We’ll see. No pressure on this study or anything…
I agree with bk, we have been dealt an awful card no doubt, and over something we all realise with hindsight was ludicrously trivial, but things could be a lot worse. I have a friend who was a big success in sales, made a ton of money and was a real playboy then came down with MS. He still has a great sense of humour and copes incredibly, and this is a guy who can’t even type on a keyboard half the time and needs daily carers to help him wash and prepare dinner. Needless to say his sexual sides are also even worse than mine (he’s the only friend I’ve talked about that stuff without any hesitance). He believes he will get better even though his chances must be a lot slimmer than even mine. Spent twenty grand on stem cell treatment which did nothing.
It’s a cliche, but time is a healer. There is a psychological healing process which occurs the longer you are off the drug and can adapt to your new circumstances. This is also aided by some of the more gruelling sides like insomnia and fatigue fading, at least in my case. And of course, we are finally becoming active and organised and getting help from some within the medical establishment. This will only snowball.
In no way am I criticising guys who are at the end of their rope. It’s hell, and we’ve all been there. And the despair at being thrown into this situation is worsened by the actual depression caused by the poor response to testosterone we now face, something that makes us different from people with worse disabilities. But there is still a lot to be enjoyed in this world the way we are, with the possibilty that one day we can properly treat the problem, even if takes a decade or more (which I don’t believe it will).
Thats great if you can still enjoy life being like this. I can enjoy a few things… but it always comes back to being lonely and miserable. Being what I am, I’ve always had a hard time dealing with failure. I wouldn’t play a sport in high school if I wasn’t on the starting team. I just don’t see the point in a life like this. No family, no kids, alone for the rest of my life.
If you can deal with that, thats great, awesome. More power to you. To me, life is about being happy. Right now that is impossible.
You’re assuming this is permanent. Long term maybe, permanent I highly doubt. Even if they never can isolate and effectively treat the core problem there will be other means of alleviating the symptoms as time goes on.
Yeah but in what? 10 or 20 years?
I’m 28, I’ll be 40 in 12 years… it took this long just to get a true scientific/biological study going.
I should be looking to find someone to potentially settle down with at my age. but instead I missed out on a large portion of my “screwing around” years in my early to mid 20’s cuz of this.
Whatever, I don’t care as much anymore. I’ve been through the rollercoaster too many times. Dispair, regret, agony, misery, longing to go back. Just want to get off the ride now.
Well, you’re not the only one, but we can’t change the situation to any significant degree, we can’t forever ruminate on the might have beens. Worst case scenario, you can still fuck your brains out then have kids when you’re 40. You say you could ‘only’ have sex a few times a week now earlier in the thread, that’s better than many on the forum and could even be enough to get you a relationship in the here and now.
Plus, sufferers didn’t properly begin to congregate until about 5 years ago so you can’t reasonably say we are going to progress at the same pitifully slow rate of the first decade. We have had more media awareness, studies and research in the last 9 months or so than in the previous 13 years so it’s right to be optimistic that things will move a lot faster now. Just imagine if you’d crashed years and years ago.
The cialis that was allowing me the ability to have sex seems to be waning somewhat in its effectiveness. As you said thou… I will try an give it some more time.
Did I mention that women absolutely love my negative attitude? Man… didn’t used to be like this before… Dammit.
I wonder if this is cured will my balls go back to normal size and hang low like they used to.
