Fatigue after quitting finasteride. Advice, anyone?

Member Stories
#1

  1. Where are you from (country)?
    Norway

  2. How did you find this forum (Google search – if so, what search terms? Via link from a forum or website – if so, what page? Other?)
    Google

  3. What is your current age, height, weight?
    27, 84kg, 176cm

  4. Do you excercise regularly? If so, what type of excercise?
    No, I can’t. My side effects come back very strongly then.

  5. What type of diet do you eat (vegetarian, meat eater, raw, fast-food/organic healthy)?
    I eat more or less anything. Also a lot of carbs and sugar (:/).

  6. Why did you take Finasteride (hair loss, BPH, other)?
    Hair loss

  7. For how long did you take Finasteride (weeks/months/years)?
    5 weeks

  8. How old were you, and WHEN (date) did you start Finasteride?
    26, 23.04.14

  9. How old were you when you quit, and WHEN (date) did you quit?
    26, 01.05.2014

  10. How did you quit (cold turkey or taper off)?
    cold turkey

  11. What type of Finasteride did you use – Propecia, Proscar, Fincar or other generic?
    Finasteride 5 mg

  12. What dose did you take (eg. 1 mg/day, 1 mg every other day etc.)?
    1.25 mg/day (some days I forgot)

  13. How long into your use of Finasteride did you notice the onset of side effects?
    Right before I quit (5 weeks)

  14. What side effects did you experience while on the drug that have yet to resolve since discontinuation?
    Low sensitivity and ED (unable to stay hard in bed, actually I went from hard to soft in 5 secs!). All the other side effects came after I quit.

Put an X beside all that apply:

Sexual
[X] Loss of Libido / Sex Drive
[X] Erectile Dysfunction
[ ] Complete Impotence
[X] Loss of Morning Erections
[X] Loss of Spontaneous Erections
[X] Loss of Nocturnal Erections
[X] Watery Ejaculate
[ ] Reduced Ejaculate
[ ] Inability to Ejaculate / Orgasm
[ ] Reduced Sperm Count / Motility

Mental
[X] Emotional Blunting / Emotionally Flat
[X] Difficulty Focusing / Concentrating
[ ] Confusion
[X] Memory Loss / Forgetfullness
[ ] Stumbling over Words / Losing Train of Thought
[X - on rare occasions] Slurring of Speech
[X] Lack of Motivation / Feeling Passive / Complacency
[ ] Extreme Anxiety / Panic Attacks
[X - yes, somewhat] Severe Depression / Melancholy
[ ] Suicidal Thoughts

Physical
[X] Penile Tissue Changes (narrowing, shrinkage, wrinkled)
[X] Penis curvature / rotation on axis
[X] Testicular Pain
[ ] Testicular Shrinkage / Loss of Fullness
[X] Genital numbness / sensitivity decrease
[ ] Weight Gain
[ ] Gynecomastia (male breasts)
[ ] Muscle Wastage
[ ] Muscle Weakness
[ ] Joint Pain
[ ] Dry / Dark Circles under eyes

Misc
[ ] Prostate pain
[X] Persistent Fatigue / Exhaustion
[ ] Stomach Pains / Digestion Problems
[ ] Constipation / “Poo Pellets”
[ ] Vision - Acuity Decrease / Blurriness
[ ] Increased hair loss
[X] Frequent urination
[ ] Lowered body temperature

[ ] Other (please explain)

  1. What (if any) treatments have you undertaken to recover from your side effects since discontinuation of the drug?

  2. If you have pre or post-Finasteride bloodtests, what hormonal changes have you encountered since discontinuing the drug (pls post your test results in the “Blood Tests” section and link to them in your post)?
    I don’t have that, but my doctor said my levels looked normal.

Hi all.

After I quit cold turkey on the 01.05.2014 my system said kaboom, and I was more or less a sexual zombie for three weeks. I had flue like symptoms, insomnia, cold penis, etc. etc. you know the story. It was rather horrible.

I recovered more or less after four weeks and had a summer with libido “surges”. I thought I was recovered and horny. On the 5th of august my system crashed and I got penile pain, very varying libido etc.

When I came back from summer holiday, I started excercising (I was a Krav Maga practitioner). I believed that could help (increased testo production). I have read posts that claimed that physical excercise helped and I believed it could too. I continued doing this through september and october. I had rather intense discomfort in the penis, weak morning erections, reduced sensitivity and reduced libido. I also felt prostate sensitivity, at the most when I had air in my stomach or needed to take a dump, because then there’s obviously some pressure on the prostate, which led to tinglings and “streaming” feelings in the thigh and rectal regions, penile shrinkage and lowered sensitivity. At the worst I also experienced the infamous penile rotation and also some stinging in the testicles. All in all a hopeless situation for sex.

