I ask this because I see people who say they only took it a few weeks or even days before they noticed serious effects while others take it for years without them. How can it be confirmed that the duration of time you are on the drug makes a significant difference in the severity of the effects?
Some get sides within days, weeks, others months or years.
You can’t confirm anything since each individual’s response to the medication is different. But in general, for those with ongoing issues that manifested after discontinuing, it doesn’t seem to matter wether they took it for days or years, they often end up in the same boat.
That said, obviously the less time one takes it likely the better, if only to reduce the “possibility” that such things might occur. But since nobody has found the reason for why some guys react to the medication this way, it’s a total crapshoot as to who will recover (most men) vs those that don’t (guys like us).
I don’t know if the amount of time on the drug matters, but the amount of time OFF the drug does matter, that I am certain of. Time probably helps more than anything at healing you.
It undoubtedly varies from person to person, but I can say that time on can be a factor, as it was for me. My sides were virtually nonexistent for at least 4 months, how much more I can’t be sure. But it was a gradual decline, and if I hadn’t been such a mess at the time from external reasons, I certainly would’ve realized my condition sooner than I had.
On the positive side, as terrible as the sides are, I feel like the majority of posters here have experience SOME recovery with time off the drug. Anxiety seems to be the easiest symptom to alleviate, and sexual sides the most problematic. This is just my impression, and my experience. Since I quit roughly 16 months ago, my mental sides have virtually disappeared, and my sexual sides are improving, but slooooowly. In fact I’ve long accepted I won’t get a 100% recovery. I’d be very happy with 50%. I’d say sexually I’ve improved 20% in this time period. Hopefully by the 2 year mark (a few posters have had significant improvement by this time) I’ll be at 30%-40%.
I wish there was some poll or thread giving people an idea of what time frame they can at least hope for based on even a minority’s experience (still only including those who had lasting sides of course). The best we can hope for is that those who recover come back to post a thread, though I’m sure some haven’t.
just wish this f*cking shrinkage would reverse in the next year, just a little bit . . .
From my limited experience (4 days on propecia, 1.5 month off now with my T reduced to 25% its original value), and my limited knowledge of this website, it seems to me that there are two sets of problems caused by finasteride.
The first set of problems is caused by stopping the drug and does not seem to depend on the time you are on it. When you stop the drug, You are injecting yourself a big dose of DHT regardless of how long you have been on the drug. Some people are fine with it, but some people (like myself) develop hypogonadism. Hopefully this may be fixed by time?
The second set of problems is caused by prostate issues plus some mysterious effect that finasteride has which nobody could quite understand (insensitivity to DHT, etc…). It seems to me that these problems depend on how much fin you swallowed, but it’s just a thought.