T3 made my dick go back to normal (in appearance) at least…
bk_
I really like and respect the perspective you have. That book would prolly have been something I would have read before I mentally crashed. This is my theory and I’m sure others would agree. When you’re born you are completely fresh and innocent. You are untouched by society and parents. Everything is new and colorful. The only opinions you have come from nowhere else but inside you. You interpret things objectively because you are not jaded by experiences and because you have no ego. You are an intelligent being. Slowly but surely society and parents start giving you standards. The ego is growing inside of you. Your rebellion as an individual becomes constrained by the NORMS of your race, demographic, class, parents, society and churches until their goal for you to CONFORM is complete. You start to let these standards and the material things you have define you as a person. Until you have fully realized the damaged that has been done and recognized it, most of the decisions you make and how you view things are really programed inside of you in some way, shape or form. Some people are more independent thinkers than others when their young; nature or nurture? I mean who told us balding was such a bad thing to begin with? Who gave us that opinion? If we were all left on an island as toddlers and survived to create a small culture, how would balding be viewed then? And even if we did create a culture that was only 1 generation old, I can guarantee norms would be set nonetheless. Thats just how society’s are. Sure I believe in rules because without them it would be utter chaos. And in my opinion thats why religions are created. As a form of control. To mold the morals and opinions of the masses, because a single perspective has direction. To me, churches ruin spirituality. It’s the Santa Clause to a larger scale.
Growing up in the south of the US, I was most definitely bred to conform. I always defended my opinions strongly because thats just how I am; even though most of them weren’t even really mine to begin with. I always handled decision well though growing up because I’m naturally level headed and was always a confident person, never took much personally. For some reason I didn’t know how to handle balding because it was a situation I couldn’t control and how my mind was programmed. I’ve really looked at other people and their fuck ups. And their fuck-ups usually stemmed from some insecurity that was given to them or one they created themselves. I had a friend who had a HUGE insecurity about not being able to make his Father proud. He would go to the end of the earth to impress his Father. He became a model in New York and did some really fucked up shit because he wanted to make it so bad; in my eyes to really impress his Father. He came back with a whole new bag of insecurities. Sure at the end of the day it is his fault but where did it stem from? In a way insecurities can be your alley because they’re driving forces if you use them right. If I never had the insecurity of being teased because I was skinny, I prolly would have never hit the gym as hard as I did. Would Napoleon Banaparte have been as successful and conquered as much as he did had it not been for his height?
The word enlightenment seems like something only monks and samurais would experience. Something hippies would chat about while smoking a joint. A fancy-cliche word. Honestly I think enlightenment is just a simple moment of a realization; about things, people, circumstances and most importantly yourself. The moment I felt this I immediately loved my bald head. Even though a year prior to this I was impotent, I was still insecure about my bald. I immediately started feeling emotions I had not felt since I was a child; even the years leading up to when I took Fin and the emotional deadness it left me after I took it. Everything seemed new. Tastes, smells, sounds, every fucking thing was new to me. As if I had never experienced any of it before. I was raw as I once was as an infant. My mind was set to zero. Who the fuck knows what the sex would have been like. I wasn’t on meds and not going to therapy, it just happened. No reading required, a small experience that led me to all these realizations and I finally-genuinely understood things. That’s why I call my problem a “demon” because it finally surfaced and all went to shit.
Maturing no doubt takes time and happens with age. I was always considered a mature person for my age. Parents and people in general always trusted me for some reason as far back as I can remember. Of course I would use that to my advantage when needed, never would do anything straight of shitty though. This place I’m at has nothing to do with maturity. Absolutely nothing. I am nothing what I use to be. Not the son, brother, uncle or friend.
I am not wise or intelligent anymore. I would say I am cunning and more clever now because all of this. Viewing the world and other peoples intentions from the past with these fucked up eyes of mine really spreads some light on shit.
If I coulda just passed the balding test I woulda been fucking gone.
The mental effects are just as devestating as anything.
All I can describe it as is feeling like an entirely different person…
A subdued verson of my old self, I have no “edge” anymore… or at least its severely reduced…
I feel passive and weak.
Sooner or later you have to make a decision on whether you are going to sit around being sad or if your going to live your life the best you can.
It took me about a year, finasteride puts you in a big hole.
I need to make that decision very soon because i am at quite a critical point in life. I wish i could say that i might be able to turn things around, but i don’t think i can. Honestly, if somebody handed me a drink that would just send me to sleep for eternity i would consume it within an instant. The only reason i haven’t ended my life already is because all the possible methods will allow too much time to think. I had the courage to do it when i was away but because of the circumstances it would of been incredibly unfair on other people around me. I realize that there are so many other people in this world that are worse off than myself and life is never fair, but i simply cannot go on with such impaired sexual functioning and depression/ anxiety.
