteride. When ejaculating a month ago that introduced additional physical sexual issues.
I can fully relate to the sexual dreams. The waking up from them is like torture. I’ve had occasional nocturnal emissions from them but the volume is very low.
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Obviously this affects everyone differently but I haven’t had any issues with food but I’d try to not obsess over what food you consume. If possible, just try to eat cleanly. Getting a stool test may be a good idea to see your microbiome in your gut.
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Thanks for replying with your experience, and I’m sorry to hear you got more problems from that.
Yeah I think you’re right, I need to try and not worry about the foods so much and just generally eat clean. I was trying to search for the safest diet in the hopes it would allow my body the ability to heal early on. But it seems different things affect different people and that I’m likely also in this for the long term.
I’ve not actually had many reactions from foods either, but then again I have kept my diet fairly restricted. I did however have terrible constipation and a slowing of my digestion at the begining which made me overall concerned with what was happing to my body in regards to what I was eating.
The only specific issues that have come up which I think were likely triggered by food was today with the anhedonia, and a couple days a go when I drank some kefir which worsened my tinnitus for the rest of the day. Both these times could have been a coincidence, but it seemed related. I actually use to drink kefir daily without issue too, as well as eat sardines and multiple eggs daily.
Other than those 3 foods for now, plus tomatoes & avocados, I’m just going to go back to eating my same old food and try not to over think it.
I woke up with an erection this morning which I was incredibly surprised about. It basically faded within a few seconds of waking however. The skin had also regained it’s elasticity, this also faded after some time however.
Weirdly last night seemed like a bad time for my penis, I was quite worried. It felt so incredibly cold, it was pale in colour, and the head had maybe 5% sensitivity, if that, and 0 sensitivity everywhere else. The insomnia and suicidal ideation was much worse. I also couldn’t feel my heart beating in my chest, I felt more cut off from my body which was horrible. Oh and the anhedonia was still there, and still is today.
Currently my penis is back to it’s sort of PFS baseline state, which is lack of elasticity in skin, no sensation in shaft, floppy / jelly like, good sensitivity on the head (right now it’s around 75% which is the highest it sometimes gets to, it varies from 10 to 75%).
I’m not sure if there was a cause for any of this, or if it was just random fluctuations. The things which were different yesterday were:
- I ate some different foods in addition to my usual foods. The new ones were a small amount of watermelon, quite a lot of butter, and an apple.
- I did my first “workout” yesterday since my crash. Only 3 exercises, lateral raises, push ups and chin ups, but I pushed the sets quite hard. I didnt want to do too much volume incase it was too much for my body to handle.
There’s probably no point in this update, in that there’s nothing to learn from it. I just feel so hopeless with what’s going on, I don’t know what to do other than record what’s happening and to try and do healthy habits as best I can.
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This is brutal.
Im not even sure if I got any sleep last night.
Definitely no sleep until 5am, at which point I went downstairs. I might have had a little sleep on the sofa for no more than an hour, but I’m not sure.
The fatigue and anhedonia is unreal. I’ve barely been able to move off the sofa today. Only to do things like get a drink, go to the toilet. I tried playing so music to try and motivate myself to do things but it felt so flat, and as if I had cotton in my ears so I just turned it off.
I’m going to take some sleeping pills tonight. I’ve got a bunch of either:
- Kalms Valerian root 96mg
- Clonazepam 0.5mg
- Pregabalin 50mg and 25mg capsules. Not sure if this works as a one time sleep aid, or if it needs to build up. I will probably skip this one for now anyway.
I’m going to have a look on the forum to see if anyone’s had any issues from either. If anyone’s online and sees this and has had experience with either valerian root or clonazepam please let me know how you got on.
I think I saw some posts where people used Zopiclone and Zolpidem which seemed to work well for short term use. I might ask my doctor for some next week if this keeps up.
What’s crazy is I feel exhausted and have so much fatigue, but somehow I also don’t feel tired and just won’t be able to sleep.