I’m not looking for anything in particular in writing this. I’m just so depressed. I’m depressed even though I’ve read a number of fairly encouraging posts on here over the last month – mixed in with a number of very discouraging ones too. I try to focus on the positive stories…the guys who say they’ve improved, beaten it, had success with various regimens. I’ve looked for common ground between their stories and I think there is some: Healthy diet, sleep, positive attitude. Maybe T-boosting supplements. Maybe even progesterone.
CDNuts seems to have the most comprehensive recovery. In early November, I tried to replicate it, starting with the fast. But that was impossible. I got into the 3rd day and had no energy to move around at all – and I’m just not in a position where I can take the kind of time off from my life that would be required to pull off a true 14-day fast.
So I moved on to shifting to a Paleo diet, exercising more intelligently (for years, I blindly ran every day – probably wore my body down needlessly), cutting out alcohol, caffeine etc. I didn’t embrace it overnight. Some days I’d feel very depressed and just want to eat unhealthy food. Some days I’d feel very lonely and just want to go drink with friends – and while drinking, I’d feel good for a few hours. Not all better, not cured, not normal sexually or anything…but I’d just feel good to be out with people and the alcohol would relax me and improve my mood. The holidays weren’t good for the diet/lifestyle overhaul either. But I can definitely say that in November and December I ate much healthier than I’ve ever eaten and on the whole drank less booze and a LOT less caffeine than I have in my adult life. And I told myself I’d make the full transition on New Year’s Day. So here I am, 3 days in to a complete Paleo diet. And I take the T-boosting supplements CDNuts recommended – have been doing that for a month. I do the Iodine painting routine too – started that a week ago. I know it’s a lifestyle commitment, it’s about wanting it, improving gradually over time. But man, I just feel so empty. It would have been great in these past few months if I’d noticed any improvement during the periods when I was doing the Paleo/supplement routine…or in these last three days. If, like, after 3 days of being really good I was rewarded with my penis not being all retracted all day. I mean, I sit there feeling no connection between my brain and my penis. It’s tiny. It’s all retracted into my body. It doesn’t move ALL DAY. It’s just dead. I get an erection during the night or sometimes when I wake up – and it can’t disappear fast enough. I remember what it used to be like. How I’d wake up with a hard on, have to pee through it, and it would still be hard when I got back to my room. I remember how it would just naturally fluctuate during the day…random erections, half-erections, instant responses to things that turn me on. And now…just nothing.
And also: fat. Fat has just been accumulating all over my upper body. When I was on Propecia, it came around my hips and waist – I couldn’t figure it out at the time, why I was suddenly putting on weight there. When I stopped the drug, it shifted – I don’t even know exactly where, but like my upper chest under my arms and shoulders, I think even in my back – there’s just like a lot more fat sloshing around there now. Shirts that used to be big on me or fit perfectly are now embarrassing to wear. They’re so tight. They don’t fit. AND I HAVEN’T GAINED ANY WEIGHT!!! It’s just redistributed.
I guess I’m writing this because positive attitude seems to be such an important part of recovery, and I am just plagued with so much doubt. You can tell me to focus on the program, read just the recoveries, tell myself I’ll beat it … but it’s just not my nature to accept and believe something like that. I’m just the kind of person who needs evidence – constant, real vivid reinforcement that I’m on the right path. Without it, doubts builds, it eats at me and darkness descends. That’s where I am right now. In a really dark place. I’ve been dealing with this since June 2012. It’s now January 2014. I read some people on here who say it gets better with time – there’s a slow but steady pattern of improvement. Not for me. Not so far anyway. I read people on here who are able to establish connections between certain behaviors (eating this food, using that supplement) and specific results (“and when I took that, I felt great for three hours, then crashed again”), but that’s not been my experience. This has not been a roller-coaster for me. This has just been a steady state for more than a year and half of feeling like a eunuch. Of seeing how feminized my body has become. Of feeling that retracted, lifeless penis. Of watching any erection I wake up to just vanish within seconds. I got T injections for a while. The first one worked on and off for three weeks; there were days (and parts of days) when my sexual function was restored. When I remembered what I used to take for granted, realized how much I’d lost. But after that first injection, everyone after was like a placebo – no effect.
And now here I am, more than 18 months after realizing what Propecia was doing to me. This March will be the 3rd anniversary of when I started taking it. I remember a year ago at this time. I was scared. It had been an awful 6 months. But it was new to me – I still had hope that somehow, some way, I’d get out of it. The T injection had just (briefly) worked. I thought 2013 might bring light. Might bring normalcy, a future. But it brought nothing. Absolutely nothing. And in the last few weeks, as the steadiness of this condition has sunk in, and as I’ve realized just how much time has past – just how much of the prime of my life (I’m 34 now) I’ve lost – depression like I’ve never known has hit me. I broke down and told my parents a few weeks ago. It was awful. They raise their son trying to make a future for him, hoping for a good life for him, and now as they near their retirement years, this is how he comes back to them. I cry thinking about them. I look at old pictures of me as a kid and I cry. I think back to anything in my life before this nightmare started and I cry. I think of the future and I cry at its emptiness, its bleakness. People around me have noticed how much my mood has changed in the last month. They’ve asked me what’s wrong, tried to cheer me up. Work is a nightmare now. I have no motivation to do it. I have a high-pressure job. I wonder if I should quit, but I haven’t saved enough money where I can do that and take time to just try to get myself together. What I really think about more and more is suicide. Death used to terrify me. Actually it still does. But I think this has made me understand what exactly the despair is that makes someone choose death. I’m not saying I’m going to do it, but I think about it a lot lately. It all just seems hopeless.
