4 pills of Finasteride has stolen my emotions and by consequence my will to live

Member Stories
#1

Where are you from (country)?
United Kingdom

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?)
Kevin Mann on Youtube, I avoided this place initially due to his slanderous review. Ironic that I’d end up with the veyr condition he dismissess the existence of :S

What is your current age, height, weight?
20 5’5 180lbs

What specific drug did you use (finasteride, dutasteride, saw palmetto, isotretinoin/Accutane, fluoxetine, sertraline, citalopram, leuprorelin, etc…)?

Experienced sides and crashed on: Finasteride

In the past two years that could contribute: Fluconazole (stomach infection), Ketoconozole (hair loss), Minoxidil (hair loss), RU58841 (hair loss), Accutane (short course finished early October)

What dose did you take (eg. 1 mg/day, 1 mg every other day etc.)?
1mg/day

What condition was being treated with the drug?
Hair loss/androgenic alopecia

For how long did you take the drug (weeks/months/years)?
4 days

How old were you, and WHEN (date) did you start the drug?
20

How old were you when you quit, and WHEN (date) did you quit?
20

How did you quit (cold turkey or taper off)?
Cold turkey

How long into your usage did you notice the onset of side effects?

First day I noticed a decrease in anxiety when thinking about university work that I considered positive however this wasn’t a decrease in anxiety at all, this was my emotions being shut off and my ambition being reduced. Only until a few days after quitting did I notice my other emotions were blunted too.

Two days in I noticed I had ED and a diminished libido

Four days off fin I noticed my penis had lost some of its girth, developed lots of purple spider veins and changed colour. I now know this to be the beginning of peyronies.

What side effects did you experience that have yet to resolve since discontinuation?

  • Emotional blunting
  • Lack of ambition/care
  • ED
  • Loss of libido
  • Reduced morning/night/random wood
  • Harder to get off (I had premature ejaculation before if anything now the opposite)
  • Peyronies
  • Insomnia/waking up in night
  • Muscle twitching/Fasculations
  • Already had tinnitus but its now louder in my left ear than before
  • Suicidal ideation and hopelessness WITHOUT depression

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
[ ] Difficulty Focusing / Concentrating
[ ] Confusion
[X] Memory Loss / Forgetfulness
[ ] Stumbling over Words / Losing Train of Thought
[ ] Slurring of Speech
[X] Lack of Motivation / Feeling Passive / Complacency
[ ] Extreme Anxiety / Panic Attacks
[ ] Severe Depression / Melancholy
[X] Suicidal Thoughts

Physical
[X] Penile Tissue Changes (narrowing, shrinkage, wrinkled)
[ ] Penis curvature / rotation on axis
[X] Testicular Pain
[ ] Testicular Shrinkage / Loss of Fullness
[X] Genital numbness / sensitivity decrease
[ ] Weight Gain
[ ] Gynecomastia (male breasts)
[X] Muscle Wastage
[ ] Muscle Weakness
[ ] Joint Pain
[X] Dry / Dark Circles under eyes

Misc
[ ] Prostate pain
[ ] Persistent Fatigue / Exhaustion
[ ] Stomach Pains / Digestion Problems
[ ] Constipation / “Poo Pellets”
[ ] Vision - Acuity Decrease / Blurriness
[X] Tinnitus (ringing or high pitched sound in ears)
[ ] Hearing loss
[ ] Increased hair loss
[ ] Frequent urination
[X] Lowered body temperature

[X] Other (please explain)
Insomnia/waking up in night
Muscle twitching/Fasculations

What (if any) treatments have you undertaken to recover from your side effects since discontinuation of the drug?

None. Worried things might make me worse but I think high doses of test might be my first attempt, if not it seems corticosteroids show promise in removing methyl groups. Zinc and Tribulus don’t seem to hopeful.

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)?
N/A

Anything not listed in the above questions you’d like to share about your experience?

Tell us your story, in your own words, about your usage and side effects experienced while on/off the drug.

I don’t want to aggrivate anyone or waste anyones time since I know my case is not even close to some people who experience brain fog and many other serious debilitating effects but I truly have trouble finding the will to live nowadays and I can’t turn to anyone who really understands apart from here, I’ve spoken to my mother about how I feel and she just tells me that can be caused by depression :frowning:

She doesn’t seem to understand I’ve been depressed but when I was depressed I’d be crying all the time and just generally very upset… Right now I feel like my brain is broken, I can’t feel sadness anymore I can’t even cry if I try no tears just kinda water up.

