7-8 hours broken past two nights, feeling better and better. Libido and mental state has correspondingly been very high.
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Holy fucking improvements Batman.
Iām sitting here at 2AM listening to music and I canāt stop. I want to go buy a guitar and learn how to play. It all sounds so good and I can FEEL the music again. My god, I had forgotten. 8 hours sleep solid since last update. Will be less tonight, but by choice. This might be it, this might be 100%. Even if itās not, itās good enough where I absolutely do not care. Hereās some other things from the past couple days:
-Food tastes amazing. Iāve eaten so much today. My appetite is ridiculous. Before I wanted good food, now I crave foods. It is now impossible to put down a good cookie or something whereas before I could easily stop. (Just one more!) I still remember when my wife basically had to make me eat after my initial crashā¦ā¦
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Desire to read books is back. I cracked a book that has stood untouched for a while, covered in dust. That was one of the things that was harder for me to do most of the time while sick. When I did read it was forced and difficult reading was just thatā¦. More difficult, if not impossible. I just wasnāt into reading like I was before.
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General improvement in overall happiness and engagement. I feel like I can conquer the world.
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Anger and drive returning. Starting to feel annoyed that our house is a mess. Itās been this way for the past two years without issue. Iām also trying not to give a fuck, because obvious reasons. Nothing seems worth getting upset over anymore. Life is too fucking short.
-Libido is back, man is it back.
-Crazy big pimples all over my back and even on my ass. (Iāll absolutely pay this price)
My favorite thing ever written is The Watchmen. If you can still enjoy reading and havenāt read it, I cannot recommend anything more that this absolute work of art. Itās one of those things that shaped my worldview. IF IāM STABLE, I will go for a fresh read of it soon in celebration. For those that have read it, right now I feel like Dr. Manhattan. I feel like my brain was blown apart by fin and Iāve spent the past 2+ years putting it back together bit by bit. Now Iām goddamn Dr. Manhattan. At the moment, the quote below near brings me to tears at its beauty.
ā Thermodynamic miraclesā¦ events with odds against so astronomical theyāre effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.
And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughterā¦ Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to goldā¦ that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.
Butā¦if me, my birth, if thatās a thermodynamic miracleā¦ I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!.
Yes. Anybody in the world. ā¦But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forgetā¦ I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the anotherās vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Comeā¦dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyesā¦ and letās go home.ā
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I also like Watchmen, and sometimes I hope Rocha can personally visit the top management of Merck lol
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have u been doing anything other than avoiding soy and alcohol?
No, Iām not really doing anything special other than that, at least from what I normally do. The only things that MIGHT be different from others are as follows:
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I generally do long-distance, endurance training. Even any sprint work I do is interval training geared towards endurance. Still, I donāt feel itās anything particular special. I mention because I see a lot of people here have focused on high intensity training before. I just took a different approach, mainly because of my akathisia though, long runs are the only thing that made me feel less like wanting to kill myself for a long time.
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I do eat a very healthy diet, organic, everything handmade, nothing pre-processed. This is mainly because of my wife. She even handmakes noodles, bread, etc. She makes everything VERY from scratch. I again donāt think this really does much, but I just mention it because itās likely different than others.
Thatās it. Nothing else. Iām not at 100% anymore like the other night, but Iām honestly not too far off. It was good to get a taste of what Iām aiming for in the final stages of my recovery.
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A few random notes.
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Another thought on things that might be different from others during my recovery. I never got sick until very late stage recovery. This was because of COVID and my wife is Germaphobic, so we were heavily quarantined, sanitized, etc.
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I want to note that I donāt think that any of these things (not getting sick, diet, or exercise) likely did anything to aid by recovery. However, I also canāt say that it didnāt and just want to note it for documentation purposes.
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Still doing incredibly well. My enjoyment and emotion from music is the main thing I have gotten from this latest round of improvements along with extremely boosted confidence, better sleep, and general mood and mental state. Libido has actually dropped though, not terribly, but it did drop. I was normal, going 1-3 times a day, and now maybe 2-3 per week? I will absolutely take the trade though.
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I was very stable before the crash with it becoming very difficult for me to feel changes except on a weekly, monthly basis for the most part. Now I can feel hourly changes, Iām at a higher state on average, but much more unstable again.
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Also have some things returning that I did not miss. I have a bad back and knees, however when I was sick these did not really bother me at all. Just now I was sitting cross legged on the floor for a few hours working on something, when done I could barely stand up and walk my knees and back were so stiff. This used to happen all the time, but did not happen the past 2+ years. Add this to the rest of the list of weird PFS shit. Itās kinda like my bodyās inflammation capability turned back on maybe? Maybe the joint thing with my hands from a few months back was the start of it booting back up and thatās why they were so inflamed?
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Hi henchman, are you still using ps128? Do you think that are you experiencing any benefit from It? Thanks!
Iām not, I still have a bottle left if anybody wants it because itās expensive as hell. Like everything else, I donāt know if there was any benefit. Seems like anything that leads to true long term benefit makes me feel much worse first, and it did not do that so Iām betting it probably did nothing? Hard to say.
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You are right, it is difficult to know which things are helping or not. Thank you very much for always being willing to respond and thank you for updating frequently.
