You seem to have a uniquely bad experience of brain fog, tim. Most of us seem to have depressive or impairment symptoms commonly associated with low T. Also, I’m not meaning to be offensive here but I still can’t really understand your symptoms from how you describe it. I don’t really understand what others mean when they talk of ‘being in a movie’ either,
although I could have similar feelings I’m not aware of for all I know.
I’ll list my mental side effects to flesh out this stupid and ill-fitting phrase ‘brain fog’.
Bad short term memory: frequently forget to do stuff I had planned to do only minutes or even moments earlier. Very mildly there on fin, awful post crash.
Word finding difficulty: nothing flows freely from my mind anymore. I used to be able to type lengthy, eloquent e-mails at work or to friends with ease (probably slightly dropped off while using fin but not so much that I’d notice), now it’s a real chore to type much. This also ties in with loss of creativity. Also seem to make far more ‘typos’ these days.
Poorer social skills: I find myself with fewer things to say and tend to drift out of conversations quite easily, not having said much. Much less talkative.
Poorer attention span: I get restless and don’t have the patience to concentreate on things at all. This has probably improved a lot from year one off the drug but is still probably far off my normal personality.
Spaced out: I can just zone out into a world of my own and not communicate much, sort of zombied out. Looking back I had this a bit on fin too.
Passive personality/anehdonia: don’t really give a toss about anything anymore. Ties in with no emotions, I had blunted emotions on fin for sure.
Throw in severe depression since crashing, although this thankfully has improved as some of my physical symptoms do, as with time I come to terms with having my life destroyed, and the range of mental problems incurred by this drug is catastrophic in itself. The problem is that because like every other fucking symptom induced by this poison, with the exception of moobs or peyronies, it is ‘subjective’ and difficult to diagnose, thus you don’t even get any sympathy or understanding, let alone attempts to treat it, from most docs. If a couple of dozen guys had gone blind from propecia use it would probably have been off the shelves by now.
The mental sides are frustrating for me because I can remember how different I felt when not taking fin for a while three years ago. Other people remarked how much more talkative I was; I was happier, less anxious and more outgoing. The man I would have been had I not found out about finasteride. I’m not saying I was under a cloud for five or six years but I can see with hindsight it changed me. A lot of long-teerm users are probably unaware or in denial about their mental sides on the drug cos they probably took it without breaks for years and forgot wtf they were really like drug free. Even then however, I had a glance at this site before I crashed and didn’t really get what people meant by brain fog, it was only in my pfs life I fully understood it. In the days before my crash it literally felt like my mind was drifting in and out of fog. The cognitive dysfunction, as opposed to blunted personality on fin, only took hold after I crashed; I worked in a lot of competitive sales jobs and was always a top performer - I’d have been found out easily with bad brain fog. I can’t imagine ever doing that line of work again.
One thing is that I can still enjoy music. I wouldn’t like that at all as I have always loved music. However, I tend to listen to the same things a lot, again due to a certain lack of certain creative spark. Obvioulsy I avoid any sentimentailty, love songs, and things that remind me of different or happier times.
The important thing is not to give in to it. Without wishing to sound supercilious, a lot of people are slow witted, forgetful and dull. People will not notice it much unless you point it out to them. Interacting with people is good practice for training your brain back to some semblance of normality. I do consider ‘brain fog’ another horrid consequence of this rank rotten rat poison, but for me it’s below the sexual and physical sides.