Despite my negative view towards this situation i can often see a silver lining. I would imagine many of you have similar thoughts of a ‘silver lining’ too. This whole experience has been incredibly humbling and i can safely say that i will be a better person because of it, not that i was ever really a bad person. I appreciate just being healthy (when i feel it) and couldn’t care less about trivial aspects of life anymore, such as the hair on my head. There is no doubt in my mind that i have become stronger as a person and matured beyond my years. I could probably go on a little further. I believe hitting rock bottom can have huge benefits itself, but you obviously have to get back up. That’s where the problem lies; i don’t think i can get up when i am in this predicament. I just feel like a useless, weird, impotent young man. I may as well be 60 years old.
some excerpts from awor 3d
So what we have to hope?
that scientists confirm awor hypothesis?
or that awor mistakes and the solution will be simple prostatitis like solon states?
we hope only to regain something in a reasonable timeframe …
Hi all,
Being on the same boat as you all, i know how terribly hard this situation is. Unfortunatelly, it puts you in a position that you have to be extremely strong. It always make me very sad when someone is considering suicide. I personally have considered this option in 2006 and i don t blame any of you. Our lives will never be the same, even if we get cured. There will always be this scar. So we NEED, there is no option, to transform this awful event into something different, into something positive. We need to do something positive somehow.
The most important thing that can help you is your own mind… We need to put things into perspective. How many men become paralized every day in car accidents for example. Do they all kill themselves? Just remember they dont even control their own bladder anymore. Hope this story can inspire you:
This guy was an international model, he had any women he wanted, he was famous all over Brazil. His name is Fernando Fernandes. One night after drinking too much and driving, he had an accident and became paralized from the waist down. Talk about someone who could feel really guity and stupid. Well, turns out, two years after the accident he is now the world champion in Paracanoe. In all interviwes i ve seen from him, he is always trying to take something positive of his situation.
This is a couple of months after the accident:
youtube.com/watch?v=2lbQjukr_Kc (sorry it is in portuguese, but you can have an idea from the images. This is a few months after the accident. You can see he has a sad expression but he has a positive attitude, he keeps saying he is trying to take something positive of this)
This is last month:
youtube.com/watch?v=jwOkNpSZt90 (check the difference in his expression)
I know it is different, i know it is another situation, but the same way he developed strategies to overcome this, we need to do the same.
Here are mine:
0. Stop comparing the old you to the new you. Learn what is good to the new person you are. Try to make the best of the new you. Find a routine that works for you (diet/ mild exercise/ whatever).
- Guilt is rubbish
- On the first sign of a guilty thought “oh i shouldn t have taken finasteride, etc, etc…” Cut it off immediately, or it grows like a snow ball going downhill.
- Always observe yourself. Act the same way about depression, don’t let it grow! At the first negative thought, fight it, go for a jog, take a warm bath, do something you enjoy, eat something you like (i know, i know, “i am not the same, i don t enjoy things like i used to, etc”… cut off these thoughts too. Forget the old you). Try and find actions and foods within your diet possibilities that give you momentary relief. And use them when necessary.
- Find a religion or a spiritual meaning. I have studied spiritism based on Allan Kardec work. It is a spiritual belief based on reincarnation. It opened my eyes that the situation i am in now is an opportunitty to grow spiritually, become more patient, more mature, think more about others than myself, etc. Find one religion that suits you, your background, etc. If you intend to read about spiritism, there are books on Amazon “The spirits book” and “The gospel according to spiritism” both from Allan Kardec.
- Pray. It is proven it activates one region of your brain that gives you strengh. Science.
- Get rid of the “ghosts”. Try to fulfil some of the dreams you had before this disease, even if you do only part of it. Cialis is working for you now? Screw that girl you wanted even if your pleasure is not the same. Do it anyways.
- Don t let the disease make you feel useless.
