I’m not sure if this is common or anyone else has experienced similar conditions but I will talk about what’s happening to me these days since quitting finasteride 6 months ago. It’s a bit long since I want to make it as elaborated as possible but please scroll down if you want to jump to where I’m at now.
According to my observation, most people’s PFS follow these patterns(please correct me as I’m relatively new):
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Hypogonadal: After experiencing sides while on the drug, patients quit, and go through a brief period of recovery that can last weeks or months. After the initial recovery, the crash comes and you get low libido/ED/constant fatigue/sleep problems, etc. Accompanied by mental sides like anxiety and depression as well in many cases.
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Reflex-hyperandrogenetic: While on the drug or after quitting, patients experience no hypogonadal sides but get increased body hair/oily skin/itchy scalp/accelerated hair loss/greatly elevated libido. This never goes away after quitting.
My problem seems to be the mix of both and is always oscillating in between:
I was on fin for more than 7 years. During all this time I gradually developed depression, chronic fatigue, severe insomnia, moderately lowered libido and erection quality (which was rather manageable). Since the sexual sides never were out of control and I never knew the other problems I had could be related to fin, I kept taking the drug over the years until I discovered what was going on. I tried microdosing with less than 0.1mg/d for around two months.
Ever since I cut down my dosage to below 0.1mg, I almost immediately experienced incredibly oily/itchy/inflamed scalp and facial skin along with rapid hair loss. My body hair and beard almost doubled. The other symptoms including energy level/sleep problems were largely the same. I completely went off the drug in August 2016.
Within three months of quitting, my remaining sides greatly improved within weeks. I was able to sleep much better. My focus and energy level were back. My libido and erection became the same as if not better than before fin. At the same time my scalp inflammation got even worse. It was so bad that if I go to the gym for an hour I’d go home with my scalp sore and painful to the extent that I couldn’t focus on anything else! I was waking up in the middle of the night scratching my head and my scalp was visibly red and inflammed all the time. It was covered in sebum and scaling with bursts of acne and threw me in absolute despair.
As time goes by my reflex-hyperandro symptoms only seemed to get worse and my libido kept rising. This even led to my desperate attempt to go back on 0.25mg EOD fin for two weeks during early October 2016. Unfortunately as soon as I got back on fin all my previous hypogonadal sides came back and I turned into a zombie again. I had no choice but to quit again.
Since then, I had around two months of no major hypogonadal sides and I decided to wait and see if my reflex-hyperandro get improved. Those two months weren’t so great overall since I was going through a lot of stress in graduate school, but they weren’t that bad as compared to the fin days either. That led me to where I am now.
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During the past month, I realized that I entered this strange status. I would go several days with great energy, over-the-roof libido, rock hard erection, and then crash into a non-functional zombie with poor sleep. I’d try everything I can to get myself back by exercising, eating more, etc. so that I’d eventually have better sleep and good energy level again, and then BANG the same loop repeats… It’s almost like my body is constantly throwing itself up and down and it’s getting more and more extreme during my up and down times.
Just during the past two days, I had the worst fluctuation in my life ever. For two days in a row (yesterday and the day before) I became so horny that I was waking up mid night with rock hard penis that simply wouldn’t calm down. My body was burning and sweating as if I was on fire and my libido was stronger than I could ever imagine even back in my teen. I also had good energy level during daytime. However, right after that, yesterday night I had no problem falling asleep and I wasn’t woke up by my night time erection but after waking up this morning, I had the worst crash ever since I quit fin. I could barely turn off my alarm clock and get out of bed. My body was painful all over. I have no libido at all through the day, and the lethargy is so bad that I feel like passing out as I’m typing.
I have absolutely no idea what my body is trying to do to itself. It seems as if it’s trying to restoring itself by bringing up androgen signaling over and over again, yet the balance was never reached and the only result from my body’s regulating was a crash after. And then we go again. This oscillating along with aggressive scalp inflammation is killing me.
Did anyone else have the same experience? Advice and help are appreciated. I’m hopeless and can’t see how this would get better.