In the beginning of november, I started weight lifting with a friend of mine, and that was the point when I found out that I can’t tolerate physical excercise. My penis actually retracted while I was lifting and I felt “live” that what I was doing wasn’t good for my body. The morning after I woke up with more or less complete penile sensitivity and brain fog, and I experienced disturbed sleep during the night. I quit all excercising. It took me 5 weeks to recover properly, and then I actually went into a 5 week more-or-less recovered state (strong morning erections, no serious unpleasant feelings in the penis etc.) with very high libido; i.e. a surge period. This was around christmas and most of january.

By the end of january I was seriously convinced that I was completely healed. A wonderful feeling. So, I went for a skiing trip with a friend for about 3 hours. This set me back quite a bit (I felt very tired the same evening). A night after that trip I slept for only three hours and went to work the day after and that made me seriously set back. Penile pain came back, etc. Then I started drinking alcohol again in february. I was out 4 weekends and got pretty drunk. This was bad for my condition, in retrospect.

During the last year my hair loss has come back rapidly (which I welcome). I have a beard, no signs of gynocomastia or similar, so my physical signs are OK atleast. All in all I can say that, judging by the forum posts, there are a lot of men out there in a severly more bad condition than me. But things progress slow… too slow.

If I drink alcohol, I get an unpleasant feeling in my penis after a few minutes (I guess at the time alcohol starts to mix into the blood). This also goes for Maca; when I take a maca capsule it takes about 30 min before my penis starts to retract and blood vessels become more apparent. Following that I get a kind of mild sore feeling in my penis (it’s like it’s stemming from the prostate). I have repeated this just to be sure, and the symptoms are the same, each time. I’m having a hard time believing this is nocebo (I have an M.Sc. degree and know a tad statistics, just so that’s said). After a few hours the maca is “gone” and the state I had before taking the capsule resumes.

So, it seems I’m very very sensitive (in a negative way) to:

  • physical excercise/exhaustion (it was enough to move some construction timber in my garden for 30 minutes to be set back and experience previous side effects).
  • alcohol
  • Maca (haven’t tried anything else)
  • Too little sleep (seems devastating).

In addition, I’ve had finasteride side effects gone worse when I have experienced stressful or emotional/romantical feelings.
I’ve written a daily log during the last year, and to summarize, I have almost always masturbated each 2nd, 3rd or 4th day, with varying orgasm quality. In the surge periods it has been 2-3 times a day. It has been one week on rare occasions, but that has been at my all-time-lows.

My “research” so far has shown me that as far as I keep away from the things listed above, my recovery progresses in a slow but steady manner. I’ve lost the “surge” periods now (and I take that as a positive progress!), but as far as I can tell, my libido is now at an all-time-low. I’ve masturbated maybe 5-6 times in april. However, as things are more stable, I think that’s better than being sexually hyperactive one day and completely dead the other (high unnatural fluctuations), and I believe that is a sign of recovery.

This has been the most traumatic experience in my life so far. Suddenly you are reduced to something less than a man and when you are meeting girls and trying to get things to work in your life, it just puts everything on hold.

So, has anyone in here been in more or less the same situation as me? By that I mean especially with respect to the fatigue? Can you point me to things that I might try and things that I should not try? Can we say that alcohol is something we should steer away from, or not? As far as I know it reduces testo production, no?

I’m a bit skeptical to trying whatnot supplements, although I’m interested in any tip.

Best regards,

The norwegian viking (which will rise again, sooner or later)

#2

Some corrections/precisions:

“All in all a hopeless situation for sex.” -> Well, all in all a hopeless situation for ordinary human life. Being in constant pain is worse than having lowered libido.
“The morning after I woke up with more or less complete penile sensitivity” -> it should be complete penile numbness, of course.
“Following that I get a kind of mild sore feeling in my penis” -> Well, it can be rather strong, too, but it disappears in a matter of hours or days.
“In the surge periods it has been 2-3 times a day” -> Not each day, of course. This is the absolute maximum. It was like I couldn’t get satisfied.

#3

Hey there,
What really helped with my fatigue was my sensivity for some kinds of food. For instance: i can’t eat eggs. I can eat them but i would have major brainfog. I can’t even eat a schnitzel and within a few minutes i would have brainfog. So i decided to seek help trough a nutritionist.

You can also look at adrenal fatigue or your thyroid. Working on these two can also help with fatigue. There are enough sites that will give information.

#4

You could try supplements or herbs.

Take a look:
examine.com/topics/Fatigue

Personally, I took/take CoQ10 and L-Carnitine (listed there with B grade level of evidence to reduce fatigue). I also took/take vitamin E, vitamin D3 and L-arginine for several purposes, I tell you my whole arsenal because they maybe are also useful to fatigue.

I am at 11 months off and I feel much less fatigued than in my worst days. So apart from time and body´s own healing, they may have helped.

#5

Thanks for the input!
Have you experienced that any of these supplements also has helped on libido/erection?

