Migraine kicked off by Finasteride

Hi All,

I thought I should post my story here for others to see in case you have the same outcome as I did on Propecia.

My hair started to show signs of thinning at the front when I turned 30. Back in 1997, propecia was quite new and after researching things I decided to grab a script for 5 mg finasteride and cut it into quarters. I was on it for 3 weeks back then and then it started. I started getting neck pain, headache and terrible brain fog. I stuck with finasteride a little longer – maybe a week, but the symptoms got worse and worse. I knew it was the drug and stopped immediately. For 8 months these symptoms persisted although they were not as severe. Suddenly it all stopped.

Some time later I had another relpase of the same type of symptoms but much weaker, it lasted another few months and stopped.

In 2002, I was freaking about my hair again and decided to try propecia again thinking maybe the first round was a coincidence with the SEs. I took 1 mg for 3 days and BAM, I was back into another heavy session of neck pain, head fog and headaches. It lasted about a month.

Fast forward to earlier this year and I decided one more time to try propecia but at 0.5 mg. I took only one dose and within 4 hours had the most horrific head pain ever AND had vertigo this time. I couldn’t think straight, vision was screwed up. Bad news. I felt pretty shocking for about 8 days and it got better as the days passed by.

I’ll never go near that stuff again. I now know that I have a predisposition to migraine (which causes a lot of the symptoms I’ve read on this forum). Migraine is not just a bad headache but once triggered causes a lot of neurological problems. I believe that my first use of the drug really catapulted me into becoming a migraineur. I still have bouts of it here and there but never as bad as it was on Propecia. It’s scary what can happen when we mess around with hormones like this.

S

Holy crap, your (initial) reaction was exactly like mine, only much more stretched out. I crashed hard, got better, crashed again lightly, and then got better again, with a lot of the same symptoms.

I’m also prone to migraines too; they usually start with me going partially blind and my comprehension of the world around me gets really cloudy. Fin caused a lot of similar problems, so I wouldn’t doubt there could be a connection.

The best advice I have for you (as far as dealing with a migraine) is to take 2 excedrin migraine pills as soon as you realize you’re going blind. It lessens the cloudy brain fog effects and almost completely neutralizes the massive headache part.