Someone over here gets relief from mental symptoms with pseudoephedrine i believe, so maybe it’s just hormones moving around.
I can’t say fortnite in particular makes me feel better, but when i’m busy and able to keep up i feel better than when i’m not. Generally if I have nothing to do then I feel terrible.
I have a 60 Inch 4K TV, ps4 pro and the newest games lying around but I cant even play because of my anhedonia.
I bought Red dead redemption 2 on release but still havent played it. Fuck PFS
Oh wow. I love Dark souls… Playing Dark souls 3 now at the moment as my single player game and loving it 
Glad to have met a fellow unkindled 
Dont worry… You wont feel like this forever… It must get better! Try playing for 30 mins a day atleast?? See if that helps you get into it?
It wont get better cause I have this symptom since my crash 3 years ago.
I could play for 30 minutes but it would literally feel like a chore. I cant enjoy it.
When I first crashed I couldn’t even look at a tv screen - my eyes couldn’t keep up. Now I can watch tv and play games just fine! Although my reading is still compromised - words still visually seem to be distorted/hard to reads.
This is not necessarily in response to the original post but a general rant on this general topic.
I am starting to get really frustrated with some of the posts about alleviation of sides, cures, etc. I think I am going to become an insufferable hater and everybody here will soon start hating me, which usually happens to people who insist on telling the truth to people who want nothing but wishful thinking.
Human libido and capacity for sexual arousal has ups and downs, it is variable. It has short term variation and it has longer term variation. The ups and downs can be big. Someone who is at their 100% baseline of sexual function can have a dip to 30% that lasts for days. This is normal.
Similarly, someone who is at a 20% permanent baseline can have a surge that brings them up to 50% temporarily, and for a magical moment in time they find themselves above what they would have been in a down state before PFS. If and when that happens that doesn’t mean their “sides” have been alleviated, nor does it mean they had a cure and then “crash”. I am so tired hearing this story in an endless number of permutations. This is a simple matter of critically analyzing variation and determining a long-term baseline or trend.
I also get hard-ons when I have slept little, for example, and that’s a normal part of being REM sleep deprived. Does it mean sleep deprivation can be considered a “cure” and I should resolve to sleep less so I can be cured? Yes, if I am a complete idiot.
Similarly, raising your baseline temporarily while taking supplements and pro-hormones does not constitute a cure. For any given level of libido, supplementing the right combination of hormone-boosting supplements will shift the baseline upward, while you are taking the supplements. If the effect goes away when you stop the supplements, you are not crashing after having been cured. You have never been cured.
When we talk about mental and emotional problems such as depression, the variation can be even more profound. This would be a more complex topic than what I want to discuss here but again - having positive emotions and experiences doesn’t mean you have been “cured” of the underlying condition or that its “sides” have been alleviated. Say tonight I went out to hang out with friends and for two hours I didn’t feel like killing myself. Did my sides get alleviated? Yes, if you have absolutely no concept of where those “sides” come from causally… Again, this is а long topic that I don’t want to begin now but maybe another time.
I can not play anymore. I was fond of FPS (anagram of PFS) I really liked Crysis, Mirror’s Edge etc. Now I can no longer play anything, I’m not in the least concentrated.
No offense but is this thread a joke?
Wether it’s a joke or not, whatever gets you through the night is ok, in my opinion.
Even I’m better at night, worse in the morning
Playing through boss fights and pivotal moments in RPGs was one of my favorite pastimes. This condition sucked all of the joy out of it for me and gaming has since been nothing but a mental escape. That is the only thing it does to alleviate symptoms.
Personally I second what sibelio says
This whole thing is getting stupid
No offense but it’s hardly productive and threads like this wipe out the seriousness of our condition and create the hypochondriac accusations …
Sorry but come on guys threads like this are what made me hold off joining this forum for years when your in a shite situation the last thing you need is crazy talk.
If you like gaming fare enough but surely you can see my point.
What a load of Bullshit man.