- You can still have a family
- You will have other lifes to do enjoy. (This is my personal belief of reincarnation). Use this one to develop courage, resilience, strengh, faith, patience.
- On a really bad day, take the day off from thoughts of the disease. “Today is my day off, i ll think about this tomorrow.”
- If you have the patience to meditate, do it. I ve had great insights of what to do to improve while i was meditating.
- If i can’t be completely happy, i will use what i have left to help other people. I still have so much more than so many people.
- Put the sexual aspect into perspective. Suppose i was to live until 115 years old, and i had not taken finasteride. At 75 would i kill myself because i would have to live 40 more years without sex?
- Think about today, one day at a time.
- Respect your new limits, and dont be guilty about them.
- Do not ever give up.
I am sorry if it may seem corny or utopic, but it may help. When you let that bad vibration keep growing you attract more bad energies. It is hard, it is a fight. But if you fight one day at a time, you can do it. Hope the best for all of us. Be strong.
Just to throw this out there; if anyone wants some relief about the fact you don’t care about your hair anymore just visit ‘the impact of hair loss’ section on hair loss talk support forums. You have guys just as negative, if not more so than us about there life situation. I had some of those depressive feelings about hair loss when it first happened. It just goes to show how perspective is everything.I know quotes are quite cheesy but i like this one:
“I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet”
I agree you with 100%. I know I’m not going to get better sitting around bitching about this. I know my current actions are not right. It’s like another member on here said : I’m stuck in the middle about coping with this and making the best of it or realizing my failure of what I expect of myself and offing my being.
Agreed with everything you said. I also realize that things could be so much worse; which also adds to the guilt because of my fucked up attitude. With my situation, before my “demon” got hit and I was just experiencing impotent/libido issues; I GENUINELY realized how lucky I was in life, realized I wanted to be the greatest uncle and found the best ME I had ever found. I was a server in college and was serving a table with a Mother and small boy. He had a beanie on his head and about halfway through the meal he took it off. I could sense he was embarrassed about his bald head (chemo) but saw since I was so confident and happy with my bald head he didn’t seem as ashamed of it. I felt so sad and wanted to tell him everything was going to be okay and show him so much love but it was almost like I couldn’t. The damage had already been done but I just hid it. I never earned my baldness and new shit would fall eventually but didn’t wanna face it. Some people feel OKAY with their bald head; I literally LOVED my bald head it taught me so many lessons. I was meant to go bald but to young and vain to realize the lessons it was trying to teach me. I rejected yet another gift life was giving me.
Another recent lesson that things could have been worse was actually yesterday. My 3 year old nephew is the most hyper-active child you will ever meet. Not only that, I can see he is going to have attention disorders when he gets older because now that his two younger brothers take the show he no longer gets the attention that an only child receives. I could see this a long time ago and always gave him 100% of my attention so he never felt “abandoned”. Now I just don’t have the patience or energy to keep up with him. BACK TO MY STORY. I thought it would be a good idea to give him a benedryl to help him calm down (no clue that my sister gives her kid’s KIDS BENEDRYL)…So I took 1.5 capsules and put it in a coke. About ten minutes later he was screaming and crying. I could tell the medication hit hard him hard. I told my mother and being the hypochondriac that she is was saying I could have overdosed him and we might need to rush him to the hospital. Not trusting medications AT ALL anymore I got on the internet and did some research and was assured everything would be fine. I didn’t let him out of my site for hours. I was scared shitless. The feeling I got if something could have happened to him was horrific. Wayyy worse than what PFS is causing me. Of course everything worked out and after his wailing it was actually kinda funny because he was zoned out and feelin goooood. I think he was on a high so we just watched a bunch of spiderman episodes till he eventually passed out. He woke up and was back ripping the house apart.
And about family issues. You know that card in the middle that holds all the other cards up so they don’t fall?..Well that card in the middle is me and everything else fell in my family and there’s nothing I can do about it…more guilt added.
