Back in 2009, my dermatologist told me to take fin 5mg tablets, cut into quarters, and take one per day, skipping the fifth day. I did that, and everything seemed to be going fine.
I did occasionally have this reluctance to keep taking it, because I thought it might be better to just be natural, but my family talked me out of it.
When I read in the news a few days ago, I believe April 13, 2012, that there could be permanent side effects, I decided to stop. That was an “off” day so I had already not been on it that day. In retrospect, I had a period of diminished libido for a few weeks prior to it, maybe 2 weeks. I would masturbate, but didn’t necessarily feel like I “needed” to. It was still going fine.
After I read the news story, though, I was worried. When I got home from work, I did masturbate, although it was somewhat difficult to stay hard and I did not have the normal amount of semen or ejaculatory force, which surprised me. I hadn’t been paying attention to that as of late so I don’t know if it was a recent dropoff, or just the result of a not-so-good orgasm.
The next day, yesterday, I didn’t wake up with “morning wood”. I had a lot of trouble sleeping more than 6 or so hours, and tossed and turned all night. I had a fever and chills, a sore throat, and significant aches and pains, loss of appetite, and general fatigue. I went on a second date with a great girl, and I definitely did feel attraction to her, but I didn’t get an erection even when we made out, which is unusual for me.
Since I had masturbated the day of the news story, I have not been able to get myself hard. I’m not sure if it’s because I am feeling sick (100.8 fever, down to 96 degrees chills) or because of the fin.
I’m now on day #3 without fin, and I just am sort of freaking out a bit. I have a close relationship with my parents, and told them about it (I am 28 and live at home, yes I do have a job) and they said it was just because I was panicking over the news story, and that I was just in a slump. My dad said that he’d almost never had “morning wood” in his life. I normally wouldn’t think anything of it, but I do remember getting morning wood at least a few times in the last week, before the news story.
I tried looking at porn, but I just wasn’t able to get an erection no matter what. Not even a semi-hard erection. I know that it can be hard to get one if you are worried about it, and to be honest my worries really started kicking in the morning after I masturbated, when I didn’t have morning wood.
I just want to be able to have a normal life, it’ll be okay if I never have super rock hard erections, I just want to be able to have a relationship and kids one day. I should also note that as recently as 5 or 6 days ago, I had some amazing orgasms while masturbating, but I guess there could be something of a decline? Hopefully it will rebound, or hopefully it’s from whatever bug I seem to have, or just from me being panicky about this.
My brother also takes/took the medication, and he said that he had had a bit of a “slump” for the last few months, but he doesn’t seem very worried. I urged him to stop taking it as well, and I think he will listen. He seems to think that it’s very unlikely that there will be anything bad long-term, which is what my parents are also trying to reassure me of. I have been somewhat working myself into a panic. I do tend to panic and over-analyze things sometimes.
Should I be seriously worried at this point? What should I do?
Thank you.