Well i gave it a few days just to be sure, but i now am happy to say that after the hours upon hours of research the countless visits to doctors, thousands of dollars spent on supplements, and the most miserable 10 months of my entire life that I am now on the way to recovering from propecia!!! The past two days or so have been nothing short of miraculous, and i don’t really know what to say about it all. Basically, through all my various research on the issues and my experience with propecia I had an idea that something was wrong from the begining with my sleep. I was on Propecia for three weeks and experienced all the sides everything you could almost think of but the worst of it all was my sleep, it just was like i wasn’t really sleeping anymore. Upon quiting the medication while many of the ed/libido issues cleared up, the sleep never did along with the brain fog, fatigue, weight gain, and a lot of other hormonal and physical changes. I became so mentally numb over the course of the past 10 months it wasn’t funny and everyday I woke up feeling like a bus ran over me. It just seemed like propecia messed up my sleep and then it never recovered.
So I went to various doctors thinking my hormones may be out of whack etc. There were some minor tweaks here and there, at one point they thought my thyroid could be issue, which it probably was, but none the less nothing major. I paid for a saliva test that revealed raised cortisol levels so that was probably contributing to the problem as well. The thing is though in terms of figuring out a way to recover for myself instead of just looking at testosterone being the root cause I took the symptoms I was having and tried to related them to other disorders. I came across various people who were hypoadrenal (adrenal fatigue, yes it’s very real) and hypothyroid (the two usually go together). Many of their symptoms were errily similar to many of the guys on here so I thought about supplementing with cortisol and thyroid hormone. However, I kept wondering to myself how did a guy like me go from a division 1 athlete who was in top shape, good looking, and doing well socially and in school to being an overweight, ugly, anxious mess of a person who was fatigued so fatigued mentally and physically during the day that they were barely able to function over the course of 10 months.
Basically, I came to the conclusion that sleep was one of, if not the key issue along with bringing GABA back up, and then hopefully giving the adrenals a chance to recover. Eventually at the request of my endo he refered me to a sleep specialist where I was give a sleep study three weeks ago. Upon meeting with the doctors last week the study revealed what I already knew, I wasn’t really sleeping. I was getting little to none stage 3 and absolutely none stage 4 sleep and I can assure you many of the other guys out there arent as well.
So we went over the various options of treating it and I asked about xyrem (ghb). The dr agreed to look into it, but wanted to try me out on another drug first called GABApentin. Gabapentin is basically a medication that was originally made in effort to directly mimic the chemical in the brain and used to treat epileptics, but they found that it had an impact similar to GHB on it’s affects of deep sleep. I took the drug roughly three days ago and I woke up refreshed, feeling good, and then all of the sudden as the day went on it hit me IM NOT TIRED, I CAN THINK STRAIGHT, IM NOT ANXIOUS, IM HAPPY, NO MORE BRAIN FOG AND I CAN FUNCTION AGAIN!!! I’m telling you guys sleep is key to many of the problems. Now with that said by no means am i 100% cured, however mentally i would say im 70% already after two days. I dont want to make this too long so Ill keep updating regularly but Im telling you guys out there GET A SLEEP STUDY DONE ASAP because I can almost guarantee it will show something.