#6

Yes. Regarding sexual help (though they have lots of known and supposed functions) L-carnitine is supposed to raise libido, vitamin D is a testosterone booster and the other 3 (L-arginine, vitamin E and CoQ10) are mainly antioxidants. However, these last 3 are also treatments to early Peyronie desease, so they are intended to prevent penile fibrosis and therefore help with sexual function as well.

On the other hand, take into account that supplements are not miracles. It took me several months to feel improvements, but my condition now is ok and I am very optimistic. Time, rest, healthy life, mental strenght, luck (because you see there are severe cases on here) and last, supplements.

If you want to jump on just one of them, take vitamin D3. It seems almost everybody gets benefit from it.

#7

Thank you very much, that was just the input I needed. Not to be naive, but I do actually feel optimistic myself, since I am sexually degraded and not sexually dead. With the fatigue I’m also partially physically handicapped since I cannot exercise, but I have a theory that if I push my self bit for bit (fast walking, slow jogging) it might be beneficial. Atleast I get to know my body that way. I will start with some of these supplements and see how I respond to them over time.

Do you have any experience with Viagra and company? Do you think I should stay away for some reason?
I tried ~10 mg Cialis for the first time here the other day and the effect was physically very satisfactory. However, things are not the same since sensitivity and libido is lowered at the time being. I had a lot more libido in february and march. Very strange.

Something tells me that I should maybe be careful with sugar/carbs too.

#8

Yes viking I really recommend you to take vitamin E, vitamin D, L-arginine and CoQ10. Now I only take them like twice a week but I think (and like to think) they are/ have been useful.

Regarding Cialis:
If you have a slight-moderate ED I think it is advisable because it helps at maintaining the erections. I only take 1.25 mg per week (on friday, pre-weekend). If I were you I would only take it at low dosis and not daily because it can create tolerance and a daily regimen is not really needed since its effect is cumulative. In my opinion it could be nice to take it 1-5 mg and 1-3 days a week. You could try for instance 2.5mg on thursdays and fridays. In temporal ED treatment the supposed recommended dosis is 5mg daily for some months, however we have already learnt about pharmaceutics interests… Haven’t we?

So, lower dosis so as not to develop tolerance and slower frequency in order to take it for years if needed.

Just take higher dosis if you are going to have sex.

#9

I can only tell you what has helped me the most after hundreds of vitamins and prescriptions and that is cortef. Helps a ton with energy, mood, ability to handle stress, sleep, muscle, etc. Took a few months to get the timing and dosage to work, but well worth it. Does not help with erections or libido though and wont “recovery” PFS. Will make life 200x more livable though.

#10

Thanks a lot, all of you.

Right now I’m actually at the point where I think sex without any drug would be successful. However, it would be nice to go for a round two or three, too…my recovery time is atleast 2-3 days now. So yes, I will experiment with low dosages of Cialis and maybe Levitra, with care (wrt. tolerance).

As for the fatigue, that’s only present if I get physically tired (or take a Maca capsule!). Right now, I have more or less 100% general condition, so my life feels good except for a somewhat lowered libido and a bit lowered sensitivity, plus a somewhat soft penile tissue. But maybe my tissue is normal; I have forgotten what normal was! I now and then can get a full sustaining erection and yesterday I had more or less 100% sensitivity.

I started with L-Carnitine and Citrulline malate (-> L-arginine) now, with the examine.com advices on dosage. I have Q10 in the mail and then I’ll stock up on vit D & E.

It’s strange. The last time I “crashed” was after taking that maca capsule around 2 1/2 weeks ago, in a search for increasing libido (I have experienced strong libido with maca during PFS without “crashing”). Side effects came back strongly and I got completely uninterested in women. The maca effect must have been a shock for my prostate. It was like all hell broke loose and I got really depressed. Now I’m returning to myself again, slowly. The reintroduction of interest for girls is a magic feeling; not possible to explain. But I think I have ruled out the things that make symptoms worse, and now I’ll just wait and be patient. All in all, my quality of life is more or less good right now, as long as I don’t do anything stupid.

For all of you who read this and are in a bad PFS situation, you really need to hang in there. I know how the depression feels, the pain, the brain fog, the numbness, the feeling of being totally degraded by this drug. Hang in there, it is so extremely important that you do that.

I’ll post an update on my progress when and if I have anything interesting to report.

#11

Quit from maca. It has shown to be an anti-enlarged prostate.

Take a look at the topic: Experiences attempting CDNUTS protocol. We have listed and talked about some supplements.

#12

there is strong relation between low thyroid and low cortisol… so kind of adrenal fatigue… you are true… with cortisol your sleep will be top quality and will get ur energy back.

moonman did you gain fat to face with cortef again?

#13

I suffer severe fatigue too. How are you dealing with that after some years?

1 Like
#14

Any updates? How are you feeling now after this time? Any improvements?