An article following a man’s experience with the medication, symptoms, doctor visits, and life afterwards.
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Thank you to Ryan for coming forward. You’ve got balls of steel. Also, major thanks to @axolotl for his work on this. Glad to see they’ve included a link to Propeciahelp.com at the end.
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Reading the comments, it appears the public perception of finasteride and of PFS has swung in our favor a great deal over the past 5 years.
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Yeah, I saw that too.
The needle is moving.
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Firstly, thanks to Ryan for participating. It’s a very brave thing to have done. Thankyou.
I’m disappointed that the article doesn’t really describe what I’d consider the life changing symptoms that really ruin lives. It mentions insomnia for example, but doesn’t really describe what that can mean post finasteride. Reading the article it focuses on sexual problems, and doesn’t really mention the many neurological problems our membership deals with and there’s little mention of the physical changes many see.
It’s good to have more articles and especially to have had it mentioned that often doctors don’t believe the symptoms can be related to finasteride (and I note the comment section has at least one guy blaming us for mistakenly connecting finasteride with our symptoms, and a number of other people cheerfully posting to say they have no problems) but it’s still not really describing just how bad things are for a lot of people here, let alone the most servere cases.
From the comment section:
I wonder if we’ll be seeing this guy sign up here:
“I’ve been taking it for 2 years and I’ve had nearly zero side affects. I don’t know if I’m not fertile but I don’t care I’m having no more kids. My libido is still the same and My crown hasn’t got any worse. I only take it mon Wednesday and Friday as the drug stays in your system for four days.”
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Agreed that the article doesn’t represent PFS particularly well, but noticed a huge change from seeing the majority of comments being pro-finasteride in the past, to the guys proclaiming “most of these guys probably had problems anyways” being the small minority of squeaky mice today.
Also, grammar check in title?
but men say it has devastating side-effects such IMPOTENCE - that can last years after you’ve stopped taking it
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Thanks, I think I’m less aware of the sea change as a result of my shorter tenure here. I know we’ve covered the psychology of why people do pipe up to defend the drugs they use but it is still very disappointing to see, even if the numbers are shifting.
The death of the written word.
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Again, if this article can help sensible guys to consider not taking this pill it is victory.
I am waiting for Ryan 's feedback on the final version of this article. I’m sure he has been honest. We have been in contact for a month and this guy is AN ABSOLUTE GENT. As you know I can be quite negative about my new condition ( cf this week end’s post) and I strive… Ryan will always be here for support as he himself is having a hard time.
A very careful person. Ryan if you ( and I know you will) read this I send you a warm man’s hug :D.
Keep in mind that when you are interviewed for a newspaper, a lot of “editing” goes in he process. In France it is the same. I hear people who say how little is kept when the complete interview was more detailed.
I am going to translate this article for our French association this morning so that we can add more evidence of the terrible consequences of this medication.
As for the comments, it is classic. It is a never ending story… The people who take it and are fine will never understand what we go through. I was there a year ago on considering staring fin.
The medical advice in the article makes it pretty clear that people should be careful.
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Cheers for the comments guys unfortunately the article is very diluted and doesn’t touch the true horrors of what the majority of us are suffering. Some exposure at least 
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Yeah great to see awareness about our condition but yet again they only focus on the sexual stuff. The neurological stuff like the complete feeling of isolation, racing thoughts, brain fog, depression, low stress tolerance, anxiety are the real devastating effects that can wreck someones life.
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IMO the fact sexual sides can strike ANY TIME even after stopping the treatment should be enough to deter anyone fro taking the drug. When looking online, the semantics is vague and most sites will say it will stop after taking the drug.
I was super cautious when taking it on three things : breast growth, libido, erections… I constant checked anything that might go wrong. Most of the time, you take a drug, you get sides quickly after intake. We can see so many dues who get hit after a week or a couple of days… The ones who are at danger are the ones like me who go perfect for months and who “out of the blue” get fucked… When my dick went limp all of a sudden after eleven months I did not know what was going on… This article makes it clear that you should stay off this drug. The medical advice is clear from the docs who advocate the risk / benefit aspect. There should be more videos on youtube about negative experiences of Propecia… When I looked a year ago the results show the happy stories ( I remember this guys who tells his story from the NHS) but more difficult to get the dark side of the drug, except for Paul Innes. It is pretty obvious Ryan insists on : sexual sides, depression, anxiety that lead him to lose his job and marriage. He mentions neuropathy, that is freaky. The ex tacher is quite clear as to what extent his life has been trashed by Fin. The devastating consequences such as losing your partner and job to this should make things pretty clear. Because of this drug I for the first time did not go to a music festival I had attended for years… If I look back on what happened in the meantime: A year ago I started fin and a month ago I stopped it… I may be depressed but the underlying factor is the drug.
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Well done for speaking out @LazarusRy. Without a doubt human stories make the issue harder to ignore. The huge stigma attached to sexual and mental illness in men has historically hamstrung pursuing this angle effectively as so many want to remain anonymous. However, anonymity goes barely anywhere when it comes to telling human stories. Without bravery like this getting the word out is much harder. We are working on ways to establish our youtube channel and hopefully inviting members to tell their stories of how PFS has affected their lives as people. It’s important that people know everyone affected is a human being who had a valuable life.
