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Where are you from (country)?
Hungary. -
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?)
I’ve sturted the drug 3years ago and it wasnt hard to find the site as it is on the top of google findings when it comes to propecia/dutasteride side effects. -
What is your current age, height, weight?
28, 180cm 77kg -
Do you excercise regularly? If so, what type of excercise?
Yes, but not much. I walk a lot and some lighter athletic excercises daily. Not long ago I started heavy weighlifting but currently I do it only every 3-4 days. -
What type of diet do you eat (vegetarian, meat eater, raw, fast-food/organic healthy)?
No diet. I always eat what I desire but there is no sugar/fat overdose as I dont really like food with high fat/sugar. -
Why did you take Finasteride (hair loss, BPH, other)?
frontal hair loss, NW2.5 -
For how long did you take Finasteride (weeks/months/years)?
9months -
How old were you, and WHEN (date) did you start Finasteride?
25, 2009 winter -
How old were you when you quit, and WHEN (date) did you quit?
26, 2010 end of summer. I never forget that august when I realized that I was totally numbed sexually . -
How did you quit (cold turkey or taper off)?
Cold turkey as it was recommended by an urologist. The side effects have nothing to do with quitting. I’ve noticed the disappearing morning wood about 1 month after starting the drug but they wrote that side effects go away with long term use. I’ve worked a lot that time anyway and it wasn’t so noticable that my urge to masturbate slowly decreased to zero. I had extremely high libido, could get an erection as a result of erotic thoughs in seconds and I wouldnt be able to imagine that a drug can do this with me. -
What type of Finasteride did you use – Propecia, Proscar, Fincar or other generic?
generic dutasteride (Dutas from an online store). -
What dose did you take (eg. 1 mg/day, 1 mg every other day etc.)?
0.5mg/day -
How long into your use of Finasteride did you notice the onset of side effects?
After 1 month I realized the loss of morning wood. -
What side effects did you experience while on the drug that have yet to resolve since discontinuation?
When I discontinued the drug the only side effect I was aware of was total loss of libido and erections. In the following 2-2.5 years I got more and more exhausted and by blood tests gradually bacame worse and worse. In the first half of this year I was in the worst condition in my life ever. I’ve started a treatment that brought surprising results in a few months and I’m in a much better shape now.
Put an X beside all that apply:
Sexual
[X] Loss of Libido / Sex Drive
[X] Erectile Dysfunction
[X] Complete Impotence
[X] Loss of Morning Erections
[X] Loss of Spontaneous Erections
[X] Loss of Nocturnal Erections
[X] Watery Ejaculate
[X] Reduced Ejaculate
[X] Inability to Ejaculate / Orgasm
[X] 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
[ ] Slurring of Speech
[X] Lack of Motivation / Feeling Passive / Complacency
[X] Extreme Anxiety / Panic Attacks
[X] Severe Depression / Melancholy
[X] Suicidal Thoughts
Physical
[ ] Penile Tissue Changes (narrowing, shrinkage, wrinkled)
[ ] Penis curvature / rotation on axis
[ ] Testicular Pain
[ ] Testicular Shrinkage / Loss of Fullness
[X] Genital numbness / sensitivity decrease
[ ] Weight Gain
[X] Gynecomastia (male breasts)
[ ] Muscle Wastage
[X] Muscle Weakness
[X] 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
[ ] Frequent urination
[ ] Lowered body temperature
[ ] Other (please explain)
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What (if any) treatments have you undertaken to recover from your side effects since discontinuation of the drug?
At the beginning I tried to excercise eat healthy food and some vitamin supplements. I’ve tried things like maca and Icariin bought from sources with good reputation. After almost a year with my worsening sitution I’ve given up with this. I’ve visited a lot of doctors who told me that my blood tests were not perfect but OK and they wouldn’t do anything about it. -
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)?
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Anything not listed in the above questions you’d like to share about your experience with Finasteride?
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Tell us your story, in your own words, about your Finasteride usage and side effects experienced while on/off the drug.
So I’ve started to take this poision because I was totally scared of becoming bald about 3-4 years ago. That time I was working hard and didn’t really have women in my life, just masturbated when I had to. I was a bit depressed about my hair loss and I thought that hair loss kills me anyway if the drug doesn’t… 
Today I think differently about this. Sexual power is priceless. Within 9 months the drug turned my extremely high libido into nothing. I was a superman, having an erotic dirty thought or hearing a girl moaning in a near flat induced a testosterone rush and a rock hard erection in seconds without any physical stimulation and I couldn’t think about anything else than sex.