@ correiovip
You prolly have one of the best attitudes on this board and we def need people like you. That is an inspirational story, one that would make a good hollywood movie of how to GET BACK and conquer with what you are dealt. But in our situation if there was one insanely 100% recovery and one of us became the greatest pornstar of our time; how would people view that. Because of course to us PFS victims he would be a hero but to others its kinda like OOOKKKAAYYY. “Lord of the Cock Rings: There and Back again, an impotent tale”…People have no idea what this shit has put us through, far more than just on a physical level. I saw on a yahoo pop-up about a guy that was cured from HIV. Yeah it’s a nice story but at the same time it’s not really viewed as something heroic; not like cancer for instance.
I do believe in spirituality and know well there are higher powers in the universe. But in the end I don’t think there are great mysteries. LIFE, LOVE, GOD or whoever gives you one chance at life with consciousness and do with it as you please. It’s up to you whether you wanna make life better or worse with your short time on this earth. Certain aspects of yourself are passed on forever and reach places you would never fathom. The band NERD stands for Nobody Ever Really Dies.
Hi Correi,
how are you doing these days?
Thanks to Correiovip and the rest of posters on this site.
You guys are the only source of support I get.
I dont share my condition with family or friends.
I must admit, I log on here to read what’s helped one of you guys, hoping it will help me also.
I still believe that there will be some sort of breakthrough, if not in treatment than in understanding, that will at least help us have more good days than bad.
The road will not be easy but we must stay positive.
The suicide thing u raised is a touchy topic.
For me, getting better just looks like a pipe dream now. I had everything going for me. Now it is all gone.
I spend about $100 a week to stay only just functional. I get a big ass bag of meds a month and it does very little.
When i was having my bloods taken, GP’s and endos they told me nothing was wrong but something was so fucked up inside of me.
My brain fog and blurry vision is still destroying my life. Erection is at about 10% of where i once was.
It was like my body would get a bit better then then worse, better then worse. The downs were always bigger then ups.
By brain fog still goes up and down for some reason. The cycle is about a weekly cycle.
As i sit here and type my vision fuzzy and borderline on double vision.
The brightness on the monitor adding to the issues
Testosterone doesn’t seem to help much any more. It did huge things for me a year ago, now very little.
But i have been around a while and i know your fortunes can change just around the corner.
fingers crossed for all of us
Visionquest,
From my point of view, we need to deal with this disease trying to minimize its effect on us, instead of expecting a breakthrough (of course that would be great, though). In six years, i have tried almost anything natural. I tried to stay away from prescription drugs as much as i could. Never did TRT and wont do it. The best thing that worked for me is trying to live with it like a chronic disease like diabetes. If a diabetic doesn t live according to certain rules he will have a miserable life. We need to find our rules. I ve found most that work for me, in a exausting trying and error process over 5 years.
After 5 years of daily effort, i was able to live “completely cured” from October 2010 to May 31, 2011. Everything was normal, sleep, mind, erections, sex, humor, everything!! (The only restriction i still had was not to take caffeine). But then in an unfortunate event, i proved my theory that this is a chronic disease…
Problem is, Propecia caused me to develop acid reflux disease (one of the causes of this is a high level of progesterone for some time, we all know propecia alters progesterone levels). Well, i had a very bad event of acid reflux for over a month and i decided to take omeprazole, because i just couldnt take it anymore. Bad mistake… it stressed my body and i lost some of the progress i achieved in years. But now i have more clues of what i can do and what i can’t. I am using apple cidar vinager to treat my acid reflux (very slow improvement day by day), i cut all the foods that could lead to an episode like this, and i am taking xanax 0.5mg to calm down my body again.
There are two stages of this disease in my point of view. Crisis and plateau.
Crisis: penis shrinkage, insomnia, agressiviness, irritability, brain fog, slurring of speech.
Plateau: You are cured from the symptoms above, stable, but not normal as you were before. But if you don t reach plateau and keep yourself constantly in that state, you don’t allow your body to heal itself slowly on a day to day basis. In my case, i was never able to reach plateau naturally, i either had to take Xanax or Bromazepam. I tried exercise, st johns worth, etc, etc. Then, to keep yourself in that calm state, you need to stay away from stressors like prescription medications and in my case caffeine.
