First cold turkey, then ween off... Best approach?

ps: sorry, I can’t fill out the symptoms/profile list, as I’m not talking about myself, so I don’t have all the detailed information…


Hello,

I have a good friend who took finasteride for about 2-3 years. He gradually started having problems with his blatter/prostate: feeling the need to urinate very often, also during love-making (pressure on blatter). He also has memory problems, but not sure whether these are linked to finasteride as well, could be. He didn’t always take the pill very consistently, he sometimes skipped a day or a few days.

In any case, he started to see the link with his medication and after I did some research, I warned him about the side-effects.

I told him: whatever you do, ween off of it, don’t quit cold Turkey!

But of course, that’s exactly what he did… I found out only 2-4 weeks after he stopped taking it. I recommended him to still take one pill a week, which he has done now for 5 weeks or so.

He now tells me that his blatter/prostate problem is worse than before; he has ‘crises’ where he really has to go to the toilet very urgently…

I really hope his body will find its balance again… and that there won’t be any other side effects emerging… I’m presuming it might take months before his body fully recovers?

Any thoughts or advice? How long should he continue talking the pill once a week? Would it make sense to still continue a couple of weeks or even months like this, taking a pill once a week (decreasing to every two, then three, weeks), while at the same time decreasing the dosage?

Or is it better to quit entirely now because the damage has been done anyway?

Did I make things worse by encouraging him to more or less ‘re-start’ the drug (though just once a week) after he had already quit for 2 to 4 weeks? I just thought that it could offer a little ‘support’ to the endocrine system, continuing to give it a little bit of what is was used to before, in an attempt to prevent a crash…

Thanks…