My progress

Member Stories
#1

  1. Where are you from (country)?
    Canada

  2. 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, searched for “propecia side effects”

  3. What is your current age, height, weight?
    21, 5’11", 195

  4. Do you excercise regularly? If so, what type of excercise?
    Play Sports a few times a week

  5. What type of diet do you eat (vegetarian, meat eater, raw, fast-food/organic healthy)?
    Fast food mostly (university student)

  6. Why did you take Finasteride (hair loss, BPH, other)?
    hairloss

  7. For how long did you take Finasteride (weeks/months/years)?
    8 days

  8. How old were you, and WHEN (date) did you start Finasteride?
    20 - From April 3rd, 2009 to April 11th, 2009

  9. How old were you when you quit, and WHEN (date) did you quit?
    20

  10. How did you quit (cold turkey or taper off)?
    Cold Turkey

  11. What type of Finasteride did you use – Propecia, Proscar, Fincar or other generic?
    Propecia

  12. What dose did you take (eg. 1 mg/day, 1 mg every other day etc.)?
    1mg/day for 8 days

  13. How long into your use of Finasteride did you notice the onset of side effects?
    2 months after discontinuation

  14. What side effects did you experience while on the drug that have yet to resolve since discontinuation?
    All these side effects are yet to resolve.

Put an X beside all that apply:

Sexual
[x] Loss of Libido / Sex Drive
[ ] Erectile Dysfunction
[ ] Complete Impotence
[x] Loss of Morning Erections
[x] Loss of Spontaneous Erections
[x] Loss of Nocturnal Erections
[x] Watery Ejaculate
[x] Reduced Ejaculate (NO EJACULATE!!)
[ ] Inability to Ejaculate / Orgasm
[x] Reduced Sperm Count / Motility

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

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

Misc
[x] Prostate pain
[ ] Persistent Fatigue / Exhaustion
[x] Stomach Pains / Digestion Problems
[x] Constipation / “Poo Pellets”
[ ] Vision - Acuity Decrease / Blurriness
[ ] Increased hair loss
[x] Frequent urination
[ ] Lowered body temperature

[ ] Other (please explain)

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

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

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

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

I took the drug in 2006, and didn’t notice any side effects. I took it for maybe 3 weeks? The reason at that time I didn’t notice is probably because I didn’t care. From that moment on, for some reason, I would gain a lot of weight (until now). I had difficulty ejaculating for a while, plus I had severe anxiety that persists. This is all looking back, I never took notice of this while I was on or after taking the drug, only realized this now.

Then I took the drug again this year (as listed). I stopped because I feared my focus/concentration was going, but when I did quit I had NO sexual side effects. Now, yesterday, my testicles/prostate started to hurt, especially when I sat down. Then, I didn’t produce any ejaculate, whatsoever! It’s been like this for two days. I also noticed my penis looks like it shriveled up.

I’m only freaking 21 years old, and I want to have a family, kids!

:frowning:[/b]

Recovered - Tried everything: HCG, Arimidex, Nolva
#2

Read FAQ at top of site, get bloodtests then evaluate next steps.

#3

You first took the drug in 2006, when you were 17?

#4

I was 18.

#5

So I seem to have found the trigger.

The big question for me was, why did it take 2 months after discontinuation for side effects to show up? The day they emerged, I had a slashing pain in my testicles. I remember thinking to myself “What happened today? What did I do?”. I knew what I did that day, and I know what I changed, and I considered it as an option for why I got these side effects, but never took this possibility seriously.

The answer was, I took a multi-vitamin that day. How do I know this is the cause? Well, ignoring the fact that the day I got the side effects was the first day I decided to take a multi-vitamin regularly, every time I took the multi-vitamin again, I felt very ill, I felt cold, weak, I didn’t want to eat, I felt like I had a bad cold. I’ve only been able to put 2 and 2 together today (to determine that is really the cause or the trigger), and I’ve stopped taking it. The only side effect I have is muscle twitching, and unable to ejaculate with any force (semen does not leave the end of my penis, stays in the shaft). I took the multi-vitamin in the morning, tried to throw it up thereafter, and am now just waiting things out.

I tried to get in contact with Dr. Komer in the Doctor’s section, but I want to take my time and see if this problem resolves itself before I seek any professional help that may not improve the situation, or make it worse.

I think it is very important for you guys to try to take what I just said very seriously, it could be a clue to completing the finasteride puzzle.

Has anyone met with Dr. Keith Jarvi?
#6

Okay, so I just ejaculated and semen was able to exit from my penis. What should I do? I seem to be improving, but is it naturally, or was the multi-vitamin helping? It always makes me feel pretty darn sick (and seems to be the root of my initial problems). Is it a case of feeling bad as my body is simply getting better?

#7

Multivitamins have nothing to do with this syndrome. Most likely anything you are attributing to multivitamin use is psychosomatic.

#8

I’m sorry, Mew. I have to disagree a bit here. When I took the multi-vitamin, I felt physically sick (As in, had to stay in bed and take two Advils sick). The day I first took it, I got my side effects, after two months of discontinuation of Propecia. Can these all just be strange coincidences?

#9

If you take multivitamins on an empty stomach, yes they can make you feel sick, almost to the point of wanting to throw up.

Irregardless, if you want to believe the multivitamin is the source of all your problems, then you probably have no use for this site?

#10

Obviously it is not the source of my problems, I feel that there might have been some sort of mineral or such in them that was the trigger for my finasteride problems.

I’m trying to help. Any piece of information that I think can aid, I don’t want to hesitate to provide.

#11

Again, I just want to try to help everyone, I’m trying to present anything and everything I can to aid. I’m sorry if some of my theories might be silly, but I don’t want to not provide the forum, that was my only area of support, with as much aid as I can.

