Hi everyone, it’s been 11 years since my last post. I figured I’d give an update that might be useful.
Short summary:
I was 28 years old when I took fin. By year 5 post-fin, things started to seriously improve. By year 10, I had reached a point where my symptoms were successfully treated and I was once again thriving: I now have a wife, two kids, a house, good job, etc. Last year (year 13 post-fin), unfortunately, I got a bad case of long covid and now my life is ruined again. I thought propecia had been the battle of my life, but it turns out it was only the first. I hope I will get out of this hole once again and when I do, I will be damaged and scarred, but I will live the most fulfilling life that my body allows me to.
What (I think) I learned:
- The bad news is that except in a few cases, post-fin is a life-long condition. I am sorry, but you must wrap your head around this fact. You will never be the person you once were. However, over the years you will learn your new self and learn to love him and to cheer for him. I know this is not what you wanted to hear, but it’s important.
- Things do get better. I don’t know if it’s time itself, or rather it’s you who slowly learn how to deal with this condition, or probably both factors, but it does get better.
- A message to those of you in your 20s. I am so so sorry that this happened to you. Right now, you watch your peers living their life to the fullest and you are a shell of your previous self. But you’ve got to see the long game here. Over the next 10 years, your peers will age and get worse, while you will be a little Benjamin Button who gets stronger and better. With luck and discipline, the gap will essentially close, as it happened to me. When it does close, you’ll look at the previous 10 years, and you’ll see these years not as something that you lost, but as something irrelevant.
- Do not mess with testosterone or DHEA unless sex drive is the only issue you have. If you have brain fog, fatigue, etc, just leave your sex hormones alone. If you boost them, you might experience some good days, which will inevitably come to a sudden end. Your body wants to see a low level of testosterone because of other issues you have, so if you boost it, your body will find ways to go against you, like increasing estrogen, SHBG, etc.
- Diet, physical shape, and sleep are key. You have to see yourself as an old man who wants to be the best he can be. So, these three things are key. With a bit of luck, some of these lifestyle changes will be temporary; when you are better, you can relax them without getting worse.
- When you find a supplement that works, even just temporarily, you should be happy. You can use it in the future occasionally to give you a boost.
Here is the longer story and what I did to improve. I am no doctor, so this is not a suggestion to do what I did; actually, I think that what I did was kind of crazy. It’s important to document it though.
Year 1:
I took propecia back in 2009 (1 mg / day for only four days). I crashed around a week after stopping propecia, and in the first year developed most of the symptoms that everyone develops: no libido, shrunk penis, smaller tight balls, no energy, dizziness, brain fog, GI issues, insomnia, anhedonia. I had good weeks alternating with bad weeks, my body was a mess. A doctor put me on clomid – bad idea. I developed some serious adrenal issues thanks to that, and my penis was still useless. Toward the end of year one, I ditched clomid and started a mostly raw food diet. Within days, my sleep was excellent and my energy was through the roof. My brain was sharp and I could play soccer for 4 hours a day just like when I was a teenager. Libido was still lacking. This great period lasted one month.
Year 2:
At the beginning of year 2, I had an accident and a complicated surgery. I crashed again and became worse than I ever was. At this point, the raw food diet didn’t help anymore very much. This was for me the lowest point. Needless to say, in my first years I was on this forum all the time trying to find answers and protocols. Over the years I tried diet, hormones, addressing gut issues, neurotransmitters, etc.
Year 3:
I was in grad school and I needed my brain. I realized that high-dose pregnenolone completely fixed my brain fog and lack of energy. Before you start bathing in pregnenolone like I did, though, keep in mind that pregnenolone will cause your cortisol to be very high, which is pretty bad long term. In this period, my heart rate was always high, I couldn’t sleep more than a few hours a night, etc. This was not a problem though, because as soon as I woke up I would take pregnenolone and within 30 minutes my brain was alert and functional. Again, it was crazy, but I needed to graduate and find a job, so I stuck to it for a little over a year.
Year 4:
After finding a job, I decided that it was time to stop this pregnenolone madness. Of course, fatigue, some brain fog, and lack of stamina came back. At this point, I found the miracle drug for me, gabapentin. 100 mg every night, together with melatonin and other sleep supplements, and I would sleep much better and feel much better the next day. I kept taking it for 5 years.
