I took propecia for around 30 days 10 months ago. I was all the more stupid seeing as I’d found this site before I took the drug and took it anyway.
But now I am getting there. I get good morning wood most mornings and I can masterbate whilst getting rock hard again. My semen is thicker, though still not right and my sleep is getting better. It will take more time but I know now that I’ll get there and the worst is over.
I was experiencing no improvement until I totally revamped my diet and started exercising regularly. And, importantly, I don’t masterbate more than once a week now.
I know it’s only been 10 months for me, and I’m still not there, and that must seem like a short time to some of you, but I do believe, as many others have said, that diet and exercise really are the key to this or at least they might be able to get you back to a functional state again. My sex drive isn’t yet what it was although it’s way better, but I believe that I am now functional and that was my main aim.
The other main piece of advice I’d say is to keep away from the more negative aspects of this site. I’ve only looked at recoveries on here for the last 6 months and they gave me hope. I really think that believing you can beat this is one of the keys so please don’t give up. Change is gradual but I believe that it will come to most or many who follow a good diet and exercise regime. It’s only in the last few months that I’ve seen real improvement but now I believe that by sticking to this diet I might get back to 90% of where I was.
Don’t give up! I’ll continue to post updates every now and then to tell you if I make a complete recovery.
That’s good to hear that you’re doing better. I’m also about ten months off and I think my condition has generally improved as well, though it still isn’t quite where I’d like. Could you please describe your routine in some more detail? What does your exercise regimen look like? What is your diet like?
I try and do heavy weights at least once a week, sometimes twice, and heavy CV exercise twice a week (swimming and cross-training usually), always leaving a day’s recovery in between heavy sessions.
I find that lifting weights is one of the best ways to improve my recovery and it’s helped improve my general physique a lot too.
I’ve also started to eat a lot of vegetables, especially broccoli, and I drink the water that I steam it in afterwards. I entirely cut out caffeine and alcahol, I drink green tea instead, lots of water, and I have very few dairy products now. I also eat a lot of apples because they contain quercetin which I believe can be helpful. I don’t eat any red meat, I only eat chicken, but I think that a source of protein is important. And I switched to eating porridge each morning instead of cereals.
I also make sure that I try to get 8 hours sleep each night.
That’s pretty much it. There’s no magic formula. I tried a lot of the supplements that people recommended in the initial stages but then gave them up due to little improvement, and I wanted my recovery to be entirely natural. Now I just take zinc and cod liver oil supplements
But ultimately I think that forgetting about it and not worrying about it is perhaps the most important things. I’ve found a lot of my progress has been correlated with lower stress levels. I know it’s hard not to think about it but you have to try and divert your mind with other things.
Working out and lowering stress levels are important. I urge everyone here who hasn’t been working out to start in some fashion or another. Our bodies need time to recover and pushing them through weights, cardio, and burst/rest training is important for resetting our health level to a higher bar. The beginning’s a bitch but after months it starts to improve.
I just thought I’d post an update here seeing as it’s 5 months since I last posted.
I can say that generally, things have continued to improve, although I’m certainly not recovered and I do not think that I will ever be as I was before Propecia. But I think the key to this whole thing is knowledge. The longer you live with it, the more you can adapt and the better you can get your body working, because the more in touch with your body that you become.
Ultimately, I think that the most important thing is sleep. You have to get into a regular sleeping pattern. This took me a year to do, but now I get 8 hours sleep almost every night. It takes discipline, especially as I’m a uni student, but I know that after a good run of sleep my body begins to recover and I tend to have good erections. Not always morning wood, but I can masturbate like before propecia which is a great feeling and one which I never thought I’d get, and I can do that more regularly now than 6 months ago which is a good yardstick for my progress. 8 hours sleep means that at least I can feel really good throughout the day, and honestly I feel much more healthy than before Propecia.
But the sleep must be combined with sexual discipline. I can masturbate maybe once every 4 or 5 days, but more often than that and my body struggles and I feel tired. It also helps to stay away from even looking at women during the time in between. This is hard to do and I fail sometimes, but I pay the price. Slowly I have brought down the time between masturbation, but that must be done slowly. It used to be once a week but it’s getting less.
And you also have to eat well, although I do find that this is secondary in importance to sleep. Too much sugar damages the adrenal system and I can feel that. Wholemeal everything, lean protein, and loads of vegetables are what I go for. And very little sugar.