#12

Is there saw palmento in your multi vitamin?

I also didnt get severe side effects until about 2 months after I stopped. I started taking valium and then stopped and got all the side effects listed on this site. I’m not sure if these side effects would have happened had I not taken the valium…

#13

No, there is not.

Okay, I’m at a level between where I was to begin now, and where I was a couple days ago, maybe this is all just in the process of improvement?

And my penis seems to be “peeling”.

#14

My muscles are still twitching, but maybe one or two pulsations now that are considerably weaker. Like Mew said, my ejaculation is simply just slowly crawling out (no force pretty much) and it takes considerable time for it to get at the tip of penis (while it did not even get there before). I still have testicular pain (doesn’t hurt that much, though), and my penis feels “funny” sometimes. Yet, it is still peeling.

#15

I haven’t recovered yet, but I’m hoping to. I haven’t suffered from any libido issues, my ability to gain an erection may have been slightly reduced, but I have been noticing more morning wood as of late (due to arginine?).

My Symptoms:
Reduced Ejaculate
Testicular Pain
Prostate Pain
Wrinkled Penis
Spider vein on the left side of my penis
No ejaculatory force (ejaculate doesn’t even come out of the tip of my penis)
EDIT: Slight Gynecomastia

So far I have taken:
Quercetin
L-Arginine
Zinc
Multivitamin
Maca
Omega-3 (DHA)

What seemed to have been working for me:
Quercetin?
L-Arginine?

What seems to have harmed me:
Maca! - Gave me testicular pain, prostate pain, and made my penis shrivel up more - I don’t know if these are necessary evils toward the path of recovery, but I am going to leave Maca aside for the time being.

What I am going to keep:
Zinc
Daily Multivitamin
Quercetin?

My goal as of now: To simply be able to have more ejaculatory force (and more ejaculate?) - How can I reach this goal and what works?

What I think I have or am pretty sure I have: Excess Estrogen (maybe converting from testosterone?), and prostate issues (decreased size of prostate?) - I am unable to get DIM in Canada, anyone have any suggestions to battle these two? I have a feeling that if I fix these issues, all others may follow.

(I’m sorry guys, I need a place to keep my thoughts, and I thought we could maybe help out each other here with me posting this)

#16

Also, mentally, am I all there? Negatives like “no” and “not” confuse me sometimes making hard for me to follow (eg: “I’m not able to not sleep”). My memory seems fair, but this inability to keep up with spoken language bugs me. Could I just be looking too hard for errors in myself and have overblown this into being more than the nothing that it is?

#17

Update:

  • I’ve been getting constant morning erections the last few days, but I don’t know what to do with this information - I was always able to get morning erections, but it never seemed constant, potentially even not constant since my use of Propecia in around 2006 or so. I’ve been using Arginine, and it may be causing this. Should I continue using Arginine?

  • Also, I still have seemingly prostate pain (when I try to push my prostate the outside to see if it hurts), but it seems to be improving from yesterday to today.

  • My ejaculate has always had little to no force (doesn’t even exit the tip of the penis 90% of the time), I don’t know what to do with this - could Arginine help?

#18

I have been taking for 2 weeks:
L-Arginine (1pill a day, 1000mg a day)
Zinc, Calcium, Magnesium all in one (1pill a day Zinc=25mg or 167%dv Calcium 1000mg or 100%dv 40mg Magnesium or 100%dv)

L-Lysine (1 pill 500mg)
Vitiman B6 (1 pill 200mg 10000% of dv)

Has not done anything yet but at least I am trying something after not facing the problem.

my story:
propeciahelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2221

#19

Hey guys,

Over the past year I have tried everything from HCG to Nolvadex to all the prescribed herbal stuff on this forum. Over the last few days I have seen my sex drive recover, and my brain fog disappear. As I said, I’ve tried everything. Yet, recently I picked up Tetris Tribulus, and a specfic extract of it to be specific. I used it numerous times at low doses, and it helped me while I was on it. I went off and on it, feeling better while on, and those feelings gone while I was off. What I recently did (about 2-3 weeks ago), was use it for maybe 5 days at 2-3 times the prescribed rate of each dose, 2-3 times a day, for as I said, maybe 5 days or less. The results were that even after I stopped, things seem to have returned to normal (after a brief up and down few days), and potentially even better than before. The reason they might be better than before was that I used finasteride twice in my life, and only after the second time did I notice the negativity. The improvement that I have seen may be due to a recovery from even my initial finasteride use, when I was probably only 17-18, and my hormones were going through changes that needed not to be toyed with.

Anyway, over the next few days I will detail if my progress continues, and I will show you guys the exact product I used and the dosage I use in exact detail. As I said, I’ve tried a lot of things over the last year, as that is my personality, I tend to be rather relentless. I tried finasteride at 21 and it changed me, made my life worse, but I hope to be an improved person from the experience. To be honest, from all the recoveries on this forum, everyone seems to have found their cure from differing sources, and I guess this has to do with how everyone’s body reacts to changes to notice the HPTA axis imbalance. I’m trying to chip in what I can.

Thanks

1 Like
#20

By the way, I read all the studies about Tribulus’ effects on estrogen rather than testosterone, and etc. and when I took it, it was a calculated, albeit, desperate move. I’m not saying that Tribulus is the cure in itself, I’m just saying that it may be the trigger for the body to notice a hormonal imbalance and fix itself. Tribulus could have sent my estrogen numbers through the roof, and I certainly know it improved my testosterone numbers because of the way I was feeling. Again, take everything with a grain of salt, I have taken advice from people on this forum about their recoveries that caused me to use products recommended by them that made things worse for me.