I was a extremely empathetic person, I had an extreme love for animals. Its still there but significantly blunted. If I saw an animal upset or something it could effect my mood for days…

Nowadays I don’t really have a mood, its not happy nor sad.

On top of that my libido has slowly been decreasing since improving after coming off finasteride, penis is very numb and certainly has peyronies. Muscle twitches all over the body, can’t get more than 4 hours sleep without waking up now.

Fortunately I can still ‘enjoy’ things, feel pleasure etc… My guess would be the reward system is dopamine related and emotions come from estrogen receptors which may have been upregulated. Anticipation/excitement/pleasure had disappeared completely but seems to have come back, however I’m not capable of true anger/sadness/happiness just a dummed down version of anger which is frustration and an empty emotionless choked up throat when sad. Personally being overemotional has always been something I identified with, I considered it a character trait, so I feel like I’ve lost a part of me maybe a part that will never come back…

Cialis has little effect. I’m also on trt due to steroid abuse in the past and its completely changed the way I respond to my trt. If I take a higher dose than normal I become even more empty and feel weird, when I take my trt dose it seems I start to feel worse whereas normally trt dose day would feel the best its the opposite now where the longer I go without dosing the better.

My grades at law school have begun to slip as I struggle to find motivation with zero anxiety about how my future ends up now. I never thought I would commit suicide but now I talk about planning it like its inevitable, I really want to live but I also really don’t want to live feeling empty with only the bad things in life like stress, anxiety or frustration. In a few months if I don’t get better I don’t think I see much point in existing to suffer.

When suicidally depressed in the past I always thought about my family, how they’d feel or how I’d never see them again, and ultimately the fear of death would put me off.

However this feels different, I was standing at the train waiting for university the other day and I felt an urge to just throw myself in front of one but it wasn’t like a strong emotional urge it was just like a huh I could end this right now and there wasn’t really much stopping me from doing it except it was a few week or so ago and I thought hm good chance I’ll get better.

I need help guys, I need to know how you carry on how you see a light at the end of the tunnel. Personally I’m struggling with the fact that my life is now merely ‘what could’ve been’, I’m sort of starting to forget what the old me felt about certain things. Thats a concept that just terrifies me and I’d rather not be conscious than become a shell of myself.

One of my biggest fears in life has always been dimentia because of the idea it can change who you are, yet here I am 20 dealing with my biggest fear becoming reality already.

Anyways, I’m sorry for rambling I just needed to get this off my damn chest. No one else would understand :sob:

4 Likes
#2

Hey @Junkieasteride, that must have taken a lot to put into words. What you describe is absolutely horrific and an experience many of us here know. I’m so sorry to read that things haven’t improved since you posted a few weeks ago.

What I will say is that you are very early on in the process of this and additionally, there seem to be confounding variables instead of just Finasteride. You mention steroid use and you also mentioned other substances when you first arrived here. I think a long period away from any substances would be a good idea to allow your body to try to just function as it is. As you have only ceased Finasteride very recently, it’s possible this is still all an adverse reaction and you may find things improve. Anecdotally, I’ve read quite a few cases of people reporting a terrible crash with severe depression and insomnia and go on to state these things have passed after some weeks or months.

You are showing incredible courage to keep on with your work despite what is happening internally. Please stay strong. There are many diligent and intelligent people working to try to solve this mess. We are here if you need to vent.

3 Likes
#3

It’s definitely not easy to deal with this at a young age, I’ve been thru this and it’s taken up a lot of my time. There also wasn’t this group available when I needed help.

I agree with @Tzinkman maybe stay away from stuff for awhile and see if your body re-regulate itself and hopefully it could fix some of the issues on it’s own.

If you’re completely not getting erections, I would recommend a low dose of cialis or something just to keep the blood flowing I know for me it feels worse mentally when there’s no response from the penis at all.

3 Likes
#4

This story and the emotional blunting and indifference, lack of ambition and just not caring resonates strongly with me. It’s perhaps a worse symptom than the reduction in libido.