Year 5:
I bought a juicer and experimented with juice fasting and oh boy, that helped. For a week I slept like a baby and my mind was as clear as ever. Mood was great, colors were more intense. I kept juicing occasionally ever since (for a day at most). That year, I got married to a wonderful woman who accepts me for what I am post-fin. At this point, I could have sex but it wasn’t great and my penis and balls were still shrunk. I still didn’t feel like myself though.
Year 6:
Our first child was born. And that is when things really started to turn around. I have a few hypotheses, from the most likely to the least likely:
I started working less. importantly, I didn’t work in the evenings any longer. And it turns out that minimizing tv and computers in the evening made me sleep much better.
I started to sing (to my child) every night. i read somewhere that singing stimulates the vagus nerve and that has positive effects on hormones and neurotransmitters.
I had a oxytocin overdose. Before my child’s birth, I thought I couldn’t feel emotions very well. I was wrong: witnessing the birth of my child triggered the strongest emotion I ever felt; I’m sure I had a oxytocin overdose. Look it up: having a child releases a flood of oxytocin that changes the brain of both parents permanently.
That year I also changed my workout. Up to that point, I was focusing on going to the gym and lift weights. That year, I focused more on long walks of about an hour. It improved my sleep and appetite.
Year 7-10:
We had another child, again another huge oxytocin overdose and less computer-related work for me. I also stopped taking gabapentin. I forgot to mention that over the years I kept taking some pregnenolone here and there when I felt like I needed it.
Year 10-12:
At this point, I had ok energy, ok physical stamina, but I still had sleep issues and still couldn’t drink alcohol or have a large dinner without my heart rate stay up all night. I decided to start running. In these years, I trained up to the point to start winning medals in local races. I specialized in 5k, which I could run under 20 minutes at the age of 40. I was running 3-4 times a week, which helped my sleep, my mood, my appetite, and my ability to drink alcohol. However, that feeling of happy relaxed drunk was gone the day I took propecia and never came back: after that drinking gives me a drunk but not stressed feeling. My libido was acceptable: I could have sex every day if I wanted to. Talking to fellow 40 year olds, I found out that some (not many) of them also started having trouble sleeping and couldn’t really get drunk without paying the price the next night or the next day.
Year 13:
At this point, at 41 years old, I had the same mental and physical stamina I had pre-fin when I was in my 20s, and a similar enjoyment of life. I was sexually completely functional: I could have sex for as long as I wanted, no problem with erections, etc. The only thing I was missing was the raging libido from my 20s. To address this, I decided to cautiously try to boost it with DHEA, which I had low. Note that I had supplemented with DHEA in the first few years, but any result I got didn’t stick. It was not the right moment yet: I needed to fix everything else first. Well, on 100 mg of DHEA a day I had similar libido as in my 20s; I simply couldn’t stop thinking about sex all day. It also increased my aggressivity. I don’t know how a normal 40-year old is supposed to feel like, but it can’t possibly be much hornier than I was on DHEA. I was planning to stay on DHEA forever.
Year 14:
Unfortunately, I stayed on DHEA only for two months, that is, until I got covid and my heart rate skyrocketed, so I had to stop it. My long covid is a new nightmare that I don’t want to really discuss too much here. It’s just a very different disease from post-fin. I have high heart rate and blood pressure upon standing (hyperadrenergic POTS), insomnia, and reduced ability to work because of all the adrenaline that my body is constantly pumping in my system. With long covid I have had bursts of raging depression – and I’m not saying this lightly. With fin I had anhedonia, that is, I didn’t care if I lived or died. With long covid, I felt the urge to hurt myself. Thank goodness the depression is mostly gone, but it is scary. A big difference between my post-fin and my long-covid is that with long-covid if I do too much activity, I get worse permanently; with fin, I could try drugs, hormones and what not and I never got worse permanently.
I don’t want to get too much into how I’m doing now because it’s not that relevant to this forum. I hope that my experience might give some hope and perspective to others, especially the youngest victims.
