- Where are you from (country)?
Holland
- 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?)
Google search
- What is your current age, height, weight?
31 , 190cm , 94kg
- Do you excercise regularly? If so, what type of excercise?
Before fina / duta I hardly excercised, lately I’ve been excersizing 4 to 6 times a week
- What type of diet do you eat (vegetarian, meat eater, raw, fast-food/organic healthy)?
Try to eat healthy but it’s tough
- Why did you take Finasteride (hair loss, BPH, other)?
Hairloss
- For how long did you take Finasteride (weeks/months/years)?
Approx 8 years
- How old were you, and WHEN (date) did you start Finasteride?
22 or 23
- How old were you when you quit, and WHEN (date) did you quit?
29
- How did you quit (cold turkey or taper off)?
Cold Turkey
- What type of Finasteride did you use – Propecia, Proscar, Fincar or other generic?
Propecia with some additives combined I a pill. And later on Avodart Dutasteride.
- What dose did you take (eg. 1 mg/day, 1 mg every other day etc.)?
1.25mg a day
-
How long into your use of Finasteride did you notice the onset of side effects?
They were quite fast but I didn’t link them to these stupid pills for all the years -
What side effects did you experience while on the drug that have yet to resolve since discontinuation?
Put an X beside all that apply:
Sexual
[ ] Loss of Libido / Sex Drive
[ ] Erectile Dysfunction
[ ] Complete Impotence
[ ] Loss of Morning Erections
[ ] Loss of Spontaneous Erections
[ ] Loss of Nocturnal Erections
[ ] Watery Ejaculate
[ ] Reduced Ejaculate
[ ] Inability to Ejaculate / Orgasm
[ ] Reduced Sperm Count / Motility
Mental
[X] Emotional Blunting / Emotionally Flat
[X] Difficulty Focusing / Concentrating
[X] Confusion
[X] Memory Loss / Forgetfullness
[X] Stumbling over Words / Losing Train of Thought
[X] Slurring of Speech
[ ] Lack of Motivation / Feeling Passive / Complacency
[ ] Extreme Anxiety / Panic Attacks
[ ] Severe Depression / Melancholy
[ ] Suicidal Thoughts
Physical
[ ] Penile Tissue Changes (narrowing, shrinkage, wrinkled)
[ ] Penis curvature / rotation on axis
[ ] Testicular Pain
[ ] Testicular Shrinkage / Loss of Fullness
[ ] Genital numbness / sensitivity decrease
[ ] Weight Gain
[ ] Gynecomastia (male breasts)
[ ] Muscle Wastage
[ ] Muscle Weakness
[ ] Joint Pain
[ ] Dry / Dark Circles under eyes
Misc
[ ] Prostate pain
[ ] Persistent Fatigue / Exhaustion
[ ] Stomach Pains / Digestion Problems
[ ] Constipation / “Poo Pellets”
[ ] Vision - Acuity Decrease / Blurriness
[ ] Increased hair loss
[ ] Frequent urination
[X] Lowered body temperature
[X] Other (please explain)
Most likely : My body eventually stopped tolerating alcohol when I drank more than 5 units. this always resulted in me having to vomit the next day till approx. 18:00 pm (from the moment I wake up)
- What (if any) treatments have you undertaken to recover from your side effects since discontinuation of the drug?
None till today
- If you have pre or post-Finasteride bloodtests, what hormonal changes have you encountered since discontinuing the drug (pls post your test results in the “Blood Tests” section and link to them in your post)?
I didn’t do any testing
- Anything not listed in the above questions you’d like to share about your experience with Finasteride?
Nothing I can think of.
- Tell us your story, in your own words, about your Finasteride usage and side effects experienced while on/off the drug.
I’ve been taking this $(#*@)% drug for so long that I don’t remember all the dates correctly anymore but that doesn’t really matter. I’ve been on it for approx. 7 or 8 years and off it for about 1.5 years now.
MY STORY
I started most likely just like 95% of the other forummembers: When I was in my early twenties I started noticing that my thick hair started thinning rapidly. Since I care quite a bit about how I look it freaked me out like crazy and I started researching possible cures for this ‘’disease’’. I eventually ended up running into propecia / finasteride. I payed a pretty well known hair clinic a visit and drove home with a supply for three months of Propecia. Not realizing at all that I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life.
I endured a couple of the ‘’official’’ side effects right of the bat; watery ejacalate and some cramps / pain in my testicals. The testicalpain eventually went away but the watery ejaculate stayed. I was kind of happy with it : the drug must be doing its work.
Then after a while I noticed that my vision got worse. I started to see texts that were far away more blurry than I used to. This obviously freaked me out so I went to my local eye-specialist. He explained to me that I used to have 200% vision on my left eye and 160% on my right so any small loss of vision may seem huge to me but is actually nothing to worry about. This explanation made me feel comfortable and I blamed the little loss on aging. Fwiw : at the time it never even crossed my mind this could be caused by the pills I was taking.