But the other interesting thing that I have noticed is that my sexual side effects change depending on where I am. I am happier at university and concomitantly my sides are less bad there, I think because laughter and not feeling stressed is important to aid adrenal recovery. Whereas at home I have few friends and my dad has cancer so it is difficult to laugh and be happy. So I think that it’s vital to be in a situation where you can at least be relaxed and try to live a normal life. And I think that exercising regularly is important.
And I do now think, most of the time, that I could have sex if it came to it, although not often, and that I might actually be able to have a proper relationship again.
There is no doubt that over time, whatever I eat and however I sleep, this is getting very slowly better. So I hope that in a few years I might be able to live a much more normal life than I do now, as I have to be very disciplined at the moment.
The hardest thing is to go through it alone, especially as I’m at uni and my friends can’t understand why I don’t go out clubbing often or why I eat so healthily, but I don’t feel able to discuss this openly. But you have to always look for the silver lining and for me I know that I have a completely different perspective on life than before Propecia. I appreciate every day when I feel normal much more than I ever did, and I value things completely differently, and in my view this has improved my enjoyment of life considerably. I also look better. I’m slimmer and my skin is much better. There are positives to this ordeal, you just have to get your head in the right place. I’m not in denial, I just look at things completely differently and you have to find a way to look at things positively.
Sorry for the length, I just thought I’d try and offer some hope and my perspective on this whole thing. But I firmly believe that discipline, and getting your head in the right place, over time will mean that most people can at least function adequately, and I’ll take that, although I know that I am luckier than some and so I am not preaching. I will update again in 4 or 5 months.
now I know when people say a good sleep pattern is good. Do you think it matters what time you actually go to sleep? Or is it just important that you get 8 hours? because i feel getting sleep has no bearing on anything… at least with me…
Actually yes I do. I remember reading somewhere that adrenal recovery takes place at optimum levels between 10 p.m and 1 a.m. I don’t know if that’s true, and frankly I don’t see how it could be because the body clock adjusts to each personal routine. But I really do find that it works for me. If I get to sleep before 12 and wake up at around 8 then I feel fantastic. But if I go to sleep after 1, and even if I sleep through to 9, I really don’t feel refreshed at all. It’s really odd but it definitely makes a difference to how I feel.
I also read that you should try to avoid late night TV as that strains your body, so maybe just trying reading a book before sleeping. My routine is to listen to a podcast as I go to sleep and that just relaxes me and almost always I get to sleep within half an hour. But it took me nearly a year since Propecia to get into a routine of sleep so it might take time, but it’s definitely worth it.
I’ll try to focus more on that then I guess… I’ve been off propecia for about 10.5 months, same as you. Although I havent really made any progress, and am starting to think I never will.
Good story mate, i like your positive outlook. Your routine is more or less like mine and i do think its slowly working. I just went on holidays and had a really great time. I had interest from an english girl on the tour bus who sat on the back row with me, and also from one of the brides wedding guests at the wedding i went to. Amazingly, in the back of the bus i got boners twice from pure thought. Plus others from having a short nap while driving. First time ive ever had a spontaneous erection since quitting over a year ago.
Anyway, i didn’t mean to Hijack your thread, just to say that i agree that stress / location seem to play a large part for me aswell. Its difficult, because i know if i was normal i could have bedded these two girls with ease. The bridesmaid ended up masturbating in the room i was in as we could see each other but too many people were comming and going haha. You never know, we might one day be ok again
Orgasm is actually pretty much as pleasurable as it once was, at least some of the times. When I first got off the drug my sperm just dribbled out in a petty green mess. Now, sometimes, it is quite thick and white, but it is definitely still a bit green and more watery than it should be. It is variable, but generally improving. The main thing though is that the orgasm itself does tend to be quite good still. Basically, everything is up and down, but generally on an upward trend, though as I said, when I’m at home with my parents its like I’m back to square one instantly. Quite weird really. I think it shows how important your situation is.
One other thing I thought I’d add is that having a few hobbies that you love is a really great thing to have. It’s like an escape. I do a lot of dancing which ticks all the boxes (gets you up close with women, is active, and lets you completely lose yourself) and I find that regularly doing this really helps and is actually more effective than lifting weights. gain, I think its about positive mental stimulation for the body. It’s vital to this problem and if you can always have that stimulation then you are more likely to at least function better. That’s my theory anyway.