After 9 months of dutasteride I had absolutely no libido and I didn’t want to masturbate anymore, slight ED. I was able to get an erection (even rock hard one) but only courching and sitting position but only in the evening and only by masturbating for 30-60 minutes. This was a problem when my urologist asked me to do some sperm tests. I couldn’t have an orgasm, I had only a little ejaculate and even that was totally watery with with at most a few white spots and it was just slowly flowing out instead of shooting out. 3 sperm tests at my urologists, all of them diagnosing prostate inflammation of unknown reason. Today I know that bad A/E ratio and estrogen dominance can cause this.
I think the doctors I’ve visited are incompetent in this topic, they just check the ranges and if your value is within range then everything is OK for them. With my current knowledge I already know that my LH and FSH that time were extremely low (LH: 2/8 FSH: 2/14) and that I started to become estrogen dominant (E2: 130/170) that screwed up my androgen/estrogen ratio too. After stopping the drug the following year I tried to make the situation better with eating healthy and taking some multivitamins and exercising regularly. I just became more and more exhausted and numbed/depressed and gave up with this after a year. The year that followed this was a hopeless disaster, I gave up with my life and after two years of quitting the drug I decided that I kill myself if there is nothing that makes the situation better in the next year. I’m a very slim guy with body fat around 8-10% but I started to develop pseudo gynecomastia and fatty patches at my nipples and in my armpits, above my penis and on my thighs. (despite the fact that I don’t have fat anywhere else including my stomach that is a typical area for man when it comes to gaining fat.) I had pain in my knees. I could sleep only 1-3 hours a day.
So after two years of quitting I started to get some blood tests (on my own money) and visited a lot of doctors and started to research the internet to find out how should my blood test results should look if I was healthy.
My first blood test two years after quitting the drug (value/range_max, I’m lazy to be detailed and precise):
LH: 2/8
FSH: 2/19
T: 18/27
E2: 190/170
SHBG: 40/90
PRL: 300/280
DHEAS: 6/19
Unfortunately measuring DHT, sensitive E2, and 3adiol-g is not possible here.
Doctors’ reaction: “Hmmm, almost OK.” Ridiculous. In my opinion doctors here are totally incompetent when it comes to age dependent hormonal balance. Maybe because this kind of imbalance happens rarely and it wouldn’t be big business to specialize in this or I don’t know…
I found one doctor who diagnosed hyperthyroidism and mild hyperprolactinaemia. Another doctor (who didn’t want to do anything to me because I was OKish) recommended a HCG therapy when I told him that I would kill myself anyway within a year so everything is allowed. According to the doc some people are using this instead of TRT and for some people it seems to reset HPTA and it usually doesn’t screw up things if it is used with low dose or even higher doses with half-one year between doses. I read similarly good things about HCG so it was no question that I wanted to try it. We injected 3 x 5000IU HCG in may this year (2013) with a week dealy between the 3 injections. I didn’t take any aromatase inhibitors like body builders recommend it with HCG. In the first two weeks of HCG I felt like a 200 year old man without power in my arms and legs. I could do exercises, it took effort to sit in my chair and typing with my keyboard. I had T=10/27. In the next 2 weeks I became better and better. 1 month after starting the treatment my T was 21/27 and it remained on this level since then. The doctor was surprised that my E2 didn’t skyrocket as it usually does, instead it became 70/170.
So the final results of a 1 month HCG therapy at the end of May:
T: 21/27
E2: 70/170
PRL: 500/280
LH: 5/8
FSH: 5/19
- Hyperthiroidism gradually disappeared. (Previously a doc recommended taking medications to treat this but I refused to do so.)
My PRL increased. Currently the effects of the treatment seem to be permanent and I felt 100 times better after the treatment. I could sleep only 1-3 hours a day before HCG now I can sleep 7-10 hours even if I wake up often I can sleep back. After HCG most (80%) of my pseudo gyno and (probably E2 induced) fat has disappeared in two weeks without any training/exercise. Currently I have only a bit of the original fat (most of it in the triangle above my penis) and I recently started training that will probably eliminate the rest in the next months. My knee pain started to evaporate. Today my knee is OK.
