I was hoping someone on this page that might have experience with both long-term marijuana AND long-term Propecia use and withdrawal could give me some advice on diagnosing the cause of my mental symptoms and, ideally, offer some clue as to how to speed recovery. I have no faith in the ability of a general medical practitioner to be able to help.
My experience as concisely as I can state it:
I smoked marijuana on a daily basis for approximately 12 years (often up to 6 times a day), beginning the summer after my senior year of high school in 2000, and took Propecia for approximately 10 years beginning when I started noticing my hair thinning when I was a sophomore in college in 2002. I quit smoking in September of 2012 (almost 2 full years ago now) and stopped taking Propecia in December of 2012.
About 2-3 weeks after I stopped smoking marijuana, but while I was still taking Propecia, I started to develop severe head symptoms. Because the onset of the symptoms occurred around the time that marijuana was passing out of my system I concluded they were likely related to marijuana withdrawal; that my brain, my neurons and neurotransmitters and synapses etc., had adapted to 12 years of daily cannabinoid intake and that a ‘reset’ was occurring, and a re-adaptation had sent me into a type of cerebral whirlwind that would eventually subside. Since then, after researching the effects of Propecia on this site and elsewhere, I have become less certain that my symptoms are based on marijuana withdrawal but that, in fact, perhaps my marijuana use was actually masking the effects of Propecia, and that these symptoms were sitting behind this mask for all these years. I question this, however, because the symptoms are so severe, as I find it hard to fathom that an altered hormone profile could have such a devastating effect upon my brain, and because, if indeed the marijuana was masking these symptoms all these years, it was doing a stellar job at doing so, because even when I wasn’t ‘high (under the influence of RECENT cannabinoid intake),’ but when cannabinoids were still in my blood stream, I didn’t notice these effects. Could marijuana have done that perfect of a concealment job!!! It is hard to believe…
I have had these symptoms for almost two full years now, with little sign of them subsiding, all of them likely related to the same troubles in my brain:
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the root symptom seems to be a lightheadedness, like not enough blood is being delivered to and/or circulated through my brain; my prevalent theory on this has been that perhaps there is swelling in my brain from long-term cannabis use recovery and that this swelling is restricting the ability of the arteries in my brain to circulate blood - this lightheadedness can be described in other ways, like a sense of dizziness, disorientation and distorted vision wherein I can’t perfectly focus my sight on small points without feeling like what I’m trying to focus on is unstable - early in this last two years the disorientation, or lightheadedness, was so bad I often thought I would fall over or pass-out - the doctors I have seen said it doesn’t appear to be an eye problem or an inner ear problem
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my memory is severely compromised - I have written hundreds upon hundreds of pages in my life and am well educated, and since quitting the two drugs about 2 years ago I often find myself grasping for simple words - writing is difficult
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associated with the first symptom, I often have feelings that what I’m experiencing isn’t real; like I’m in an alternate reality and constant haze
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my mental energy is low - I can still exercise when I force myself to, but I seem to wear myself out mentally a lot easier and faster than I used to
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associated with all these symptoms my productivity and social interactivity have diminished substantially
Can anyone out there please relate a similar set of symptoms or offer an opinion on what they think the cause is (Marijuana? Propecia? Both? Something else?) and what to do about it? Anything will help.
THANKS!