Hey I didn’t mean to offend or create controversy. I’m sorry guys… I just mentioned something I noticed and I guess I dont have that severe side effects or Anehdonia to begin with. It helps me to do something I love and it takes my mind off my sides and makes me feel good. I just thought it could work for everyone.
It doesn’t necesarly have to be gaming, just a hobby or something. Sorry if I have offended or upset anyone :(
P.S I DEFINETELY didn’t mean it as a joke
Just a note to remember PFS is not a universal experience in site or severity of symptoms between sufferers. There’s an absolutely enormous variation in what @scotsman pretty accurately called an “unlucky dip”, and just as it can be hard for those on the milder side to understand the extremity of some cases, it can equally be so for the opposite. I know you’re badly affected @Sibelio, but I don’t think it’s productive to take out frustration on those who may find their sides more readily affected or indeed alleviated by certain things, or like in this case are just wondering if something is a coincidence. @Pete1989 said something that I was really pleased to read to a new user the other day: People here offer support without judgement. I feel that’s great work on the part of this community and is a much better direction.
The author is new and I’m not even sure he’s aware of the disabling anhedonia or cognitive issues that prevent people playing. His topic did not assert anything (as many do), and even asked question if it was in his head. I see no reason why this isn’t a fair thing for him to ask or share and certainly doesn’t somehow invalidate the more severe effects of PFS experienced by others.
Don’t worry, @canabis. Don’t think this is a bad subject matter at all. Just a personal thought unless you wanted to keep it specific: It may be worth considering editing the topic and making the title something like experience with gaming after PFS for a more productive place to talk about this more broadly if you felt like it, as, as you say for those able I am aware it takes their mind off it. I was super pleased @Tzinkman has been able to pass the time a bit better by gaming lately, for instance. Equally, @Invictus’s experience with RDR2 mirrors my own, sadly!
If only it was as easy as playing games to cure my frequent urination, incontinence, chronic aches, Peyronies, nodules on my liver/thickened wall, and digestive issues…
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you found a way to alleviate your symptoms. The only thing I didn’t like was it made PFS seem like no big deal when some of us are suffering badly and are actually considering suicide if things don’t improve or get worse. Also I play games regularly and it has had no such effect. So that’s why I thought this thread was a troll.
I’m sorry to hear that man… I know some are affected far more and I did not realise that when I posted here. I know such physical sides wont dissipate with gaming. I hope with time or some other way everyone here gets better.
I am not taking out frustration (for being badly affected) on those less badly affected. I am standing up for Truth and for Reason. I am appealing for a higher level of critical thinking in the community when it comes to analyzing symptom variation and symptom alleviation (but also symptom presentation). These are not matters without consequences. Symptom alleviation can be construed as connected to causation and is in fact often used to imply it. I hope I don’t need to make the argument how dangerous Falsehood and Folly are, especially in matters that most definitely have to do with life and death.
A secondary but still relevant consideration in raising this point is the credibility of our community to the outside world. It is not hard to imagine what researchers, doctors, regulators and policy makers think about our condition after reading thread after thread describing symptom presentation and symptom alleviation from everything under the sun. In fact, as far as I know, this exact problem on PropeciaHelp was unscrupulously but successfully exploited by Merck’s defense team in the class action lawsuits to discredit PFS victims and the condition as a whole.
I also said this is not necessarily a response to this thread (only). I don’t think this thread is anywhere near the worst example of the phenomenon I am criticizing. This is a general problem on the forum and someone needs to point it out. I found a good opportunity to do it and did it. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate if I did it in a separate thread so that I don’t single out @canabis and charge him with everybody’s sins, which of course would be unjust and unjustified.
@Sibelio I think your a good guy, but I think its important that people are able to post freely on this forum. Of course the science is the most important aspect, but this forum is also about support as we are all suffering a trauma. I liked this post and I think it might help people. Sometimes we can become totally fixated with our symptoms, and I was very much like that in the past, but if playing a computer game takes peoples mind off things for 30 minutes then surely that’s a good thing. There are always going to be some posts that we like individually and some that we don’t, but if we just don’t engage with the posts that we aren’t interested in.