After the HCG I started taking quinagolide 75mg/day to counteract PRL and I take the pills since then. It effectively zeroes out PRL within a month. Unfortunately after zeroing out my PRL my SHBG became 70/90 making my free T probably low. My E2 seems to be stabilized at 100/170, maybe a bit high.
At the end of Jun I could get an orgasm. I did’t have erotic thoughts and the desire to have sex but I could get it up easily and after 1-2 minutes of masturbation I could get rock hard (only in sitting position) and imagine a wet pussy as desirable. Erection was still going away quckly without physical stimulation or by standing up. I guess this was the result of high SHBG and low free T.
I almost forgot: Meanwhile I was taking multivitamin pills and very strong D3 drops as I had completely depleted D3 level and a doc said that it helps regeneration on cell level.
Since then my situation gets better and better. Somewhere I read that the results of chronic sleep apnea takes some time to evaporate. I concentrate on sleeping at least 4-6 rem cycles (6-9 hours) a day. (I have never been good at sleeping, I wake up often).
My current SHBG is 50/90, if I’m watching some act photos (I regularly visit a site) sometimes I can have dirty thoughts and a little bit of spontaneous erection. I notice boobs, nice legs/arses and camel toes again while walking on the street! Since last month I have “morning wood” again and it seems to became gradually better and better. My wood isn’t hard but strong enough to point upwards. I have this weak wood ALWAYS no matter when I wake up. I have it even if I just go to sleep an hour in the afternoon. I have it always if I wake up after every rem cycle during the night. In the past few days in the morning sometimes I had the mood for making some sex. I masturbate 1-2 times a day and I always try to do it for at least half an hour. It seems that if I masturbate for longer then I have better and better erections as minutes pass and finally I have a much better orgasm if I masturbate longer. (I guess my free T increases with time.)
I read on a site that many urologists agree that “erections make erections” and another site recommended to have sex or erections “manually” especially if you don’t have morning wood because it helps the oxidation and keeping the health of your penile tissues. I made some experiments and it seems that sleeping 1-2 hours is enough for the refractory and I can do it again if I want. Don’t misunderstand, I don’t make sport from masturbation, just shared my observations. I’ve stumbled upon some sites where guys dealing with masturbation induced sexual exhaustion/penis insensitivity but that has never been an issue for me and I don’t masturbate with exotic methods.
My sperm count is also somewhat better. If I don’t masturbate for days then I can collect a fair amount of white ejaculate that sometimes shooting out a bit, otherwise its watery and just flowing out even if I have orgasm. Besides this my prostate seems to work well and making things wet and it’s doing its job even when I’m out of sperm. My penis became a bit more puffy and from totally numb it is sensitive again and it is cold only very rarely in contrast to pre-HCG: it was always hanging and it was cold/insensitive all the time. 2 months ago I was often surprised I moved my hands into the pockets of my jeans for some money.
I think during the 3 years of nightmare I maintained my original NW2.5 frontal hairline. Since the HCG treatment I’ve lost about 0.5cm of my frontal hairline and my overall body hair is double of what I’ve ever had. Stronger darker hair on my arms/legs while I’ve always had only light hair on my arms. I’ve never had noticable hair on the top of my fingers/hand, now I have. Extended/much stronger chest hair. To be honest I don’t care about this, just mentioned it for your information. I don’t anymore care about going bald. I shave the rest down if the time comes. All I need is a functioning libido/cock pair!
So this is my story: reaching a relatively good state that gets better and better in 4-5 months starting from totally sick/exhausted/depressed/dead. I thought this to be impossible.
Future plans:
- I’ve recently started heavy weigh lifting (with 2-3 days of rest between trainings).
- I’m thinking about trying another HCG session a few months later but I’m not sure about this.
- Maybe trying some aromatase inhibitors if I have to fight estrogen to make my A/E ratio better but I would do this only as a last resort.
I still definitely have some more left to declare myself cured but I’m on the right way. Any suggestions/recommendations are welcomed (regarding the heavy weigh lifting / second hcg session / anything else) and I wish the best for everyone else on the forum. Don’t be afraid to take steps, especially if your situation doesn’t get better or it becomes worse and worse.