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It actually happened. I had the calf cramp thing happen last night but on a much lower level than before. Obviously could be a coincidence, but I highly doubt it. I have never had issues with cramps like this outside of when I was on fin. Iām also having another early symptom today that I had forgotten about. While I was on fin I started having small amounts of water leaking out of the corner of my right eye continuously. Coincided with another spike in enjoyment of music/elevated mood.
This has to be it, gotta be getting towards the end now.
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Being cautious to say too much, but big leap since my last post. This has by far been my best month to date.
Iām curious to know if you were hitting the gym before Fin?
Did you find that your ups and downs were more stable while you stayed going early on?
An interesting thought given how the symptoms seems to progress and my basic research that not doing anything that generates DHT may be beneficial In the first two or more weeks off the medication. To give the genitals time to recover the receptors before slowly being introduced to DHT again.
I think it would speed up genital recovery.
My only other thought on this is based on your early experience you did get erections, I find the early erections caused the receptors to lose sensitivity potentially causing a crash.
There is couple of users who also experienced this.
I just started my journey and havenāt done anything drastic except going to the gym and changed my diet to adrengic foods. thinking more and more that the gym is a bad idea for the next month. I do find Iām sensitive to foods more though so I donāt think I have a choice there.
Iāve read your entire 200+ post journey and wanted your opinion.
Hi Seidakona,
Sorry youāre now part of this group. Itās hard to remember, but I do not think I was heavily exercising when I was on fin although Iāve always been a relatively fit person and used to be an extremely high-level athlete in my past. When my symptoms started I hit the gym HARD, it was the only thing that distracted me from wanting to end it basically.
Stable was not how I would describe myself at the start, I was so extremely up and down it was nuts. Mostly down with small short-lived spikes here and there.
During my initial false recovery I tried creatine and for a very short while and this almost immediately gave me a reintroduction of symptoms. As soon as I stopped I recovered within 1 week and continued to recover until my eventual crash. I donāt know if this info helps
you at all.
It is very difficult to say that anything I did affected my recovery in any way. However, I am 100% sure that creatine affected me SIGNIFICANTLY. It is absolutely something to 100% be avoided as it can make you drastically worse. Everything else, exercise etc. I think I would consider symptom management more than anything. I could be wrong, but unsure.
I attribute my recovery to a few things now:
- Generally being lucky that my body wanted to recover some on its own.
- Generally healthy lifestyle.
- Avoiding any substances that might make me worse religiously.
- Being quarantined and never getting sick throughout entire recovery (possibly)
- Freak accident with creatine consumption. DO NOT TRY TO REPLICATE.
I wish you the best of luck on your recovery.
Yea Iāve been thinking about it for some time. Whatās interesting for me is I can tell when Iām generating DHT and when Iām not.
My hair follicles burn then itās being made in any significant quantity.
I did see some decent recovery in the first week, then my testicles started hurting and I could feel the DHT drop.
It has recovered some what, minor burning in the scalp, but I suspect I may be low on testosterone to convert.
I will probably get a blood test this week to confirm.
Creatinine is deficient my something to avoid, I think the only thing I might try to reintroduce back is coffee. I was a heavy coffee drinker before this and I think missing that might be a problem.
Iāve heard other had adverse affects to coffee so kinda donāt want to try haha. Thoughts?
On a side note, my wife loves making Korean, whatās your favourite dish/s? May try them if I can eat them haha.
Or after I recover if I do.
I will say that I avoided caffeine for my entire recovery until recently. When I first started it did not give me normal reaction and made me feel strange. I only needed small amounts. That being said I donāt think it had any affect on my symptoms by the time I did start the caffeine. Now it affects me normally and I drink a cup of coffee daily.
I love Korean food and it is one of my favorite things to eat. I like Tteok-bokki, kimchi, gimbap, Bibimbap, and thereās a place nearby that makes some gochujang squid dish.
Yea we love Jeyuk Bokkeum with rice and pretty much the same as you besides kimchi. I like kimchi my wife doesnt.
We are very heavy into spicy foods. Korean foods have such a wide berth of flavours. We often try to get recipes from Korean friends.
During times when my symptoms were pronounced, my sympathetic nervous system was very active, so caffeine had to be withdrawn. But Iāve been drinking decaf coffee lately and itās had no negative effects at all. If you like coffee, start with decaf or very little caffeine.
Yes, I also drank decaf coffee daily for close to 2 years. I then moved to 1/4 caffeine, 1/2, then now full.
Itās really nice following your story. You never gave up and itās great reading your progress (and regress) throughout your recovery. Youāve proved yourself to be resilient and that recovery is possible.
On my side Iām finishing recovering my last sexual symptoms. Sex drive and sensitivity are back to normal, Iām motivated and Iāve been singing all day. The last thing I have is insomnia. Iām currently tapering benzos and letās see what happens. Insomnia runs in my family so I may not get all my sleep back but until proven otherwise, I believe Iāll sleep normally.
At this point, I canāt say PFS is affecting me negatively anymore. Or at least, itās not a significant issue in my life.
Donāt give up anyone. People have been recovering from this.
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