My member story

Member Stories
#1

Welcome to our community. Please fill in the following template as a way of introducing yourself, and helping others to understand your background and situation.

Where are you from (country)? United States

How did you find this forum (Google search – if so, what search terms? Via link from a forum or website – if so, what page? Other?)

Google like 8 years ago never even read the forum until a few days ago

What is your current age, height, weight?

32, 5’8, 125 pounds

What specific drug did you use (finasteride, dutasteride, saw palmetto, isotretinoin/Accutane, fluoxetine, sertraline, citalopram, leuprorelin, etc…)?

Finasteride and then dutasteride

What dose did you take (eg. 1 mg/day, 1 mg every other day etc.)?

I forget it’s been years it was generic from alldaychemist

What condition was being treated with the drug?
Baldness

For how long did you take the drug (weeks/months/years)?
4 years

Date when you started the drug?

2013 February

Date when you quit the drug?

2017 February

Age when you quit?

26

How did you quit (cold turkey or taper off)?

Tapered off

How long into your usage did you notice the onset of side effects?

Absolute first 8 hours after first finasteride pill a year later began dutasteride and that didn’t make a huge noticeable difference to finasteride

What side effects did you experience that have yet to resolve since discontinuation?

Check the boxes that apply. You can save your post first, then interactively check/uncheck the boxes by clicking on them. If your symptoms change, please update your list.

Sexual
[ ✓] Loss of Libido / Sex Drive
[✓ ] Erectile Dysfunction
[ ] Complete Impotence
[ ✓] Loss of Morning Erections
[ ✓] Loss of Spontaneous Erections
[✓ ] Loss of Nocturnal Erections
[✓ ] Watery Ejaculate
[ ✓] Reduced Ejaculate
[ ] Inability or Difficulty to Ejaculate / Orgasm
[ ] Reduced Sperm Count / Motility

Mental
[ ] Emotional Blunting / Emotionally Flat
[ ] Difficulty Focusing / Concentrating
[ ] Confusion
[ ] Memory Loss / Forgetfulness
[ ] Stumbling over Words / Losing Train of Thought
[ ] Slurring of Speech
[ ] Lack of Motivation / Feeling Passive / Complacency
[ ✓] Extreme Anxiety / Panic Attacks
[ ] Severe Depression / Melancholy
[ ] Suicidal Thoughts

These are all too extreme to be accurate descriptions and I had a lot of these issues before finasteride or dutasteride. Why? Well I was depressed BECAUSE of going bald. Let’s face it we are confusing chicken and egg with a lot of this stuff

I also got INCREASED anxiety but I already had anxiety issues all my life to begin with. There needs to be an in between. I wouldn’t say extreme anxiety but I check marked that because there wasn’t a more realistic option say, slightly increased anxiety

Physical
[ ] Penile Tissue Changes (narrowing, shrinkage, wrinkled)
[ ] Penis curvature / rotation on axis
[✓ ] Testicular Pain
[ ] Testicular Shrinkage / Loss of Fullness
[ ] Genital numbness / sensitivity decrease
[ ] Weight Gain
[ ] Gynecomastia (male breasts)
[ ] Muscle Wastage
[ ] Muscle Weakness
[ ] Joint Pain
[ ] Dry / Dark Circles under eyes

Again too extreme. I didn’t have male breasts. But I did get puffy nipples and itching. That’s gone away since I stopped the drugs

Misc
[ ] Prostate pain
[ ] Persistent Fatigue / Exhaustion
[ ] Stomach Pains / Digestion Problems
[ ] Constipation / “Poo Pellets”
[ ] Vision - Acuity Decrease / Blurriness
[ ] Tinnitus (ringing or high pitched sound in ears)
[ ] Hearing loss
[ ] Increased hair loss
[ ] Frequent urination
[ ] Lowered body temperature

All I gotta say is, Wow, people get these weird side effects from finasteride?

Andddd if you get increases hair lose it’s because you were already going bald and that’s why you took these horrible drugs in the first place CHICKEN AND EGG

[ ] Other (please explain)

What (if any) treatments have you undertaken to recover from your side effects since discontinuation of the drug?

All eight B vitamins, vitamin D. I just now began magnolia extract because it’s a GABA-A receptor positive allosteric modulator, just like allopregnanolone and other progesterone 5 alpha reductase inhibitors are.

I took anastrozole a few years ago and that eliminated sexual side effects but I stopped it because of course I began losing hair again

If you have pre or post-drug blood tests, what hormonal changes have you encountered since discontinuing the drug (please post your test results in the “Blood Tests” section and link to them in your post)?

I never took any blood tests.

Anything not listed in the above questions you’d like to share about your experience?

Tell us your story, in your own words, about your usage and side effects experienced while on/off the drug.