I can’t say much or promise anything. The only thing I can offer is the realisation that we are steadily learning more about the root cause of this condition. I may get ‘shot down’ saying this, but hopefully the much delayed Baylor study may illuminate which epigenetic changes have taken place within us sufferers, and may pave a way for treatment. It’s probably the best hope we have at the moment.

The mods are also conducting a 23andMe genetic analysis which may, however unlikely, unearth some common genetic characteristic which may predispose us to this condition.

Be patient and hang in there.

3 Likes
#5

First of all thanks a bunch to everyone who read and responded to this post, it means a lot to me :pray::pray:

@Tzinkman I’m definitely on the same page as you I believe it makes sense to allow my body to try to reach homostasis by itself and adding other substances or hormones into the mix will certainly complicate things, I’ll heed your advice and certainly spend a while away from the drugs in order to maximise chance and speed of recovery.

I certainly feel better knowing its still better to recover even despite a crash, I’m hopeful since I’m only 22 days off fin now I believe so I guess thankfully I’m still within the recovery period and since I have seen some improvement in the pleasure department, I’m optimistic due to my complete anhedonia showing improvement, where I’d be disappointed to wake up in the morning because there was nothing to look forward to. I’d spend a lot of time just staring/waiting doing nothing. Now I can enjoy things again, so I’m hoping my libido and emotional capacity will return too. Once again thanks for the response and advice.

@RR3 thanks for the response mate, currently self medicating with 10mg of cialis a day just to keep the blood flow since morning/nocturnal/random wood seems to have disappeared again following my crash, a week or so ago wood was stronger without cialis than wood rn with cialis which sucks because it seems ot line up with the ‘get better then get worse’ pattern of PFS :sob:

@ orthogs (can’t tag more than two ppl) For sure is man, we live life and experience it through our emotions and it sucks for them to be altered in any shape or form. Its significantly messing with my head and quality of life, just as much as libido. I’m hoping the baylor study will uncover the mechanism at least that way treatment wont be shooting into a barrel blind folded, plus doctors may begin to take PFS more serious. I have a feeling right now any doctor I went to for help would just throw me on antidepressants which seem to cause a different form of PFS so that isn’t really an option.

#6

UPDATE 1 MONTH:

So I noticed I now smell completely different. Kind of sweet/tangy rather than musky idk, my dick has gone cold/leathery. Pubic hair has greyed and I’ve began to notice fat in places I’ve never had it. Weirdly my fucking hair is thicker than I’ve ever seen it, so bizzare it’s like I’m still on fin.

I think body hair is starting to grey now too, my libido is like 30% on a really good day and I had a period last week where I just doubled my trt dose and my sex drive fuckin exploded but since then it’s been completely and utterly dead.

Emotions are still fucked but have made some progress at the very least, I hope to continue to make progress. I won’t try anything drastic til the 3 months mark at which point I’ll try proviron 50mgs day 300mgs a week test as androgen fix 1 lol additionally I will incorporate psychedelics in what I’ll call emotion fix 1 and we’ll see how my little experiments go.

My sides are only emotions and libido , I’ve been saved from brain fog and complete anhedonia (though I did have it at first). I can now look at a high height or something that used to creep me out and feel nothing, like I could be a badass superhero in a movie who saves people just cus I wouldn’t be worried like before lol

I’m tryna see the good side of it but honestly I preferred the me that would hide under a desk and beg they save me lol

Fortunately I haven’t gotten ‘worse’ so that’s good, just a couple periods of really androgenic horny morning wood and everything that were proceeding high trt. I definitely don’t feel like a ‘girl’ anymore like I felt like standing up for myself would be impossible there wasn’t a assertive bone in my body but it’s vaguely wearing off.

Gonna do a water fast at the 2 month mark, hopefully I’ve made progress in recovery by then and if not I’ll be super disappointed to be honest.

Merry Christmas and Happy new year to my brother’s over on this forum, may you be blessed with good luck and fortune. You fuckin deserve it after this PFS bullshit

6 Likes
#7

Thank you for your comments are very infrmative and I feel well connected with your exerience. Regarding Anger… its interesting, I feel the same as you, but one day I had a big fight at work… I fell amazing later that day!! All my body seemed to connect and feel young again! Starting making some martial arts exercises that I had forgotten, I was a martial artist in the past. Seemed that my body connected somehow… definetly was impressive day for me… felt like my real self once again.