The article is could be more hard hitting, as you say, in the sense that it is commenting on a few of the more well known symptoms. I don’t feel like this - or much - commentary appreciates the context of PFS as a novel disease state with it’s very peculiar behaviours. However it still functions to draw attention to lasting and indeed developing consequences. It does note things that are more out of the ordinary, including the progressive development of symptoms. It also provides a link to this site which can provide contextual information regarding the broad health effects. I’m not personally a great believer any media coverage is going to make a practical difference for those already with PFS at this stage, but that’s my own opinion. I tend to think of everything in terms of translational benefit. As such I see anything that is broadly supportive as a simple benefit in drawing some attention.
While the Mail comments section is not renowned for its empathetic content, this is a somewhat natural reaction and it’s not just those who are fine on the drug. This condition is not well imaginable and can vary enormously in affected sites and severities. We even have many cases in the patient community who do not appreciate the breadth of this condition, say they dont “believe” the extent of what some members are suffering with, and often attempt to explain away symptoms of others even in the presence of published or diagnostic findings. I do not remotely expect most members here to understand what I go through. A small amount of the patients I’ve had to deal with in the past who believed strongly in alternative health ideas have been frankly extreme, aggressive and bizarre. My personal guess based on a close reading of the history of the forum is that it stems from either feeling it’s somehow too outlandish and could threaten people taking them seriously with their own symptoms, or wanting to think certain things are not possible due to a propensity to reflect the experiences of others onto their own prognosis. Either way it’s self-defeating for everyone and quite unfair. I believe the latter rejection is no different to the denial of the entire situation by asymptomatic finasteride users. Sadly, for many considering this issue - (for now) satisfied consumers, physicians, scientists, and even many patients - it’s easier to make like an ostrich. Wishing it away hasn’t helped yet, and certainly doesn’t help me with the pain i’m in nor the amount I have to do day in day out. The solid data from our survey is going to be such a great help in the future I feel, within the community and beyond, at portraying the true situation. Please keep up the efforts to getting your fellow members (and hopefully accutane patients where you find them) to take the survey so everybody is represented.
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Yeah in keeping with the spirit of Paul Innes and Ben King.
I wonder how these guys are doing now since they no longer hang around anymore.
It seems Paul has gotten better over time No idea about Ben King though…
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AmIBritishOrBosnian , London, United Kingdom, about 6 hours agoDon’t take it. Took me 4 years to return to normal… weight loss, ED, watery semen/low sperm, low libido, no morning erections, dull orgasms and so forth. It works but it’s not worth it.
I wonder what this guy’s story is.
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Thank you so much to @Jaime and @axolotl for pushing to make this happen. Truly awesome work.
I understand people’s complaints about how the article doesn’t fully capture the horror of the condition and glosses over some details but I have to say I was actually impressed by it overall. As an overview of the condition I thought it covered quite a lot of ground. The inclusion of Ryan’s personal story along with supporting statements from sympathetic members of the medical community and a reference to the growing online community, all adds up to quite a compelling picture, I reckon.
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I posted this article on the hair restoration network forum
If anyone here is on that forum please leave a comment.
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I think the message isn’t getting through, these articles don’t address enough of the problems. You can see people replying saying how few people get problems so our issues are an irrelevance.
“Some people get erection problems” is significantly different to “some people have erecrion problems and their bodies essentially stop working and their ability to feel emotion and think clearly goes with it too.”
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@Greek
People put the perspective they want on such articles. A guy who has zero sides on fin who reads it will probably rant and feels he is fine or has no clear idea sides can strike any time.
Hence people who laugh at PFS on hairloss forums… On the French forums things start to change as more people post their horrible fin story…
Now from our point of view we have been victims so the feeling of despair, how little we are understood hits hard.
Again let’s hope a more sensible dude who comes across this article can think twice before popping the pill.
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I agree. I think we need to write a long and deep article that conveys the full picture. I wrote about this here:
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I agree. I think somebody with a reasonably open mind reading about how the drug can cause persistent/permanent sexual dysfunction, mental illness and the other side effects described, and has led to a significant number of completed suicides, will be able to read between the lines and figure out that it’s seriously screwing up people’s lives. Of course there are things the article omits, but I don’t agree with this idea that any media coverage is essentially worthless unless it ticks every single little box. Also, as you say, despair is subjective. This is a science-informational sort of article, not a polemic, so the journalist keeps her personal feelings out of it. That doesn’t mean she’s not giving important factual information, and I think it’s also worth noting she gives a platform to Ryan and the other guy quoted anonymously to express their feelings.
I’m not saying it’s perfect. Yes, it’s worth continuing to push for more and different kinds of media coverage, obviously nothing will be enough until we have people seriously working on a cure for this condition, but I think we should still celebrate moments like this for the victories they are. It’s all part of the process…
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