An observation that may be important regarding possible finasteride-induced brain damage

This is something I’ve never mentioned before because I never made the connection until now, reading some posts by others. While I was ON finasteride (to my knowledge this has never happened since being off), I had this weird effect, but it’s difficult to explain so please bear with me. Sometimes when I would be talking to someone, I would be in the middle of a sentence when all of a sudden I would “tick”, instantly lose my train of thought and speech, and be stunned. It was as if someone turned the power off in my brain and then turned in back on right away. And I would forget what I was saying, then remember and continue on, but a bit sluggish and foggy. I even had a friend react to it once. When I was talking to him and it happened, he went “Woah”, so it was observed by someone else as well. Again, I would be mid-sentence, like I am now, and th - TICK - cessation of speech and thought for a second or two, then a remembrance, and then a continuation, but some fogginess resulting. Could this be brain damage? I haven’t had this happen to me since quitting the drug over a year ago. Just an observation.

EDIT: Also as well, when the tick would happen, whatever word I was on would be drawn out. So if I ended on the word “because”, it would sound like: “I play this game beca - TICK - ussseee.” Then I would stop for a second or two, foggy and confused, then remember, and then continue on. It sounded really weird, and happened to me probably a dozen times. Again, I had a friend react to it as well, so I’m not the only one to have observed it.

Definitely some sort of brain damage or brain alteration. I get “brain zaps” when falling asleep, which is similar to what you discuss. This is coupled with twitching. I know this isn’t a muscle thing because it only happens as I am falling a alsleep at a very specific point in my sleep cycle. Additionally, some of us have profound mental symptoms (mine primarily affect my visual processing), so I would highly agree this is a brain thing. For me, it “feels” like something was damaged in my serotonin (or serotonin like) system (hence the depression people experience). Additionally, the visual cortex is a very serotonin rich area of the brain. This is of course all guessing on my part and soley based on how I feel. Again, I’m probably one of the least knowledgeable people on here, so everything i say should be taken with a grain of salt.

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