1 Like
#8

Thank you man I can articulate my experience well to you. I shall continue to update here as my condition makes changes just to I suppose keep both a diary for myself and also to provide a story for people such as yourself to relate to so that people know they’re not alone. Incredible what you said about anger very interesting

Just a small update. Unfortunately this particular paragraph of the update is no longer accurate. I stopped feeling androgenic entirely. I’d say its very similar to being on fin again. There are times where my libido is ok though (30%) and I have had strong morning wood today thanks to daily dosing cialis.

Overall I am still able to have one or two orgasms a day that are sometimes pleasurable and very enjoyable but then other times flat and definitely reduced. I should note its not the ‘same’ though, not even close. The sex drive and visual lust is lacking.

Thankfully it doesn’t seem the genital numbness I’ve experienced is permanently strong, its always there but it has periods where it eases up and doesn’t feel so leathery and cold.

Unfortunately no progress in emotions, very blunted. Body hair turning white still and don’t sweat anymore. Sleep is dreadful (2-4 hrs a night, waking up all the time). New purple spider veins continue to make my dick look like it belongs to someone four times my age, I presume this is occurring due to androgen deprivation. Possibly DHT due to methylated 5-ar receptors on my junk, the solution might be a 5-ar steroid that mimics DHT like Proviron or Masteron.

I know I said I’d wait 3 months before trying mast and proviron but I don’t think I will anymore lol, I need to test if I respond to alpha reduced DHT because if I do it will improve the quality of my life ten fold.

#9

Yes keeping a journal as long you feel motivated for is very interesting for us.

Also I can relate with the lost of sleep capability I was suffering that for one year. Also I can understand what you say that “orgams” is pleasurable but probably the mental horniness before and sexual energy is different somehow.

I can relate very much with the lack of sex drive and also with the zero reaction in the body with visual stimully that in the past was so strong. Im still lacking that too much feels like a plain sensation. I have been suffering this illness for 9 years now, having different stages like the one I mentioned as lack of sleep.

Prioritys in life have changed.

One more thing as you are doing steroids I have done 2 anavar cycles, the last cycles I found like 50mg give me a real DHT type of behaviour and girls noticed me a lot more like in the past. Now I feel more like “beta” or non sexual atractive to girls, but I have a new magnetism some day that Im more androgenic that I can use.

One more thing after my last Anavar cycles that I tool 20-30 cruising and someday of 40-50 had very good visual contact with girls and my emotions were ok again. But as I think it manage to put my brain on a more androgenic way (I have been too femenin brain in the past, to not say that my brain has been in havoc, loss of memory etc…) I would do another cycle if this time after the cycle my semen was watery for a long time.

1 Like
#10

Very interesting man about the anavar! Its a dht derivative so we might be on to something. If dht derivs can give me a sembalance of normalcy its worth running everyday of my life I don’t care if it fucks up my cholesterol or prostate I have bigger problems lol.

I’m glad you can relate to my experience and that it was an interesting read for you, its unfortunate that we are here but the one thing we can remember is we’re all in this together.

Daily reminder that Merck are scum :money_mouth_face::-1:

#11

Today at university I noticed I’ve developed a crush on a girl. Like she makes me feel good (moreso than speaking to any other average individual), when I was speaking to her I just thought in my head damn she’s beautiful and when I think about her I think positively of her she brings on a slight mildness of happy. I think if I was in a relationship with her I’d be pretty happy, might even still be capable of falling in love.

Of course I don’t have the balls to ask her out but damn this is a good sign. My libido may be weaker and my emotions dulled/flat but this proves I haven’t lost all connection to girls.

Its made me think I’ll be capable of falling in love in the future, thank god, despite this. I was really terrified I’d never feel that way again.

Still not better, libido and emotional blunting still bad but hey here is a positive update.

1 Like
#12

Hey Junkieesteride,
Just wanted to check in with you see how everything is going? I read your testimony and I definitely had that same feeling of suicide. There was a big difference between depression and the suicidal thoughts I had during PFS.

Anyway, any improvements? Have you tried not jerking off for a prolonged amount of time? Have you found anything that helps you?

Also, how is school going? Are you feeling well enough to attend and stay focused in class?

Keep the fight going, this is yours to win. But remember it will be difficult at times, but many of us have won the battle.

1 Like
#13

@Junkieasteride hoping you recovered!