A Member Story is Required of All Forum Participants

General Discussion
#1

Two simple things, that often go ignored or misunderstood, are expected of ALL members:

  1. A Member Story with a completed member story template (including answers to the brief questionnaire about usage history and symptoms checklist) is required from ALL members, without exception. This includes active members who joined prior to this policy being implemented. Failure/refusal to provide a complete member story may result in revocation of posting and PM privileges until an acceptably complete member story is provided since it is in violation of the Community Guidelines.

  2. ALL reports of any positive/negative results from treatment attempts must be reported in a member’s personal member story topic using a Self-Reporting Form, with one exception. That exception being casual responses to the question “What (if any) treatments have you undertaken to recover from your side effects since discontinuation of the drug?” from the Member Story Template. No one should realistically be expected to remember exact dosing and duration of treatments from years in the past. Failure/refusal to use the self-reporting form to describe treatments may result in posts being moved or removed.

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A more detailed explanation of both subjects:

  1. Member Story - The automatically-generated template MUST be included in the opening post. If you don’t experience symptoms as outlined in the checklist, provide an explanation. For instance, if you are a female member experiencing sexual symptoms not in the checklist, explain that briefly. If you don’t remember certain things about dosing and duration of use, provide your best estimate. If you already experienced an improvement after an initial severe crash, provide a short sentence or paragraph to describe when exactly your symptom checklist is referring to, or consider copying the template to thoroughly describe your state before/after. Request a blank copy of the template from a moderator if you cannot access it for some reason. Examples of acceptable and unacceptable member stories will be provided in a post under this topic.

Brief instructions for posting a member story:

  1. Open this link to the Member Story Category
  2. Click or tap the button that looks like this: image (It should be visible if you are logged in.)
  3. A text box with some automatically-generated text should appear
  4. Answer ALL of the questions to the best of your memory and check (or put an ‘x’) in ALL of the check boxes that match your symptoms. The self-reporting form at the bottom can be deleted but you will need to copy/paste it from here to report future therapy attempts.
  5. Click or tap the button that looks like this: image
  6. Be patient and your completed member story should be accepted and posted to the forum within a couple days at most (probably sooner.) After your member story is accepted, you should be able to post content to the forum unrestricted as long as it adheres to the community guidelines.
  1. Self Reporting Form - An instance of the self-reporting form should be placed in its own post under the member’s member story topic for each lifestyle change, diet, hormone therapy, supplement, drug, or any other substance trialed. If it is a combo therapy or there are extenuating factors, provide a brief explanation. Any theorizing in regards to how the treatment mechanistically treats PFS or other post-drug syndrome may be deleted or the post removed at the staff’s discretion according to the site policy regarding personal theories and speculation. Examples of acceptable/unacceptable self-reporting forms will also be posted under this topic.

These two things, which require a minimum of extra time and effort, are expected of all forum participants, in large part, for the sake of maintaining a standard of quality and camaraderie for the entire membership. If you are uncertain about something pertaining to meeting these two requirements, feel free to PM a moderator with your questions.

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Visit with a pfs believing doc
#2
#3
#4

An exemplary member story:

  • Completes questions about drug, age, country, dosage, condition being treated, duration of use, etc…
  • Completes symptoms checklist uniformly, with brief explanations of extenuating circumstances
  • Answers questions about any symptoms not included in checklist
  • Answers with an “N/A” or other similar indication of uncertainty or irrelevance instead of deleting entire sections of the template
  • Makes some brief and general statements about subjective response to past treatments without theorizing about how/why those treatments may have an effect on this condition
  • Shares some anecdotes about this condition and how this condition has affected quality of life
  • Shares some personal background info and intentions for being a member here

An example:

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#5

An example of an unnacceptable member story:

  • Does not complete questions about drug, age, country, dosage, condition being treated, duration of use, etc…

  • Does not complete symptoms checklist

  • Deletes entire sections of the member story template or deletes the entire template

  • Includes pseudo-scientific explanations about this condition or about treatments they trialed

  • Posts a wall of text with either no explanations, or vague explanations, of symptoms

  • Omits a clear description of usage history, time-frame of symptom development, or how long they have suffered from this condition

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If your member story looks something like this, it will definitely be rejected:

Hi everyone,
I’m from the US and had a rather severe case of PFS.
I started taking finasteride in college after obtaining a prescription from my GP. My father used to go to the same doctor, so he was aware of baldness running in my family. He briefly mentioned that it could be used as a prophylactic for MPB, and when I questioned him about reports of suicides caused by the drug I read online, he reassured me that both his brother and brother in law were on it for over five years and neither one of them had ever mentioned a single side effect to him. He said the only negative thing he heard about the drug was from one of his patients who had terrible anxiety to begin with and that I had nothing to worry about. I decided to proceed since I was in the prime of my life and because I was around the age my father and grandfather started losing their hair. What a mistake.

The first effect I noticed was trouble remembering things I read just the night before when taking exams. I thought it was just stress and being burnt-out at that time because I was taking 24 credits for two consecutive semesters. Around 6 months later, I began having trouble with ED and stopped cold turkey after finding this site and reading some stories of members here that couldn’t be chalked-up to simple anxiety.

I don’t really feel like giving a long-winded speech about everything that has happened since, so I’ll just cut to the chase. Last year, I began to experience complete impotence and the first time I went to see a doctor about this, my liver enzymes were high. There’s a book called “detoxifying toxicities” and one of the chapters explains how prescription drugs can clog up the liver’s filtration system and about how the combination of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and a ketogenic diet consisting of detoxifying plants like broadleaf plantains can reverse this. My concentration has improved a lot in the past year by clearing out my liver, and I’ve had a reversal of some sexual and urological symptoms, but I’m still not 100%. Looking forward to getting a few members on this site to try this with me to see if they can reverse their PFS to the point where it is no longer an issue. The only harm is in not trying. PM me if you’re interested.

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#6

Bump

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