It’s been 4 months since I quit propecia and feel my old self returning.
I started taking propecia in January 2015 after dreading the loss of my hair- worst mistake of my life.
Although I didn’t immediately feel the effects, they gradually crept up on my and by month 6 my libido and desire to have sex was drastically diminished. I have an extremely attractive girl friend of 5 years and I did not want to have sex with Her. I had a complete loss of morning and nocturnal erections and had trouble maintaining it on the rare occasions that I did engage in sexual intercourse. Before the drug I was a very sexually active 27 year old guy and would have sex atleast twice a day (everyone is different but this is what was normal for me).
1 year into the drug although I saw improvements in hair retention. I had completely lost the desire to have sex and started feeling extremely fatigued from month 8. I had to be asleep by 9pm in order to get through the next day ( I have a normal office job- which is not particularly physically draining yet I still had trouble to get through the day). This meant I was spending less Time with my partner who is the reason that I quit this drug. It also meant that I did not want to do anything that required physical effort including the gym do I would avoid it at all cost. I didn’t care to think or ask myself why I had suddenly started to change, I thought that it might be to do with my age and that I was getting older (looking back this sounds so silly).
My partner has a high sex drive and my loss of interest in sex was a strain on my relationship although I could not see it at the time. It took her 7 months to finally ask me if I was seeing someone else and whether I still loved her. I have never loved anyone the way I love this woman yet I had no desire to touch her. She finally told me that she did some research into propecia and showed me all the various posts and stories that everyone was sharing. She had realised on the days that I missed a propecia dosage, I would have sex with her atleast once - so she made the connection with the drug and loss of libido. The articles and research online was a shock to the system as I had not particularly paid attention to the sexual and physical side effects or even if I did I did not want to acknowledge them for fear of losing my hair. I was told by be pharmacist when I started the drug that 2% of men suffer sexual side effects and that it is rare- that was clearly a lie.
After reading some of the stories online, for the sake of my health, my relationship I quit the drug. It’s now been 4 months, my sex drive is slowly but surely returning, I feel less fatigued although I still need to sleep much more than I did before the drug.
My morning errctions have returned and spontaneous erections are slowly starting to return.
This drug should be removed from the market as it nearly destroyed my relationship and my health had my partner not helped me stopping this drug.