Self-reporting template - ONLY USE FOR FUTURE POSTS TO REPORT ANY TRIALS OF TREATMENTS, NOT YOUR INITIAL MEMBER STORY

  1. Name of the therapy/substance:
    • Dosage:
    • How often you took it:
  2. Status
    • Still using [ ]
    • Stopped with no lasting change to initial symptoms [ ]
    • Stopped with persistent change to symptoms [ ]
  3. Duration of use: Days [ ] Months [ ] Years [ ]
  4. Response when you started:
    • Greatly improved [ ]
    • Slightly improved [ ]
    • Stayed the same [ ]
    • Slightly worsened [ ]
    • Greatly worsened [ ]
  5. Current response (if you’re still using the therapy/substance) OR Response in the time before you stopped the treatment
    • Greatly improved [ ]
    • Slightly improved [ ]
    • Stayed the same [ ]
    • Slightly worsened [ ]
    • Greatly worsened [ ]
  6. Lasting changes to initial symptoms after cessation (if you have stopped for more than 3 weeks)
    • Greatly improved [ ]
    • Slightly improved [ ]
    • Stayed the same [ ]
    • Slightly worsened [ ]
    • Greatly worsened [ ]
#2

Welcome to the community.

Don’t forget to report your symptoms on the FDA.

How is going the magnolia extract?

1 Like
#3

Not exactly. These are symptoms of the post-drug syndrome. If you don’t have them consider yourself lucky. Or less unlucky.

1 Like
#4

The magnolia extract is interesting. It ONLY works if you take a TON of it.

I’m actually not taking any extract. It’s the whole bark.

It comes in pills of 400 milligrams each.

You can’t just take one… Two… Three… Four…or even 10 pills.

You gotta take about 20 damn pills a day. Lol

Soooo I’m sure there’s other people who have taken magnolia before and didn’t get any results. But you have to eat a lot of unpurified magnolia bark to have an effect

Anyways, magnolia is vaguely similar to benzodiazepine pills but way less horrible and unnatural feeling

They make me sleep many many hours of I take 20 pills lol

I took magnolia again because they positively regulate GABA-A receptors. The same is done by allopregnanolone and other good neurosteroids that the damn evil dutasteride takes away

My semen is still insanely watery, so, I assume my 5 alpha reductase is still extremely suppressed.

Yet, the magnolia seems to be powerful enough at upregulating GABA-A receptors, that I don’t seem to need these Neuro steroids… At least not for the time being

Keep in mind, I get HORRIBLY depressed if I don’t also take my vitamins, especially vitamin D. This has held true for years. Whenever I stop my vitamins for a while, I get depressed. Then when I take them again, after a few days, my depression gets blunted

#5

“exactly. These are symptoms of the post-drug syndrome. If you don’t have them consider yourself lucky. Or less unlucky.”

I really really realllyyyy think those are all things that naturally happen with age tho. I’ve always had bad vision and it began to get worse in my teenage years way before I took 5ar inhibitors.

I could blame it on the drugs but it was genetics… Chicken and egg

Not sure about depression. I know for a fact 5ar inhibitors should increase depression based on scientific studies of Neuro steroids. And indeed I got WAY depressed when I began taking dutasteride.

But then, I was already depressed over my UGLY BALD HEAD.

I use to get girls to talk to me easily. Once I began going bald that went way down hill. I was getting depressed before I took the drugs.

Chicken, meet egg.

Egg, meet chicken

1 Like
#6

Some PFS symptoms happen naturally with advanced age, others happen naturally with dysfunction and disease. When they happen naturally they present with biomarkers and deficiencies. When they come on abruptly after stopping 5-ARI, they don’t.

#7

NAW! holy goodness. I began finasteride way too late. I’m almost bald now.

Also I just hope my allopregnanolone and other Neuro steroids eventually return, but I am under the impression I was sorta lacking in those Neuro chemicals beforehand

If I want hair I’ll wear a wig.

I HATE how ALL you see online, when you look up DHT or 5 alpha reductase is about how you should inhibit them. All for hair.

DHT and 5 alpha reductase are AMAZING. it really sucks that because of this one horrible side effect of baldness we got Duped into PERMANENTLY taking away such an incredibly important enzyme

All. For. STUPID. Hair.

But yeah I honestly think we have to distinguish cause and effect because age is very harsh to anyone.

We as young balding men tend to be insecure and angry and want to blame everything on something. God, drugs, pharmaceutical companies… Everything except getting old…

But yeah, watery semen and lack of sex drive and anxiety and depression are certainly related to dutasteride based on all the mountains of evidence.

1 Like
#8

I don’t think you should talk for young men.

Personally I can’t recognize myself in what you’re writing at all.

Also someone below 30 is not “old”, decay slowly starts at about 25 so blaming any of our issues on “age” is pure nonsense.

2 Likes
#10

Cbrandel, I can’t find a way to copy your post, but naw, anything under 40 isn’t old

But really we do have to do a good job at distinguishing cause and effect; chicken and egg

Like me, I could blame my eyes getting worse on drugs but it was just age and sunlight. Ultraviolet rays destroy your eyes over time.

My eyes were getting worse before I took any drugs

Same with my face. People who don’t ever take these drugs get to looking older, I doubt it has anything to do with dutasteride

But yes, the sexual issues, the increased anxiety, depression and stress from lack of cortisol clearance etc, these are things that worry me

My bad if I’m coming across the wrong way, but we can’t get distracted by worrying about things that would have been inevitable anyways because of the normal aging process. That makes people not take us seriously

1 Like
#11

Well said.

#12

How is that well said. You think guys in their 20s who after stopping fin suddenly experience brain fog and muscle wastage that one would expect in their 80s are just overreacting? Merck’s lawyers will be happy to hear that.

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