In my case i believe i ve been affected from Finasteride in four areas: Hypothalamus, adrenals, liver and prostate.
Hypothalamus <=> adrenals: ACTH to glucocorticoids feedback. I believe my body fails to produce extra cortisone in an “emergency”. Taking a prescription drug for example. Or exercising hard. So i need to avoid these occasions. I never exercise more than 20 minutes. I dont do weight training because my body doesnt heal the inflamation it causes in the muscles properly. This is lack of cortisone. This is the same reason i believe my allergy patterns were greatly changed. But the daily cortisone production seems to be normal… or just slightly below normal.
Liver: I believe Propecia affected the cytochrome P450 that breaks Finasteride and other drugs. So every time i took a drug that is broken in that pathway, i had a huge stress response, like when i took Omeprazole last June. My body released a great amount of adrenaline, leading to the same crisis again => insomnia, penis shrinkage, agressiviness, etc. Also, i don t process alchool well anymore, and any food that goes through chemical fermentation, has malt, conservants, etc…
Prostate: Whenever i was in the crisis state, i had prostate pain sometimes and discomfort when defecating. After the crisis state was ended, my prostate healed with time.
Because the link Hypothalamus - Adrenals is affected in a way, you can stay in that state indefinetely, if you dont treat it. We have lost the “switch” that turns it off.
This is the course of treatment that worked for me:
- Bromazepam (3mg) or Xanax (0.5 or 1 mg) for some time.
- This improved the Gaba levels in my brain, calmed down my adrenals after i crashed from propecia, stopped penis shrinkage (it worked for me) and improved sleep so i could benefit well from Growth hormone release in sleep normally again, which is so important for healing.
- Cut any stressors: Medications, alchool, caffeine, refined sugar (in my case i needed to cut it also).
- You need to be very disciplined. This way you are preventing to go back to the crisis state again.
- Eat naturally and nothing processed.
- Again, if you stress your liver, bye bye.
- Stay in that regimen for a couple of years.
- It is a very slow process but it worked for me. What you can t do is stress your body and reverse the process.
Even though i am back to square one so to speak, i started xanax pretty fast, so i didnt reach the state i was on my first crash in 2006. I didn t lose erections this time, and shrinkage is already better, sleep also. I am confident i will reach the state i got last semester, this time faster, as i know what worked for me. And this time i wont take omeprazole ever again, even if i have to sleep in a 45 degree angle for the rest of my life!! LOL… Be strong buddy.
This might sound silly, but you could try to put yourself in extreme situations to kinda shake up the depression.
Basically stuff like rock climbing, hiking in some hard place, surfing, etc. Something new to you, that you are not used to do (that your body is not used to).
In february I made a trip to the mountain, with a friend. On one occasion we were walking from one shelter to another one. At some point we lost the track, got lost , and we decided to hike our way out of it. The thing is that we got in a situation were we had to kinda climb down some parts, not sure for how long and to where it was taking us. At that point, where my life was “kinda” on risk (it actually wasn’t, but in that moment, it felt that way) I felt like the total opposite of when I feel depressed about this finasteride shit: I was going to keep on walking all I had to to get out of there. It wasn’t simply a decision, but rather my body pushing me to go on.
That was a good sensation, it really put things in another perspective.
To me, when somebody says “think at things from another perspective” that’s bullshit, since either you just can’t do that mentally or it has no real long-lasting effects, at least. But when you actually have to take another perspective because you are in a completely different situation, you, or your organism, naturally assume a different perspective.
I’m not saying “go do dangerous stuff”; but actually, go do stuff that is completely different to what you’re used to; something where you’re not comfortable at all and you just can’t opt to get depressed (your body wont let you). Not a real danger, but a new scenario, where you need different skills and strengths than the ones you use at work/school etc.
I think that can help to the depression. Doing different, hard, physical, strange things that your depressed being just can’t take and has to give space to the “survival one”.
At least doing that gave me some relief, and remembering and actually writing this was good to me.