Then a little later it got really bad. I can remember this very clearly because It was one of the most frightening moments of my life. I was working in the insurance business at the time and when I was talking to a client on the phone I suddenly out of nothing experienced a complete altered state of mind. Like when you take a XTC pill and it starts working. (but then without the happy feeling off course) I somehow managed to finish the phonecall properly but after that I felt so weird. Like everything was in slowmotion and I was completely unable to speak or think properly. I remember walking to one of my collegues and wanting to tell him about the phonecall I just made and I just stood there. I couldn’t even remember the name anymore of the person I just talked to. (and it was someone I had contact with daily so not remembering his name was really really scary to me ) Its pretty hard for me to describe the feelings/experience very precise because English isn’t my native language so I don’t know all the specific words but It was exactly like how people describe a severe case of brainfog here on the forum. The brainfog lasted for a couple of days and eventually turned into a permanent mild fog. It might seem weird to you guys but even up to this point it still didn’t cross my mind that it could be the pills which were causing all this suffering. The main reason for this is that I have been a pretty heavy recreactional drug user ( I’m from Holland 
) and didn’t really live a very healty lifestyle so I suspected that this was the most likely cause. Like I said the brain fog turned into a permanent mild one and I was able to function quite normal so I finally got used to it and kind of accepted the ‘’new’’ me. Looking back at it I feel immensely stupid, but I can’t turn things around anymore. The permanent ‘mild’ changes were :
- Less cognitive function; By losing it I know now that I used to be very smart and intelligent. My guess is that I lost about 30% of that ability.
- Kind of the same as above but very typical for me : I used to be extremely fast with calculations in my head. This is still something I can do quite quick but not even close to the level I used to be able to do it.
- Sometimes I stumble over words , something I never ever did before. And sometimes I have trouble formulating stuff at the level I used to be able to do it
- Sometimes having trouble overseeing the big picture in more complex problems
- My shortterm memory went pretty bad
- Learning new stuff has become significantly harder
- Sometimes feeling lost while driving a car (the destination but also sometimes not knowing how to drive properly)
- I had periods of emotional numbness and 0 desire for sex. (but this went up and down)
My situation got ‘’stable’’ after this and I kept on using propecia for years and got my hairloss to stabilize. Happy ever after…… or ?
Well after 7 years of use I noticed that the power of propecia started to diminish and hairloss started to increase again. Cool here we go again…. researching for alternatives like crazy and off course running into propecia’s big brother : Dutasteride / Avodart. I went to the same clinic again and just like 7 years before there I was : driving back home with a 3 month supply of Avodart. History repeated itself. ‘’Fortunately’’ Dutasteride finally opened my eyes. When the first pill I took kicked in I was complety lost in space. I’ve never felt as spaced out as this before. Same effects as described above but then 10 times worse. No speech, unable to think, the environment felt like you’re in a movie, just completely tripping. Very scary. That night, when the symptoms got slightly less severe, I jumped behind the computer and googled ; finasteride / dutasteride side effects. Clicked on propeciahelp.com and spent the rest of the night crying behind my screen I’ve never felt this bad in my life cause all of a sudden I realized I poisoned myself for the last 7 to 8 years. Very disturbing.
QUITTING THE POISON
After reading quite a bit of stories on this forum I decided to quit the drug cold turkey. That was 1.5 years ago. I realize now that I got quite lucky on that part. I’ve never experienced a crash like most people do here and basicly recoverd for quite a bit. The symptoms that went away 100% :
- I gradually felt like myself again. Started to feel emotions again
- My sperm is normal again
- I have a huge sexdrive compaired to when I was on the drug
The only side-effect that improved but still lasted was the brain-fog but It got to a point were I could accept it as a minor issue. I always thought that I could get rid of it entirely as soon as I started to pick up a more healthy lifestyle (sleeping and exersising more and quitting the nicotine and caffeine)
WHY POSTING HERE NOW ?
Well in november last year my wife gave birth to our beautifull son and this was the reason for me to quit the unhealthy lifestyle completely. And that’s were it got complicated 
First I increased my exercise frequency to 5 times a week. This obviously had nothing but a good impact on me.
Then 2 months ago I decided to quit the cigarettes. This always has had some impact on my cognitive functions so I was prepaired to deal with them. They were there but bearable and I was still able to work normally.
Then 6 weeks later (two weeks ago) I also decided to quit caffeine entirely. And there it got really wrong. As soon as I did that my brainfog got up to a point where I’m completely unable to focus and thus work and two weeks later I haven’t improved at all. (which should have happened since caffeine withdrawal reaches its maximum after two days and can last for 9 days)
MY GOAL (AND HOPE TO GET HELP FROM KNOWLEDGEABLE PEOPLE HERE)
My ultimate goal is to wipe out this brain fog entirely. After quickscanning some topics here on the forum I think I should be looking into dopamine
- Given my symptoms and time-span when they occurred It looks to me that I always had a minor dopamine deficiency and now because I quitted the nicotine and caffeine (which both increase the production of dopamine) the dopamine level got below a certain threshold where I’m getting really bad symptoms. Another piece of evidence for this theory is that when I have an orgasm the brainfog increases significantly and I know now that having an orgasm can have significant impact on your dopamine levels. I also experience quite a bit of improvement during and after exersising. (but that only lasts for a couple of hours)
MY QUESTIONS:
- Since I know close to zero about all the neurotransmitter- and hormonestuff; does this theory make a little sense to people who are more experienced here on the forum ?
- If so; what is my best course of action from here ? (is there an ‘’easy fix’’ for that)
- If not; what should I be looking into ?
- I’ve read that coconut oil can improve the brainfog vastly; any success stories here ? And should I give that a try ?
Many many thanks in advance for helping me starting up my voyage to full recovery !
I’m scared but optimistic right now. Scared because im still unable to do my work properly, optimistic because I think my case is solvable with the right amount of effort and dedication.
Please feel free to ask questions… I’ve been on it for 8 years so I couldn’t write everything down right at the start.